hey anton,
it's me again. you didn't tell me about this nasty little bug when we
discussed global menus lastnight. simply eliminating the menus is not a
true solution. is there instead a way to create a personal global-menu
file, which uniformaly updates the entire system. based on what we did
last night over the phone, i know that if anyone, you would have the
knowledge to do this. so inform me now, so that i don't have to face
this problem if i install the rest of the components for this feature.
actually, if i continue with this process of OS-brain surgery, i am
going to wind up with this feature whether i want it or not; as you
know, i have been rapidly replacing my suse rpm-components with
linux-mandrake's instead. so at some point, i am going to be running
linux-mandrake anyway.
the other thing which this question brings up for me, is something that
i had been ruminating about prior to seeing this. can i do the same the
thing with the panels of gnome and kde. i want to have labels on my
gnome-pager buttons in the same way that kde has. or at least i want to
incorporate some of the features of either one in the other. the reason
why i stopped using kde, is because i got tired of those
application-buttons wrapping around the top of the screen. i also don't
like that the buttons weren't limited to a given desktop. i may have
been able to accomplish this by choosing to have different backgrounds
on each deskyop, but that really wasn't what i wanted either. i don't
want dissimilar backgrounds on each desktop.
is there anyway to copy the code components for the kde panel into gnome
or vice-versa. would they even understand how to use them. i mean, i
have done some snooping around in my system, and i have seen that some
theme segments are compartmentalized. but i don't know if that means
that one program can recognize, much less use, anothers code. i've got
a feeling that you might be able to alter the cosmetics in a similar way
that themes are changed. but i don't know if the code segments have to
be from/for the same program. ultimately, i would like to have the
eight labeled-desktops of kde, with the the separate visual
representations of the gnome-pagers working in conjunction. i guess
what i would like, is to have the pagers combined with the desktop
labels; so that each desktop label has it's own pager button embedded
into it. it doesn't much matter which side of the kde-desktop button it
appears on, just so long as it works. but now that i think about it, it
would probably be better if the pagers were on the left, so that the
written labels can expand to the right without interferance.
I REALLY DON'T LIKE THE FACT THAT THERE ARE SEPARATE THEME MANAGERS FOR
X11. THERE SHOULD ONLY BE ONE. WITH EVERYONE SIMPLY ADDING THERE OWN
COMPONENTS TO THE UNIVERSAL PLATFORM, IN THE SAME WAY THAT APPLETS ARE
ADDED TO NETSCAPE.
being that we're on the topic of cosmetics, where and how do i specify
the maximum width of the disk-usage applet (the one with the pie-chart)
in gnome. it is currently limited to 128; i need 140. it's currently
too narrow for my /usr/X11R6 partition, and truncates the label. it
will definately be too narrow if i specify partitions for deeper
directories. i need to be able to do this in the furture, as i run out
of space, and want to move more directories to new partitions on
their.own disks.
i'm going to paste in a comment for a bug report i made earlier today.
that is if it's still in memory. here it goes. well i just tried it,
but as you can see it didn't work. so anyway, heres the gist of what it
was about.
everytime i use rpm to install a package, my system goes into a coma.
the swap-buffer fills up completely and then the system crashes,
shutting down the x-window, and then returning to graphical login
screen. when i return to gnome, most of the time everything is back to
normal. however, once this morning the system didn't completely go
through the loop that i discribed to you. it simply came back to the
desktop, however there were no panels present. i typically have two;
one at the top and one at the bottom. they were gone and i had no idea
how to get them back without quitting the x-window. i tried rescanning
the desktop, and then it's individual components. finally, when i did
the icons, the system crashed, producing the bug-buddy which i
subsequently filled out and sent off.
so, aside from the missing applets that experience from time to time,
this is also one of the nasty things that also happens to me. this
thing with the swap-buffer filling up has happened before. i don't know
exactly how i resolved it, but i do know that it finally went away. i
think i wound replacing all of my software in system update; which at
this point would take three days of downloading if i were to use the
suse yast program. i know that from experience, because it took two
days when i had about 1300 rpm's, and as you know, i now have well over
1958!
now the strange thing that has been happening since i talked to you
lastnight, is that when i do get an rpm to load, the info and package
list is missing. the other thing is that if i tell the system to
replace the existing package, it creates a duplicate entry; i have about
six of them. i have not been able to rpm --rebuilddb for sometime now.
there simply isn't enough room on my /var partition to do so. the first
thing i want to clear up is the swap-buffer (although it does empty
everytime i return to the x-window from a crash. but the moment i try to
rpm -i ?.rpm, it immediatly fills up and then crashes again.) so what
do i do to resolve this. (and by the way, how do i post this on the site
so that everyone can see it; this isn't as straight forward as the cnet
or apple sites are; either that or i just haven't figured it out yet.
i'm probably not the only one who reads this page, but hasn't figured
out how to post messages.) hopefully i just figured it out; we'll see?
i realize that most of this is probably due to my having merged
dissimilar systems in one environment. believe, if i knew that linux
was and is not as truly cohesive as it claims to be, i would not not
have done this. however this is due entirely to the fact that i was
lured into thinking that i was using a truly open operating system;
which i only later found out after talking to you, is not, and does not
mean, a truly standardized environment. so much for the deceptive lure
of hopeful thinking. come september first, this puppy is going
FreeBSD-4.0, `power-pak'. i just wish there was someway that i could
switch my existing filesystem from reiserfs to USF, without having to
wipe-out all my existing data.
there should be someway that someone could write a program which would
reformat the disk while performing what would be essentially a
defragmentation procedure. i mean, if you can move data from one part
of a disk and put it somewhere else, there is no ligitimate reason why
the samething can't be done as part of a repartitioning process. the
program should be written in an OS-independent native x86 assembler
code, and run in the same way that my Western Digital disk check program
does. you reboot the system with the floppy-disk in the drive, specify
which partition table you currently use, and which partition table you
want to convert it to, hit enter and walk away. come back when it's
done, and presto!, you have the new partition table of your choice.
making such a program would probably not work if it were dependent on
any operating system, because it would probably disrupt the code or
severely slow it down. and even if it did work, it would limit it's
applicability. you know, all for one and one for all! if you know of
such a thing, let me know; quickly!
