Re: fvwm2 and system.fvwmrc and an automatic "Programs" menu

[Austin Donnelly <and1000@cam.ac.uk>]

On Thu, 23 May 1996, Lars Wirzenius wrote:

[user-hookable .system.fvwmrc]

  Good points:
    o sysadmin can modify all user's setup easily
    o reduced .fvwm2rc size in user's directories
    o easy for user to tailer setup without breaking it
   
  Bad points:
    o unintuitive flow of control; especially with 'style' directives
         where order matters
    o subtle (unwanted) interactions easy to occur
   
   
[live "Programs" menu]
   
  Good points:
    o gives solid look to whole distribution
    o useful to new users ("Gee, what's installed?")
   
  Bad points:
    o menu can grow very large; hierachy _definately_ needed.
    o large number of packages will need changing to take advantage of it



I think we should definately go for the live Programs menu. It's one
of the things I remember being horribly broken about Slackware 1.2
when I had it; it would be nice for Debian to get it right (as it gets
everything else right :)

I'm not so sure about the user-hookable .system.fvwmrc.  I can see all
the benefits, but I think that new users will just be bewildered by
the baroque arrangement. (But then again, I have you to see Lars'
setup, so I may be proved wrong.)


What do other people think? (me, I'm just the lowly fvwm2 maintainer).


Note that I won't be making a move on anything for the next 2 weeks; I
have my final year exams to worry about.

I'd rather 1.1 didn't go official until after then - I have a few
tweaks to my packages to do.

Austin