[TAG] One for Ben

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 06:25:19PM +0100, Thomas Adam wrote:
> > dislike the standard RedHat install for the same reasons (it's a minor
> > dislike, but that's the reason for it.)
> 
> *sigh*. I agree. I liked it more when RH4 and the subsequent RH5 release
> used Fvwm. They now use Gnome, which is arguably better IMO, than KDE.
> Qt is horrible.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.  I consider myself a fairly
stern evaluator of desktop managers, and I *greatly* prefer KDE to
Gnome.

And lets be clear: KDE and GNOME are entire desktop environments;
comparing them to window managers is apples and oranges.

> > IceWM is small, fast, and lacks nothing in features that I want from a
> > WM. From Thomas' previous rantings :), I gather that FVWM is much the
> > same sort of thing. It's like having a spoon that you bought for a
> 
> Kind of. But there are a _lot_ of things Fvwm does that IceWM does not,
> and while I am not going to outline the individual merits of each, you
> cannot, for instance, in IceWM do event actions. And while I have used
> IceWm, it just doesn't have..., well, it lacks *something*. :)

And, of course, there are an order of magnitude more things that K and
G do that neither of those window managers do.

> Perhaps another addition that you might appreciate Ben is the fact that
> you can script commands to Fvwm, using the underlying $SHELL. There is
> even a full set of perl-bindings[2] [3]. The power that this gives, to
> allow complex things to be done simply, is quite amazing. Not only that
> but Fvwm has its own internal widget set (FvwmScript) so that you can
> define all kinds of things.

KDE DCOP scripting?

> /me comes down from his high horse.

Ah; a little good olde-fashion flamage.  :-)

> But it really does just depend. I ask of nothing visual from my WM in
> terms of eye candy. Ick. The only thing I permit myself is xteddy. After
> all, a WM is just there to provide a means of being able to launch lots
> of rxvts. :)

I'm Mr. Command Line (Neal Stephenson is my patron saint), but that's
More Catholic Than The Pope, guy.

> > quarter; no matter *how* you improve the thing, it's _still_ going to
> > be a spoon, and the functionality of it will never be worth much more
> > than that price. Yeah, you could theoretically make it out of gold and
> 
> That's where I diagree. The environment you work in is what you make it.
> And since Fvwm is free, the amount of things I can do with it, and the
> extendability of it is immense. I joke not. There are over 1000 styles
> in all to Fvwm. You can configure the minutest.

But it's still a window manager.

This is akin to Dick Wolf's argument, quoted on ATC last night, that
L&O is a *brand*, while CSI is a *franchise*: the L&O's are all
*different* shows.

> > attach it to a gadget that will feed the baby, wipe up the spills, and
> > go to the store to buy the products to replace the ones it used up...
> > but it's neither a spoon any longer, nor is it nearly as useful as a
> > spoon is if you move away from the home/baby/store metaphor.
> 
> Given that all of this is contained within Fvwm, the need to *add on*
> any features are irrelevant. It's ironic to think that despite all I
> have said, given my needs, I could quite easily go back to using TWM
> again.... [5]

fvwm will feed the baby and wipe up the spills?

Ok, but you still need emacs to wash up the bottles.

:-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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	"You know: I'm a fan of photosynthesis as much as the next guy,
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					-- Luke Girardi