i discovered Blackbox a couple of months ago after dropping Xfce -- whose developers seem to be going off the rails -- & checking thro' the long list of alternatives offered by Gentoo. it's very rational & reliable & i'm very pleased with it.
i have a few questions & an alert for Blackbox developers (at the end). (1) how can i preset the background ? i use 'desktop menu -> configure -> background colors' when i start up, but it is not remembered. (2) can i get windows to respect the 35 pixel margin i use at the left, where i have the pager & an empty piece of desktop to click on ? (3) can i control mouse acceleration ? (4) i suspect it is a promised feature not yet implemented, but can i change the position & order of the titlebar buttons (i prefer to have 'max' 'iconise' at left & 'close' on its own at right) ? (5) Open Office has an ugly dark-brown window frame. on KDE, it has a much more attractive appearance & IIRC Xfce had something between. can i do anything about it in BB ? (6) can i include the KDE menu in the desktop menu ? (7) what is the best way to prestart the KDE libraries at start-up ? i know how to write simple scripts, if that's the best way, but possibly there is some recommended method. i'm a thoughtful user who can manage a Gentoo box & can read C code & have done programming in older languages (eg Fortran), but i'm not a programmer in any present-day sense. finally, Blackbox developers may be interested in the following message, which i've just sent to the Gentoo developers list: -- start of message -- 050116 Donnie Berkholz wrote re Gentoo plans for 2005 : > Desktop-WM > Lead: Brandon Hale > Only 12 bugs open here, nothing very high priority, > Controversial issue: > SuperLag has agreed to solve any problems that crop up with Openbox > and ciaranm still faithfully maintains Fluxbox. > Blackbox, however, lacks an interested maintainer for the aging WM > and its numerous accessory packages. These aren't in much distress, > but they aren't getting any newer. Ciaran has mentioned several times > that we should consider removing this. > Possible user outcry, we need a way to gauge use somehow. i've recently had a debate with CM on this subject (see this list). i've been using Blackbox for c 2 months & find it utterly stable: i use packages blackbox bbconf/keys/pager/run commonbox-utils/styles ; there are no outstanding bugs of any importance on any of these packages. there is activity on the Blackbox user/dev mailing-lists & a new version of Blackbox itself -- 0.70 -- is promised shortly. the principal maintainer seems to be an employee of Trolltech, which produces Qt, on which Blackbox is based. i suggest Blackbox is like eg Lynx, Vim & Mutt in being a mature product, which needs little maintenance, but continues to be used quietly by users. of course, it needs a Gentoo developer to take responsibility for it & CM is clearly not the man to do that, but it shouldn't be a big burden. -- end of message -- -- ========================,,============================================ SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban & Community Studies TRANSIT `-O----------O---' University of Toronto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] List archives: http://asgardsrealm.net/lurker/splash/index.html
