On Sun, 27 Aug 2000, you wrote:
> it's me again. you didn't tell me about this nasty little bug when we
> discussed global menus lastnight.
It's not a bug, it's designed to work that way. And I did tell you that
trying to use the Mandrake menu system would only give you menu entries for
Mandrake packages.
> simply eliminating the menus is not a true solution.
It is the solution for that *particular* problem. He wanted to know how to
stop the menu system from regenerating itself, and thus erasing the changes
he made using tools that are not suitable for use with the menu system.
> 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, you can use the new menu editor from cooker to generate the menu
entries you want :) This is, in fact, the preferred solution, but many
people would rather disable the menu system and continue using obsolete
tools.
> 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 Gnome Desktop Guide is an entirely different concept than the KDE
equivalent. In KDE, the pager buttons simply represent different desktops.
In Gnome, each pane represents a desktop with miniature versions of the
windows on that desktop displayed. Personally, I use this feature to help
me keep track of what is running on each workspace. Adding labels would at
the very least obscure some of the smaller windows in a four to eight pane
view.
> 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.
This was one of the things I disliked about KDE as well. I haven't really
played with KDE 2 much, so I don't know if this has been changed.
> 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.
Certainly it is *possible*, but probably not desirable. Remember that the
elements of Gnome are designed to work well together. Same goes for KDE.
If you start trying to create a hybrid, you will, by necessity, lose some of
that.
> 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.
Theme engines are a different subject entirely. Gnome uses the truly free
GTK engine, while KDE relies on Qt, which has a more restrictive license.
As such, you can "port" themes from one to the other, but you can't use
them directly.
> i've got a feeling that you might be able to alter the cosmetics in a
> similar way that themes are changed.
Not quite. These would be source level modifications requiring you to
recompile your own custom version of the applet.
> 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.
The separate theme managers are required because there are two (actually
three) different widget sets in common use: GTK, Qt, and Motif. The Motif
widgets are used by Netscape and some other commercial applications, but
rarely in open-source projects. Qt is, in some ways, more feature rich than
GTK, but has a more restrictive license, which limits its utilization. GTK
is licensed under the GPL, so it can be freely used. GTK themes can be used
with every freely available window manager *except* KDE.
> 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.
Right click on it and select properties. You will probably see that the
label for changing the width is greyed out. This is because it is
automatically determining the width. Turn off the automatic width and then
you can select it yourself.
> 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.
This is probably because /var is so full.
> 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.
It killed the panel applet. One of the things that happens when you start
running out of memory+swap is that the kernel starts deciding what has to
die in order to keep the system running. Because you run with so many
desktops and use several resource hungry applets, you are already eating a
huge chunk of memory.
> 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.
Okay. if you have the space available in another partition, you can
duplicate /ver to that partition, unmount it, then symlink /var to the
temporary location. Then you issue the rpm --rebuilddb, remove the symlink,
and remount the partition. Finally, you mirror the temporary /var back to
the real /var. (You will discover that after the db rebuild the rpm
database frequently shrinks significantly)
> 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,
It *is* truly open, and that is the reason for the following.
> and does not mean, a truly standardized environment. so much for the
> deceptive lure of hopeful thinking.
What you are running into is the problem of trying to integrate two
different ways of thinking about the same thing. Linux is Linux no matter
how you slice it. But Linux itself is just the kernel. Everything else
that works together to make it a useable operating system gets put together
by a team that has a predetermined idea of what the next generation of their
distribution should look like. These visions all comply with what standards
exist, and get modified by new standards as they emerge. Those grey areas
for which there is no standard create many of the problems you have
experienced.
> there should be someway that someone could write a program which would
> code,
Actually even that (x86 assembler) would not be portable enough. Such a
program still would not work on a PPC, Amiga, Atari ST, Alpha, or Sparc (all
of which have Linux ports available).
> 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.
That is workable for what it does, as long as you have the thing hooked to a
PC. But, Linux has grown beyond its original x86 roots, and we have to code
for portability. Writing portable code for low-level device access is a
virtual impossibility. It is the reason why it takes so long to port the
kernel to a new platform.
> you know, all for one and one for all! if you know of such a thing, let me
> know; quickly!
Sorry :p
--
Anton Graham GPG ID: 0x18F78541
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> RSA key available upon request
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read.
