Re: fvwm2

[Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com>]

Joerg Johannes wrote:
> 
> Hi List
> 
> Using sid in the most recent version with XFree4.0.3, I just switched to
> the good old fvwm I used to have in SuSE times (I never liked KDE and
> Gnome).
> 
> 1.) .Xresources. Well, the problem I have is: when starting emacs from
> the fvwm-mennu, it starts up with default values (white background,
> standard geometry,...). When I start it from an xterm, it starts with
> the options I set in .Xdefaults and .Xresources (In fact, these two are
> hardlinked). So, why doesn't fvwm read these files?

  it's not fvwm who would read these files.

  check the emacs menu, maybe you start different emacs from command
line and from menus...

> 2.) I use gdm as login manager (because of the "shutdown" option). When
> logging out of fvwm2, I don't get the login screen back, but only an
> empty root window with mouse pointer. Falling back to the login screen
> works with all other WM'S (e.g. enlightenment, gnome, kde). What could
> cause this?

  does the login ever appear? try to wait... I had similar problem with
xdm, the problem was in using /dev/random instead of /dev/mem (or other
fairly random file)

> 3.1) the menus (general). I have poked around in the reades, and read a
> lot about "hook files". I did not quite understand how to use them. I
> understood it in so far, that it is not very smart to have a personal
> menu in my .fvwm directory, because the system-wide menu file is changed
> by the menu-generation script. I can add entrys to
> the sytem-wide menus by adding them to the several hook-files, but I
> cannot remove entrys, because I had to set up a personal menu and would
> lose the comfort of a script-updated menu when installing new programs.
> Now, what can I do to have custom menus?

  I'd suggest to work on the menu side, not fvwm side. you can add your
menu items in /etc/menu directory (see /usr/lib/menu for examples, see
menu package docs for more details). That's for system wide menu, not
sure if this can be customized per user basis. Forthat you might have to
figure out how hooks work...

> 3.2) the menus (icons). the fvwm menus use the same icons as
> enlightenment menus. the only difference is, that they are not scaled.
> e.g., the emacs icon is three times larger than the font height.this
> looks rather funny (or better: cridiculous) Is it possible to scale the
> images inside the menus, or do I have to change the icons themselves?
> 
> 4.) the background and mouse pointer. The background (and the
> mouspointer) fvwm2 uses are just the same as in the gdm login screen. I
> tried to set a pixmap for the background, but xsetroot seems to accept
> only black/white xbm's. I remember from SuSE times that there was a grey
> tiled image. How can I set this (permanently). And how can I have a
> "normal" mouse pointer, not the X-shaped gdm thing?

  I like chbg for background changing. you can also run some programs
(xearth etc...) on the root window... or use e.g. xv to set the root
window image once.

  there are various files where you can put the program you choose -
generally it's either ~/.xsession for personal setup or xdm/gdm/...
startup files (in /etc/X11/xdm for xdm) for system wide setup.

  as far as the mouse cursor goes, the x shaped cursor IS normal
(default) x root window cursor, it's not gdm thing (you can change it
but I forgot how)

	erik