FVWM: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
I am noting a funny (and sort of annoying behaviour) when using firefox and acrobat reader in a fvmw session under suse 11.3 (newly installed). The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, although I do not have any X resource in .Xdefaults which makes that. The same colour applies to all pull down menus, and for acrobat also to the bookmark window. The remaining menu bars and widget are normal (black on light grey). Actually the problem occurs both for a test user which imported all my old personal configuration (.Xdefaults, .mozilla/* etc. .fvmw) as well for a test user created afresh which has none of those files (and uses for fvwm the system-bundled fvwmrc ... actually it is using the one recently modified by Thomas Adams as a kind reply to a recent post of mine). The problem does not occur if firefox or acrobat are run from KDE. So this makes me think of some sort of interference, like firefox and acrobat are picking up those resources from somewhere in the fvwm configuration, or not finding something they expect. I would be glad to override this with X resources, but I'm not sure firefox and acrobat honour them in the usual way. I tried editres to get the widget tree and it returns nothing. Any idea of the reason, and a possible workaround within .fvwm2rc ? -- Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) Italian Research at risk.La Ricerca italiana a rischio ! see http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/WWW/Opinions/nobrain.html cfr.
Re: FVWM: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:08:40PM +0100, Lucio Chiappetti wrote: I am noting a funny (and sort of annoying behaviour) when using firefox and acrobat reader in a fvmw session under suse 11.3 (newly installed). The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, although I do not have any X resource in .Xdefaults which makes that. The same colour applies to all pull down menus, and for acrobat also to the bookmark window. The remaining menu bars and widget are normal (black on light grey). Actually the problem occurs both for a test user which imported all my old personal configuration (.Xdefaults, .mozilla/* etc. .fvmw) as well for a test user created afresh which has none of those files (and uses for fvwm the system-bundled fvwmrc ... actually it is using the one recently modified by Thomas Adams as a kind reply to a recent post of mine). The problem does not occur if firefox or acrobat are run from KDE. So this makes me think of some sort of interference, like firefox and acrobat are picking up those resources from somewhere in the fvwm configuration, or not finding something they expect. I would be glad to override this with X resources, but I'm not sure firefox and acrobat honour them in the usual way. I tried editres to get the widget tree and it returns nothing. Any idea of the reason, and a possible workaround within .fvwm2rc ? Sounds like the Colormap is used up. Try adding to your .fvwm2rc file: ColormapFocus FollowsFocus -- Thomas Adam
FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, Lucio Chiappetti wrote: I am noting a funny (and sort of annoying behaviour) when using firefox and acrobat reader in a fvmw session under suse 11.3 (newly installed). Apparently also openoffice is showing the same behaviour. The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, The remaining menu bars and widget are normal (black on light grey). For firefox there is a partial workaround. I always hated themes but I found a sort of lightweight themes called personas. If one goes to the site where one can load them, one can also test them. They appear to replace the menu bar and other bars with some pictured background. My workaround was to choose a persona called simple fox (useless to say, no picture, just solid gray :-)). This makes me think that all those applications are NOT using a specific fg/bg colour for the top menu bar, but leaving it somehow transparent letting some w.m. default shining through. I suppose in KDE what shines through is determined by the default KDE theme ... how could I set a similar super-default in fvwm ? a plain *background: and *foreground: in .Xdefaults is no good. -- Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) Italian Research at risk.La Ricerca italiana a rischio ! see http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/WWW/Opinions/nobrain.html cfr.
Re: FVWM: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it writes: I am noting a funny (and sort of annoying behaviour) when using firefox and acrobat reader in a fvmw session under suse 11.3 (newly installed). The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, although I do not have any X resource in .Xdefaults which makes that. The same colour applies to all pull down menus, and for acrobat also to the bookmark window. That's not x-resources, the desktop environments stopped using them. They set their preferences in config files. Look for a .kde, .gnome, .gnome2 file or something like that. Or you could bring up your distros desktop settings dialog and change it there.
