On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 12:29:08PM +0200, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Chris G wrote:
>
> > If I had multiple desktops then (I think) each desktop would have its
> > own desktop name in the FvwmPager window title area.
>
> > > Depends how you work.
> > Well yes, hence my question! :-)
>
> When I moved to fvwm, after a bit of experimenting I settled on two
> desktops with 4 pages (in a 2x2 arrangement ... I used a 1x4 once on a
> laptop with a screen size different from my workstation ... I usually
> keep the pager and the clock sticky in the top right corner, but on the
> laptop I moved them to a bottom "bar") each.
>
> I originally expected to be able somehow to give a name to the pages
> (which could have been just a sequence number) which could appear
> somewhere as a visual reminder of where I'm in. I'd liked also to have
> different background (solid) colours for each page, mirrored in the pager.
>
> But at the end I can live well without those things. The sticky pager with
> the red active window and an highlighted active page colour is enough to
> tell me where I am, together with the mini icons of the windows which tell
> me what the various pages are used for.
>
> I ended with a "Main desktop" and a "Secondary desktop" (no fancy names).
> My original idea was to work at different "projects" in a flexible way in
> the 4 pages of the main dt, while the secondary dt was intended for
> "network" stuff. In fact I originally planned to keep firefox in one page,
> mail (pine) in another, and a VNC session onto an headless machine in
> another (the 4th was spare). This is initialized at startup in the
> .fvwmrc. Now I hardly use the VNC page, but maybe deposit in the 2 spare
> pages a PDF document (triggered in the browser or mail agent) for later
> reading.
>
> I have some reproducible patterns of windows in the main dt pages, but I
> start them manually when I need them. Not all days are equal !
>
> >
> > Can I move applications between desktops as I can between windows at
> > the moment, is it slower to switch desktops rather than windows, etc.?
>
> Thanks to Thomas Adam for the explanation about window (un)mapping etc.
> In practice I hardly noticed any difference between switching or moving
> windows across pages or across desks.
>
> I originally defined a lot of accelerators to switch pages and desks and
> to attach to window menus to move a window to ("occupy") another page or
> desk, but I found that I almost never use them.
>
> Usually I switch desks and pages via the pager (rarely dragging a window
> to a neighbouring page), while for moving windows the most frequent way
> for me is to "stick" it to all pages and desks, change page, then
> eventually unstick it. Second choice is drag in the pager.
>
Thanks for the comprehensive description of how you're using FVWM2,
all useful to get an idea of how to do things.
I have been using FVWM2 for quite a while on my home (Linux) machine
with one four (or is it five) page desktop. I only recently moved to
FVWM2 on my work machine and found that one desktop with eight pages
wasn't working too well.
I have moved to four desktops with two pages each and I've labelled
the desktops - Mail, Browser, Development, Windows - which makes sense
to me anyway.
I really hadn't realised the relationship of pages and desktops in
FVWM2, it's clearer now and many desktops with few pages each makes
much more sense for my way of working.
Thanks again all.
--
Chris Green
