On 29 May 2002 14:47:30 +0200, Marcus Lundblad wrote:
>
> On Wed, 29 May 2002, Dominik Vogt wrote:
>
> > On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 01:01:09PM +0100, Thomas Adam wrote:
> > > If fvwm3 were to be released for a date in the future,
> > > Dominik, would you consider some kind of "graphical"
> > > customisation tool, similar to what Enlightenment
> > > offers???
There were tries to add such tool into FVWM, but not very successfull.
Try for example to run a nice small "FvwmScript FvwmScript-BaseConfig".
Maybe this is because no many FVWM users need such tool? I think the
real reason is that any graphic tool is very limited by its definition.
Either this tool will be dumbed down to some predefined configurations
having users a feeling that FVWM is not configurable, or it will be very
complex and include dozens of screens with dozens of options each.
And this is very optimistic, it may easily include thousands of screens,
with hundrens of options each.
Just think about this. Some statistics about FVWM. We have as of now:
* 166 commands (and the number grows)
* 199 Style options (and the number grows)
* 54 MenuStyle options
* a lot of TitleStyle/ButtonStyle/BorderStyle options
* 33 window circulation options
* 37 WindowList options
* each Colorset has 23 options (probably 30+ in 2.6.x)
* 28 modules, some are very configurable with dozens of options each
* 13 menu placement hints, 7 bug-options, 24 cursor contexts
* 26 binding contexts, 2^8 modifiers and so on
Now, consider a user configuration that includes dozens of global feel
lines (Style *), many individual Style patterns, several MenuStyle
patterns, dozens of colorsets, dozens of fonts, dozens of menus, dozens
of functions, dozens of keyboard, mouse and stroke bindings. Window
decorations is another endless story. Now, modules. Even if a user is
limited to one FvwmButtons with one FvwmIconMan and FvwmPager swallowed
and several other applications swallowed, there are still millions of
combinations to create such FvwmButtons panel.
So everyone should choose what he wants, a full control or simplified
graphical tool with predefined configurations. You can't do everything
with graphical tools only.
Saying all this, we do have graphical tools in fvwm-themes for defining a
full global feel, settings like animation/sound-player/gnome/kde, a menu
editor and (started) bindings editor. Is this something that Thomas Adam
originally asked for? What do you miss in fvwm-themes, except that it is
not integrated directly into fvwm (which is a plus)?
> > Unfortunately, that's not really a matter of consideration. We're
> > simply too few developers, and the few that do most of the work
> > don't feel inclined to do it. In my eyes, a nice and powerful
> > config tool ist the most important improvement we could make.
>
> And this should be feasable to do with FvwmScript, so somebodyu who wants
> to do it could, I guess..
I believe that such tool should be written as a module using Perl/Gtk.
As much as I like FvwmScript, its scripting ability is far down to the
perl scripting, and its widget functionality is not as good as GTK+.
> And I'm doing a config that's customisable using menues. I plan to write
> to forms to edit colours and so on.
> But this will not be a complete cutomisation tool, only those thing *I*
> want to be able to change in run-time =)
Exactly. Someone should limit his graphical tool to some predefined
hardcoded configuration just to make such graphical tool possible at all.
For example, I write a completely new module (it will be available in
fvwm-themes) that enables persistent dynamical configuration of a panel
using menus. This module is useless in other themes that don't have such
panel. Every theme has its own configuration.
No graphical tool enables a full customization, some manual configuration
or even programming is always needed to create something good and new.
Anyway, if some programmer wants to seriously work (many months) on a
generic graphical tool, he should contact me and Olivier first to discuss
the design of such tool, we have some experience in doing this.
Regards,
Mikhael.
--
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Received on Wed May 29 2002 - 10:51:33 BST