On Fri, 18 Nov 2016 12:18:15 Jaimos Skriletz <jaimosskril...@boisestate.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 4:43 PM, David Niklas <do...@mail.com> wrote: > > On Fri, 11 Nov 2016 23:13:49 +0000 > > > > Not so much a question as a comment. > > Many window managers and desktop environments have tried in vain to > > create an automatic menu generator without success, I recommend that > > fvwm does not attempt to do this, they break very easily over time. > > > > Fvwm already provides such ability. The core of fvwm provides users > with a configuration syntax to build menus and fvwm also provides a way > for things to be scripted. So really an automatic menu generator is > just a script that outputs the configuration syntax of fvwm. > > Within the core of fvwm is the method to build menus using the > configuration syntax (which is one of the things that is planed to > change in the future of fvwm) and create some sort of menu object that > fvwm displays to the user. And that is a fine ability. > Independent of that is the ability to write scripts to generate menus. > These can be from simple shell scripts, for i in wallpappers/*.jpg; > do ... to build a wallpaper menu as mentioned in the manpage, to more > complicated perl and now python scripts: fvwm-menu-desktop, > fvwm-menu-directory, fvwm-menu-headlines and fvwm-menu-xlock are all > scripts provided by fvwm. On top of that you can write you own scripts > to automatically generate menus on your system. And this is where things break. Let me clarify my objection: Not every program has a *.desktop file, nor is the said file always correct or well written. This is most often because development has stopped on the project for whatever reason. I think it's certainly in good taste to help out these projects, but often times that means that one distro has a menu entry and the next does not. It also often times occurs that a menu should have more depth to it and so a huge amount of programs get stuck on one tab. And then there are the entries that don't belong where they are, like photorec in the media/image/picture section when it is a disk recovery program... > So this ability is already there and I think done in a nice way. In the > core it is just the ability to configure menus (including dynamic ones > that are generated when they are opened) and via fvwms ability to work > with scripts, you can additionally use a script to generate menus. > > Yes the scripts sometimes break and need updated, but they are not > internal to fvwm and are only optional for those who want to use them > (and maybe fix them when standards evolve). > > > Also, please retain the win95 configuration script, in fact, they > > ability to run a simple script to generate a few different common > > configurations is a strong point of many WMs. > > > > This is already gone. Fvwm now provides a default config as a starting > point for users who don't want to write one from scratch. But Fvwm is > more a wm that provides a user with the ability to configure their own > setup. Examples are probably better given through some other means, > such as the wiki. > I can't object to the logic, but as a former windowz user I must say that having to configure literally *everything* at once to get anything near the look and feel you want (let alone understand it all), is very daunting and takes months. Hence, it is often a good idea to provide some sort of pre-built variety in configs. Sincerely, David