Hi all, Apologies to the debian-devel list. It appears I replied to the wrong list. Please CC: me as I am not subscribed to debian-gtk-gnome currently. ----- Forwarded message from Matthew McGuire <gray@shadowglade.net> ----- To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: [desktop] Thoughts on GTK+2 problems in Wmaker From: Matthew McGuire <gray@shadowglade.net> Hi list, Thanks for the tips, and the cluebat. :) However there does not seem to be a solution. First let me outline my goal: About a month or two ago I decided to try and assemble a selection of software suitable for Windomaker that would allow it to function as a moderately complete desktop environment. Most notably it is missing a file manager, and a number of other useful apps. I decided that Mozilla would be suitable for browsing and email, so GTK+ would be needed, If so then I decided to keep things small and veer away from Qt apps. Most of the remaining GTK+ apps are designed for use with GNOME and use GTK+2.0 or GTK+1.2. I personally like a lot of the old GTK+1.2 apps but I veer away from them out of respect for the upcoming GTK+2.0 versions. This is probably a vain attempt at forward thinking. Currently most of (if not all) GTK+2.0 apps in Debian are part of GNOME 2 and present the problems mentioned in my earlier email to Marcelo. So I would like to add GNOME or GTK+ apps to Windowmaker to make it moderately complete. As it turns out, gnome-settings-daemon is the culprit/solution to my problem. Users in this setup will login to the machine using XDM, KDM, or WDM and will likely select wmaker as the window manager. The current version of GDM does not support this option. Once logged in the user shuld be able to run a GNOME or GTK+ app with the settings they have used before. Since gnome-session-manager was not used during login the gnome-settings-daemon is not run. Therefore the applications load with their system defaults including theme. This is annoying for people with specific visual needs. This can be resolved by running gnome-settings-daemon manually or with a login script of some kind. However this clobbers the desktop background to be a color gradient. Now any GNOME app that was run will switch to the correct theme and setup the user had previously defined. So aside from the background bit it sorta works. Oddly I have not found a place to fully disable the background change. The Background settings tool does not provide a "Don't use me" option. Now some thoughts on Nautilus. Which for all its worth, has improved by leaps and bounds in the past year. Someone recomended setting Nautilus to not draw the desktop. This solves the background clobbering problem, but it completely removes the desktop icons. Although I am no fan of desktop icons, I readily accept that most people will expect them to be present. For comparison, good old gmc creates desktop icons without clobbering the desktop in some unsightly manner. I went to the trouble to research the gmc source to see how, but was quickly lost in the sheer size of it's source tarball. Although I think it creates a window for each icon, arranges them according to config, and somehow hides them from the window manager window list. It would be nice to see this work in Nautilus as well. Unless anyone disagrees I think it is best for me to file bugs against some of the GNOME 2 stuff with the hope that it will be resolved. In the end GNOME 2 is a great Desktop and suite of Applications, and there are numerous improvements over GNOME 1.4. However GNOME 1.4 apps ran without any problems in other window managers and in KDE. It would be very usefull for GNOME 2 apps to work equally well. Big thanks for your patience. If you got this far, you deserve a cookie. :) Sincerely, Matthew McGuire -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew P. McGuire <gray@shadowglade.net> 1024D/E21C0E88 CB82 7859 26B2 95E3 1328 5198 D57A D072 E21C 0E88 When choice matters, choose Debian. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Attachment:
pgpTpUsmhRR3N.pgp
Description: PGP signature