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Window Manager in FC5

Ramanathan Muthaiah [rus.cahimb at gmail.com]
Tue, 2 Jan 2007 23:44:31 +0530

New year greetings to all :-))

This is no new year resolution to switch from current window manager but wanted to try my hands on coule of them for my home system.

Couple of them are : iceWM, fluxbox.

But, am finding hard to find the right doc / Google search result to configure these WMs for FC5.

Can somebody help me here ?

/Ram


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Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
Tue, 2 Jan 2007 19:06:36 +0000

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 11:44:31PM +0530, Ramanathan Muthaiah wrote:

> New year greetings to all :-))
> 
> This is no new year resolution to switch from current window manager
> but wanted to try my hands on coule of them for my home system.
> 
> Couple of them are : iceWM, fluxbox.
> 
> But, am finding hard to find the right doc / Google search result to
> configure these WMs for FC5.

Well, given the two you've mentioned, I immediately think of:

http://icewm.org/ (Oddly enough has a documentation section).

http://fluxbox.org/ (Oddly enough has a documentation section).

Of course, there's no accounting for just loading up the WM and messing about with it.

-- Thomas Adam

-- 
"Wanting to feel; to know what is real.  Living is a lie." -- Purpoise
Song, by The Monkees.

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Ramanathan Muthaiah [rus.cahimb at gmail.com]
Wed, 3 Jan 2007 02:42:21 +0530

> Well, given the two you've mentioned, I immediately think of:
>
> http://icewm.org/  (Oddly enough has a documentation section).
> http://fluxbox.org/ (Oddly enough has a documentation section).

These are the first set of sites, other than others, I browsed thru the docs / FAQ pages specifically looking for configuration with Fedora core 5, but could not find anything relevant to address the problem in question.

Search is still on . . .

/Ram


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Francis Daly [francis at daoine.org]
Tue, 2 Jan 2007 23:15:40 +0000

On Wed, Jan 03, 2007 at 02:42:21AM +0530, Ramanathan Muthaiah wrote:

Hi there,

> > http://icewm.org/  (Oddly enough has a documentation section).
> > http://fluxbox.org/ (Oddly enough has a documentation section).
> 
> These are the first set of sites, other than others, I browsed thru
> the docs / FAQ pages specifically looking for configuration with
> Fedora core 5, but could not find anything relevant to address the
> problem in question.

Without trying to be smart: what's the problem in question?

"I can run a new WM but don't know how to configure it"?

"I can't run a new WM because when I try something, something happens but I expect something else to happen"?

"I start X using 'startx' and don't know what to change to get a new WM"?

"I start X using a display manager and don't know what to change to get a new WM"?

"Something else entirely"?

I suspect that when you write down the very specific question you want to ask, the path to the answer will be much clearer to you. Even if it leads to another very specific question in short order.

And using words like "fedora change window manager" in a web search might also point in a helpful direction.

In case it's of any use, I have a file in $PATH with the contents

===
#!/bin/sh
startx $(which ${WM:-9wm}) -- :${XSRV:-9} $(which Xnest) -geometry 1024x768 -nolisten tcp
===
which allows me play with a window manager in a sort-of-sandbox. Be aware of the order in which programs see keypresses, though, because nesting within a "greedy" window manager might cause a head-scratch.

Good luck,

f

-- 
Francis Daly        francis@daoine.org

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Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
Wed, 3 Jan 2007 07:05:11 +0000

On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 11:15:40PM +0000, Francis Daly wrote:

> which allows me play with a window manager in a sort-of-sandbox. Be
> aware of the order in which programs see keypresses, though, because
> nesting within a "greedy" window manager might cause a head-scratch.

That's not the problem; the problem is the fact that Xnest emulates both an XServer and an XClient, and its implementation as to how key-bindings are interpreted/propagated within itself and to the underlying XCient (Xnest in this case) don't always tally -- the confusion lies solely with Xnest in this regard.

