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

[Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>]

Austin Donnelly:
>   Bad points:
>     o unintuitive flow of control; especially with 'style' directives
>          where order matters
>     o subtle (unwanted) interactions easy to occur

I agree about these, but -- of course -- I don't think they outweigh
the benefits.

My gut feeling is that hacker types will change everything (and use an
independent .fvwm2rc), and end user types will change just the background,
colors, and focus policy, and possibly a couple of other small things.
If my feeling is correct (should be tested; anyone have any live users
willing to try it out?), then I think my system is a win.

Actually, for the minor things (background, window colors, focus policy),
we might want to create a small application to do the configuration from
the command line or using a GUI.  With the appropriate hook files, this
should be trivial (the app doesn't need to parse a whole .fvwm2rc).

>   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've implemented a one-level hierarchy (i.e., several new entries to the
main menu).  Further levels will quickly become unusable, but one more
shouldn't be too bad.  However, I will implement it so that it allows any
number.  (ETA: don't hold your breath.  This is not intended for 1.1.)

There will be changes to many packages, but the change should be really
small, just one or two lines in the postinst and prerm scripts for most
packages.  I volunteer to send patches, if necessary.

> 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.)

I'll clean it up a bit, and put it up for http soon.