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
At Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:12:52 +0100 (CET) Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it wrote: On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, Lucio Chiappetti wrote: I am noting a funny (and sort of annoying behaviour) when using firefox and acrobat reader in a fvmw session under suse 11.3 (newly installed). Apparently also openoffice is showing the same behaviour. The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, The remaining menu bars and widget are normal (black on light grey). For firefox there is a partial workaround. I always hated themes but I found a sort of lightweight themes called personas. If one goes to the site where one can load them, one can also test them. They appear to replace the menu bar and other bars with some pictured background. My workaround was to choose a persona called simple fox (useless to say, no picture, just solid gray :-)). This makes me think that all those applications are NOT using a specific fg/bg colour for the top menu bar, but leaving it somehow transparent letting some w.m. default shining through. I suppose in KDE what shines through is determined by the default KDE theme ... how could I set a similar super-default in fvwm ? a plain *background: and *foreground: in .Xdefaults is no good. To make FireFox (and other GNome-flavored applications) 'play nice' with FVWM, I fire up a minimal bit of GNome: /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon. By firing this up with a properly setup ~/.gconfmumble directory/files, I can get FireFox to be set up with the proper Gnome 'theme' (I created a minimual theme that suited). (I actually use a 'session manager' I wrote in Tcl/Tk -- the session manager fires up fvwm and the gnome-settings-daemon.) -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com Deepwoods Software-- http://www.deepsoft.com/ () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, Robert Heller wrote: The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, The remaining menu bars and widget are normal For firefox there is a partial workaround. [persona simple fox] To make FireFox (and other GNome-flavored applications) 'play nice' with FVWM, I fire up a minimal bit of GNome: /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon. By firing this up with a properly setup ~/.gconfmumble directory/files, I can get FireFox to be set up with the proper Gnome 'theme' (I created a minimual theme that suited). So you are confirming there are applications which are ill-behaved with fvwm ? I hope this info makes sense with Thomas Adam. I am REALLY reluctant to have to learn gnome just to bypass its features (if I understand correctly). Actually I'm not even sure it is installed (our institute-wide base pre-installation prepared by our sys man replied KDE when offered the choice KDE vs gnome) ... and under KDE those applications are well-behaved. Would you mind to share this minimal theme ? Or will Thomas Adam have a simpler workaround at .fvwmrc level if this diagnosis makes sense to him ? -- Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) Italian Research at risk.La Ricerca italiana a rischio ! see http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/WWW/Opinions/nobrain.html cfr.
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On 17 December 2010 17:00, Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it wrote: Or will Thomas Adam have a simpler workaround at .fvwmrc level if this diagnosis makes sense to him ? Thomas Adam says it's still not an FVWM problem. :) If it is GTK related, that's down to GTK, although running the whole of gnome-settings-daemon is not necessary when you can use things like gtk-chtheme to set your .gtkrc stuff up. Although anything more complicated will require you to edit it by hand anyway. -- Thomas Adam
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
Robert Heller hel...@deepsoft.com writes: At Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:12:52 +0100 (CET) Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it wrote: On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, Lucio Chiappetti wrote: I am noting a funny (and sort of annoying behaviour) when using firefox and acrobat reader in a fvmw session under suse 11.3 (newly installed). Apparently also openoffice is showing the same behaviour. The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, The remaining menu bars and widget are normal (black on light grey). For firefox there is a partial workaround. I always hated themes but I found a sort of lightweight themes called personas. If one goes to the site where one can load them, one can also test them. They appear to replace the menu bar and other bars with some pictured background. My workaround was to choose a persona called simple fox (useless to say, no picture, just solid gray :-)). This makes me think that all those applications are NOT using a specific fg/bg colour for the top menu bar, but leaving it somehow transparent letting some w.m. default shining through. I suppose in KDE what shines through is determined by the default KDE theme ... how could I set a similar super-default in fvwm ? a plain *background: and *foreground: in .Xdefaults is no good. To make FireFox (and other GNome-flavored applications) 'play nice' with FVWM, I fire up a minimal bit of GNome: /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon. By firing this up with a properly setup ~/.gconfmumble directory/files, I can get FireFox to be set up with the proper Gnome 'theme' (I created a minimual theme that suited). (I actually use a 'session manager' I wrote in Tcl/Tk -- the session manager fires up fvwm and the gnome-settings-daemon.) Recently I posted how to start that daemon and some other things from a .xinitrc. Start the .xinitrc like this: if [ -f /usr/bin/ck-xinit-session ] ; then if [ $1 = startsess ] ; then shift else exec ck-xinit-session /home/dane/.xinitrc startsess fi fi If you start using the KDE or Gnome login manager, you don't need to do this. As far as fvwm and gnome and kde getting along, they get along just fine. Just start up your distros preferences dialog. For Fedora, it's gnome-control-center. Then select appearance, and select a theme. Works for me.
