Re: Sarge troubles...
Greetings and thanks for all the replies,
On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 13:21, Jérôme Warnier wrote:
> Le mar 10/02/2004 à 17:43, Adam C Powell IV a écrit :
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I took the sarge plunge a couple of weeks ago for my laptop, and am
> > having a few problems, which will keep me from upgrading my group until
> > they're resolved (but I guess that's what testing is for :-).
> I'm just beginning to upgrade mines.
> Except the FAM problem and some other unimportant issues, I find it
> ready (GNOME 2 + OOo on Debian Sarge).
> But let's see your issues and let's try to solve them.
Thank you.
> > Also, even though Applications | Desktop Preferences | Advanced |
> > Preferred Applications lists emacs as my preferred text editor, when I
> > launch Applications | Accessories | Text Editor, gedit starts, and I
> > don't see emacs anywhere in the menu (well, except the Debian part, but
> > that doesn't count). What does the "Text Editor" application preference
> > mean, if not "that's the app I want to start when I choose Text Editor"?
> I would probably think the same way as you, if I only used Emacs.
> Nothing prevents you to submit a menu file for Emacs. You'll find them
> along with examples of the already existing menus in
> /usr/share/applications/. Feel free to submit your carefully crafted
> file to the Emacs maintainer. It also works that way for the menus in
> KDE3 (/usr/share/applications is common).
Indeed, I just found that galeon has entered testing and installed it,
and it seems funny that "Web Browser" is Epiphany and Galeon is
separate. Again, it seems intuitive that Epiphany would be Epiphany,
and Galeon would be Galeon, and either both would appear; or else
neither would appear and "Web Browser" would run one or the other
depending on system defaults (/etc/alternatives) and user preferences
(gconf). Likewise with "Text Editor": it seems a bit presumptuous that
gedit claims that mantle all to itself, leaving emacs and gvim as just
some other program in the menu (if they are even in the menu).
Ah well, I suppose nothing's perfectly consistent. :-)
> > And I don't see a preference anywhere to choose the window manager.
> > Though an Enlightenment fan, I'd like to give metacity a chance. When I
> > started up, it "defaulted" to no window manager, and took a few logouts
> > and logins to realize it would only save my running window manager if I
> > checked the save session box at logout. Kinda funny -- both that it
> > doesn't record the window manager, and that it defaulted to nothing.
> > Again, with a new user, it defaults to metacity just fine, but I still
> > don't see how to edit it.
> For the system, it is an "alternatives" preferences. To change it the
> clean way: "update-alternatives --config x-window-manager" as root.
> Be conscious that this is just read for a first use (per user profile),
> though.
Right, but GNOME 1.x let me use E and someone else on the same
system/network use sawfish, etc. It seems there's a way to reach into
gconf and manually make the change, but "This is not the recommended way
of setting desktop preferences. Use this tool at your own risk." (This
didn't stick on my system, so I killed metacity, started E, and saved
the session on logout, and that seems to work.)
So what have I learned?
* GNOME 2 is less configurable with regard to window managers
(must force the change by killing one WM and starting
another), and it seems, with regard to the background (no
option leave it alone and let E manage the background as GNOME
1 could -- oh wait, here's something in gconf which might do
it, if I can make gconf prefs stick when I log out...).
* GNOME 2 is inconsistently configurable with regard to
preferred applications, where on the one hand it lets the user
choose a text editor and web browser, but on the other hand,
has these misleading generic names in the menu -- names which
are identical to those in preferences but are not configured
by them.
* GNOME 2 no longer has a user menu, or menu editor.
* There's some fishy thing which in rare corner cases results in
an inability to save any gconf preferences.
* Upstream GNOME 2 Palm Pilot synchronization is seriously
broken (for those of us who need memo-file), and it's not
clear Debian's is fixed (and I don't want to risk my Pilot's
data finding out).
* A few applications are still not stable for GNOME 2, such as
galeon and gnucash, and evolution is not yet in testing.
For these last three reasons, I think GNOME 2 is not yet ready for my
group. For the first three reasons, I must say I'm disappointed in the
upstream design decisions which reduce configurability, but am willing
to work around them. GNOME 1.4 remains pretty much solid, and I'm
confident sarge will release with similarly solid 2.4, "when it's
ready". :-)
What can I do?
Help Evolution get into testing. Cool, it seems the last RC bug is
closed (or tagged "woody"), and evolution and gtkhtml are held up by
buildd issues (mips is awaiting upload; mipsel and s390 tried to build
evolution before suitable gtkhtml was ready -- where mipsel failed to
build gtkhtml because of clock trouble; and m68k somehow tried to
configure libbonoboui2-common and libbonoboui2-0 in the wrong order...)
Clarify whether Debian's gnome-pilot is patched to fix memo-file -- will
get on it and report back.
Work around this gconf problem -- will get on it and report back.
Help get galeon and gnucash ready... beyond my ability and availability.
Open bugs against epiphany and gedit with regard to inconsistency
between their menu entries and application preferences despite identical
names. (Since .desktop entries are shared between GNOME and KDE, isn't
it a problem that Epiphany calls itself "Web Browser" -- particularly on
systems/networks where both desktops are installed?)
Make an emacs(21) .desktop entry (likely from the .menu entry) and
contribute it to the Debian packager in a wishlist bug report. (GNOME 1
had this in gnome-panel-data, but I can see how it's more appropriate to
put into the emacs package itself.)
Is anyone else working on any of these, so I don't duplicate effort?
Thanks again for the help and the great packages!
--
-Adam P.
GPG fingerprint: D54D 1AEE B11C CE9B A02B C5DD 526F 01E8 564E E4B6
Welcome to the best software in the world today cafe!
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