On Tuesday 12 June 2001 09:25, you wrote:
> there seems to be alot of differing opinions wrt integrating or packaging
> all the bbtools with blackbox. i'd have to say that, although it can be
> tedious to dl/build a bunch of apps rather than just one, i'm in favor of
> keeping things as they are now. i think the best suggestion so far on the
> subject has been for some sort of installer that could ask the user what
> parts of blackbox they want, download them, and build them. this would be
> great for all the newbies (each tool could have a brief description of
> what it does and suggestion for whether or not it's necessary ala the
> linux kernel's 'make menuconfig') and would also simplify things for those
> of us who know what we want but dont want to bother downloading and
> building each individual package.
>
First off, come on now, how much time does it take to dl/compile bbkeys, or
bbpager. Little to none. That shouldn't be a big deal. The whole beauty of
Blackbox is it is small and fast, and a "_window manager_". A framework of
common application like MS-Office mentioned earlier is steering bb into the
realm of "_Desktop Environments_" like KDE and Gnome.
Blackbox is excellent at what it does. It is a small, lightweight, fast
window managaer and it does it's job wery well. If people want a whole bunch
of comman applications, and everything to work together, then go get KDE and
make everything themed like BB. And yes you can do it. The eye candy in KDE
is extrodanary these days. On a side note I'm not sure if it is in CVS for
KDE but I have seen source compiled in to allow Icewm themes to be used.
As for the newbies ease of use. IMO blackbox is very specialized WM, and not
for a linux newbie. They would sit around on their hands for 2 hours trying
to figure out how to put a shortcut on the desktop. I think bb caters to the
crowd of linux professionals, sys-admins, and of course hackers, but not to
general purpose new linux folk.
As for the installer, sure a good idea for people like us. I'm really
indifferent to which way. How often will this installer be used? Think
about who is going to be using it, what level of complexity would be right
for them.
All right, I'm done my blathering now.
Andy
:-)
> what does everyone think? would such an application be useful? what sort
> of an interface would people like (fancy gtk/x thing, ncurses/console
> thing, simple cli q&a script)? i'd be willing to do some work on this if
> there's interest.
>
> Russ