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
Thomas Adam tho...@xteddy.org writes: On 17 December 2010 17:00, Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it wrote: Or will Thomas Adam have a simpler workaround at .fvwmrc level if this diagnosis makes sense to him ? Thomas Adam says it's still not an FVWM problem. :) Agree 100%. I notice that the various settings dialogs don't show up in the new version of fvwm-menu-desktop I'm working on. At some point I'll try to figure out why.
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, Thomas Adam wrote: Thomas Adam says it's still not an FVWM problem. :) Of course I did not intend to blame FVWM ! Actually I hoped it had a quick-and-more-or-less-dirty workaround ! (after all openoffice, acroread and firefox are not unusual applications ... I remember there were some adhoc style in the 9.2 .fvwmrc) gtk-chtheme to set your .gtkrc stuff up. Although anything more complicated will require you to edit it by hand anyway. Thats arabic to me. I do not think those stuff is even installed (I'll check on Monday), surely whereis does not find it. Since all the matter seems to force some sort of default bg/fg, I'd be glad on editing once forever a fixed file. I tried importing in my user home the .gnome* .gt* and .gconf* stuff which user root (which runs under KDE) has, but they have no effect. (after spending two hours discovering the mysql init.d script included in the distribution has a bug, which does exactly the opposite of what is written in the comments ... and which is sensible to do, and was written in my old notes, grr !) Nice weekend to everybody ! (possibly without snow) -- Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) Italian Research at risk.La Ricerca italiana a rischio ! see http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/WWW/Opinions/nobrain.html cfr.
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
At Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:00:57 +0100 (CET) Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it wrote: On Fri, 17 Dec 2010, Robert Heller wrote: The topmost menu bar (File Edit ...) has white text onto black background, The remaining menu bars and widget are normal For firefox there is a partial workaround. [persona simple fox] To make FireFox (and other GNome-flavored applications) 'play nice' with FVWM, I fire up a minimal bit of GNome: /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon. By firing this up with a properly setup ~/.gconfmumble directory/files, I can get FireFox to be set up with the proper Gnome 'theme' (I created a minimual theme that suited). So you are confirming there are applications which are ill-behaved with fvwm ? I hope this info makes sense with Thomas Adam. Not so much 'ill-behaved', just that things like various sorts of appearence settings are just not possible without gnome-settings-daemon running. Without gnome-settings-daemon I get some 'funky' defaults that cannot be changed (and look weird compared to the rest of the applications I run). It is that these 'new-fangled' applications no longer even look at the X11 resource DB (dislike!) and are using some other mechanism, one that *requires* certain parts of the desktop manager running. I am REALLY reluctant to have to learn gnome just to bypass its features (if I understand correctly). Actually I'm not even sure it is installed (our institute-wide base pre-installation prepared by our sys man replied KDE when offered the choice KDE vs gnome) ... and under KDE those applications are well-behaved. Would you mind to share this minimal theme ? I'm not sure how to do that. I had to fumble with gnome's theme manager program and don't know where the 'theme' per se lives. Or will Thomas Adam have a simpler workaround at .fvwmrc level if this diagnosis makes sense to him ? If FVWM could 'fake' what it is that gnome-settings-daemon does, which I think it is creating a UNIX socket in /tmp/orbit-$USER/ and then making some config mumbo jumbo available, that would be great. I don't know if it is documented or if there is a GTK-ish library that deals with this. It might not be a GNome-specific thing, just some sort of 'desktop manager' business using ORBit2. And probably