aoc2 enscribed thusly:
> > On 10-Feb-99 Paul Clyne wrote: >
> > > > please also CC me personally so as I dont miss any repiles > >
> > Good listers > > I know this is a subjective question but I'll ask
> > anyway.. > > What X manager do you use ?. Why ? > > I'm only new to
> > the Linux world and would like your input on the 'best' X > manager.
> > I'm currently leaning towards AfterSetup but there may be some >
> > reason that this is the 'lamest' manager.
> afterstep consumes a lot of colors. i find it garish and personally don't
> like it much, but that's just my opinion. i use fvwm2. it is fast,
I've used fvwm2 and fvwm2-95 as well as mwm, olvwm, and several
others... Now I use enlightenment...
I liked the fvwm series and stuck with it until enlightenment
added the virtual destops (not just multiple desktops like the fvwm pager
gives you, which it has had for a long time).
> configurable, decent-looking, and has a number of nifty features such as,
> when resting the mouse pointer on the edge of the screen, it "slides" to
> an adjacent "desk". it's also possible to 'stretch' a window to occupy 2
The mouse sliding to other "desktops" (actually it slides to another
virtual area on a given desktop) personally drives me nuts. Its the one
thing I've tried to figure out how to turn OFF in enlightenment, now that
Rasterman has added it. He adds a config option for everything else...
Sigh...
Personally, if the mouse is going to move from one area to the
next, I prefer the smooth scroll ala the virtual screen size option to X,
with the addition of some edge resistance to cut down on the confusion when
you "bump" the edge.
> or more desks. other wms (with the exception of fvwm and fvwm95) lack this
> feature and it's one of the reasons i've stuck to fvwm2.
Even fvwm* refers to the virtual areas of the desktop as the desktop
size and has a separate parameter for the number of desktops. You can get
a window to overlay between virtual areas within one desktop but not between
desktops. Load up the pager with desktops set to something more that one
and with a desktop size of, say, 4 x 3 and see what I mean. You will have
multiple desktops, each with 12 virtual areas within them. You can even
position your screen to stradle between two or more areas (say covering a
corner) but you can not overlap desktops. Desktops can have different
backgrounds, but areas cannot.
Enlightenment has all of that plus has the ability to slowly scroll
through the areas by small increments from the keyboard. Now, if it would
just act that way from the mouse, I would be happy. The mouse jumps the
screen suddenly from one area to the next, warping the pointer from one
edge to the opposite edge of the screen. I do not like this.
There is one peculiar difference between the way enlightenment
hands desktops and the way fvwm* handles desktops. In fvwm* you can
visualize the desktops as being a third dimention with the virtual areas
occuping the other two dimensions. As you move between areas in fvwm*,
you change your x and y origin which you retain when moving between desktops.
If you are in area 3.1 in desktop 0, you will be in area 3.1 in desktop
1 when you switch to it. Enlightenment keeps a unique and separate origin
on each desktop. Movement between areas on one desktop does not affect
your location on the other desktops. This can be handy.
I really haven't decided which behavior I like better vis a vis
the area movement and the multiple desktops. It's probably something
that should get a parameter in enlightenment.
Enlightenment also has this cute "window shade" effect for both
windows and desktops. Switching desktops is like raising and lowering
a screen wide window shade. You can also "roll-up" windows into their
title bars like a window shade. That's actually REAL HANDY when you've got
a bunch of overlapping windows and you don't want to iconify them (which
warps over to who knows where). You can just role them up into their title
bars where they sit and role them back down when you need them... :-)
The full title bar sits where it was with the full title displayed. I really
like that better than the icons and I don't think it takes any more screen
space than the icons... Plus, it's more visible (to me, at least).
I understand that this is very similar to what you find on the Next
and I've seen similar behavior on the Amiga. It's neat...
Enlightenment also supports title bar buttons which scroll out
extra lines of window function buttons for features that are not used as
often. Cute...
Down side is that earlier versions of enlightenment are REALLY SLOW.
I never did anything with 0.13, but even 0.14 was too slow for me to use.
0.15 or hot off the CVS tree (what I do) is pretty darn good. I would not
rate it much slower than fvwm* and startup parsing is MUCH faster than the
m4 parsing done by the afterstep/nextstep stuff that gets installed by
RedHat. There is still some room for improvement and Rasterman is working
hard at improving it. At this point he's gotten it to where it has become
my window manager of choice... :-)
If you use a lot of backgrounds and fancy stuff, I know enlightenment
can comsume quite a significant amount of memory. I don't doubt it will also
eat a lot of colors but I've got a video card with a big fat memory so
I can run 32 bpp and still get 1280x1024 just fine. :-) Ain't run outa
colors yet. :-)
Mike
--
Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(The Mad Wizard) | (770) 925-8248 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