-- Thomas Adam

-- 
"Wanting to feel; to know what is real.  Living is a lie." -- Purpoise
Song, by The Monkees.

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Francis Daly [francis at daoine.org]
Wed, 3 Jan 2007 21:56:00 +0000

On Wed, Jan 03, 2007 at 07:05:11AM +0000, Thomas Adam wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 11:15:40PM +0000, Francis Daly wrote:

Hi there,

> > which allows me play with a window manager in a sort-of-sandbox. Be
> > aware of the order in which programs see keypresses, though, because
> > nesting within a "greedy" window manager might cause a head-scratch.
> 
> That's not the problem; the problem is the fact that Xnest emulates both
> an XServer and an XClient, and its implementation as to how key-bindings
> are interpreted/propagated within itself and to the underlying XCient
> (Xnest in this case) don't always tally -- the confusion lies solely
> with Xnest in this regard.

That's certainly a problem, but wasn't what I was thinking of.

I was more considering where the main window manager handles some keypresses itself, and where some client of the nested X server, including the window manager, wants to be able to receive those same keypresses.

Hopefully the window managers have a mechanism of sending any keypress through to an app; my point was that in order to send a keypress through to, for example, a client of the nested X server, you would need to take account of the mechanisms of both window managers rather than just the nested one. So it's not a "clean" window manager environment.

And that's because the main window manager gets to handle the keypress before the nested X server (which then plays its own games before the nested window manager sees anything).

I lied. I don't use Xnest to play with a window manager. I use it to play with other applications under a window manager other than the one I normally use.

And yes, running under Xnest does add some extra wrinkles. "sometimes sticky control key" is one that catches me, but that could just be a feature of how I use it.

f

-- 
Francis Daly        francis@daoine.org

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Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
Wed, 3 Jan 2007 22:06:05 +0000

On Wed, Jan 03, 2007 at 09:56:00PM +0000, Francis Daly wrote:

> I was more considering where the main window manager handles some
> keypresses itself, and where some client of the nested X server,
> including the window manager, wants to be able to receive those same
> keypresses.

I've mentioned this many times:

http://linuxgazette.net/114/tag/3.html

> Hopefully the window managers have a mechanism of sending any keypress
> through to an app; my point was that in order to send a keypress through
> to, for example, a client of the nested X server, you would need to take
> account of the mechanisms of both window managers rather than just the
> nested one. So it's not a "clean" window manager environment.

That all depends how the window manager handles key-bindings.

Not all of them operate on propagation alone.

-- Thomas Adam

-- 
"Wanting to feel; to know what is real.  Living is a lie." -- Purpoise
Song, by The Monkees.

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Ramanathan Muthaiah [rus.cahimb at gmail.com]
Thu, 4 Jan 2007 19:50:31 +0530

> Without trying to be smart: what's the problem in question?
>
> "I can run a new WM but don't know how to configure it"?
Yes, will be specific with my requirement:

1. Installed iceWM & Fluxbox from their sources

2. Now, I do configure (Xsessions / xinitrc / some other file) to use one of them as my new window manager

With the current system, I have a graphical login and use KDE.

I tried, after referencing various docs, playing around with files in /etc/X11/xinit, but these changed did not help me in the final objective.

Hence, my posting to TAG.

/Ram


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Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:10:27 +0000

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 19:50:31 +0530 "Ramanathan Muthaiah" <rus.cahimb@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Without trying to be smart: what's the problem in question?
> >
> > "I can run a new WM but don't know how to configure it"?
> Yes, will be specific with my requirement:
> 
> 1. Installed iceWM & Fluxbox from their sources

Cool.

> 2. Now, I do configure (Xsessions / xinitrc / some other file) to use
> one of them as my new window manager
> 
> With the current system, I have a graphical login and use KDE.

http://starshine.org/xteddy/thomas/fvwm/fvwmchanfaq.html#cf14

-- Thomas Adam


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