KDE has its own version of gnome-settings-daemon that does what is needful for FireFox, etc. behave with proper theme-ish settings. Maybe what is needed is some FVWM *module* that hooks into ORBit2 and also provides some proper theme-ish appearence settings for those applications that need this sort of thing (and which won't fallback and use the X11 Resource DB). -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com Deepwoods Software-- http://www.deepsoft.com/ () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 01:11:28PM -0500, Robert Heller wrote: At Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:16:49 + Thomas Adam tho...@xteddy.org wrote: On 17 December 2010 17:00, Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it wrote: Or will Thomas Adam have a simpler workaround at .fvwmrc level if this diagnosis makes sense to him ? Thomas Adam says it's still not an FVWM problem. :) If it is GTK related, that's down to GTK, although running the whole of gnome-settings-daemon is not necessary when you can use things like gtk-chtheme to set your .gtkrc stuff up. Although anything more complicated will require you to edit it by hand anyway. *I* don't seem to have gtk-chtheme installed on my system (CentOS 5.5, control-center-2.16.0-16.el5, gnome-mumble-2.16.0-mumble). I did run some gnome theme thingy to get the theme stuff setup, but FireFox seems to want to get the info from gnome-settings-daemon and not by reading the various dot-files. The 'theme' settings did not take until I fired up gnome-settings-daemon. Yeah -- that's because they use gconf to actuall enact them. Whereas, the rest of us who aren't running a fully-fledged framework in which to run a desktop environment can achieve the exact same effect by tweaking the .gtkrc-2.0 file. Simple. *I* would agree it is not a 'FVWM problem' -- it is a *stupidity* with *some* GTK applications, ones that *assume* that they are running in a [GNome] 'desktop manager' environment (with all that is implied with such an environment) and don't really allow for people who might want to use these applications under a *different* sort of environment (such as one without *any* 'desktop manager' running). These applications either fallback to something stupid/ugly or leave some appearence features unset or something -- they just don't have a 'sensible' *alternitive* way to get the appearence settings. See above -- and I get your point, without the over-excessive, if strong, wording *between* *asterisks*. There's a reason why I say it's not an FVWM problem, by the way. Not because I can't be bothered to fix it (I think I've done enoug bug-fixes for one year), but because FVWM (to use your phraseology): *doesn't* *control* *applications* in how they theme themselves. All FVWM does is reparent said application within its own window -- what many people refer to the titlebar, borders, etc. It's that window which FVWM controls, nothing more. -- Thomas Adam -- Deep in my heart I wish I was wrong. But deep in my heart I know I am not. -- Morrissey (Girl Least Likely To -- off of Viva Hate.)
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 01:11:26PM -0500, Robert Heller wrote: If FVWM could 'fake' what it is that gnome-settings-daemon does, which No -- see previous reply to you in this thread as to why. [...] -- Thomas Adam -- Deep in my heart I wish I was wrong. But deep in my heart I know I am not. -- Morrissey (Girl Least Likely To -- off of Viva Hate.)
Re: FVWM: partial update Re: interference firefox/acroread and fvwm on suse 11.3
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:23:44PM -0500, des...@verizon.net wrote: Thomas Adam tho...@xteddy.org writes: On 17 December 2010 17:00, Lucio Chiappetti lu...@lambrate.inaf.it wrote: Or will Thomas Adam have a simpler workaround at .fvwmrc level if this diagnosis makes sense to him ? Thomas Adam says it's still not an FVWM problem. :) Agree 100%. I notice that the various settings dialogs don't show up in the new version of fvwm-menu-desktop I'm working on. At some point I'll try to figure out why. Settings dialogues? -- Thomas Adam -- Deep in my heart I wish I was wrong. But deep in my heart I know I am not. -- Morrissey (Girl Least Likely To -- off of Viva Hate.)
