First of all:
Dude, thow us some freaking paragraphs here! One huge BLOCK of text is
really hard to read, streneous. Anywhere else but this ML I would have
immediately deleted it. :)
Then, another important thing to keep in mind is that you do not NEED
any of the btools, any of the apps. Nobody tells you that you should
use any or either of them - if you like them, fine. If you find
something else, fine as well.
I also stopped using bbdate once I realized that I could adjust the time
in the toolbar to display the date as I like it.
Here, take a look at my desktop:
http://www.netmeister.org/screenshots/bb_next.png
You will see the pager on the top-left, which shows what it can do what
the toolbar can't: arrange workspaces in a matrix. Instead of having
nine workspaces in a line (where cycling would take forever), I arrange
them in a matrix. Through the pager, I see where I am and where I want
to go in an easier way than through the toolbar. Using bbkeys, I can
switch to any given workspace using keystrokes instead of having to use
the hated rodent.
On the bottom, I have the toolbar with the date in the way I like it (ie
HH:MM YYYY-MM-DD) and to the left of the toolbar, I run bbweather. I
used to use wmWeather, but wanted it in the same look as the toolbar, so
I wrote bbweather.
bbmail i use only as a mail-monitor. It looks (and feels) like the
toolbar and i have my keyboard shortcuts to pop open my MUA (mutt), so
again, no rodent. :)
In the top-right corner I have Licq, the only remnant of WindowMaker,
and the only app that I need a mouse for - *sigh*, I would really LOVE
to see bbicq, in a monitor-like fashion such as bbmail that I can asign
a keyboard shortcut to open (or fork to the foreground from iconified
state) a micq-terminal or something... If only I had more time, I might
take a look (I promise, it's *somewhere* on the todo :).
Anyway, that's just my input, hope it helped. Just remember that nobody
tells you what to do - use what you like and what works best for you.
Such is the beauty of *nix.
-Jan
--
Jan Schaumann
http://www.netmeister.org
