First of all, sorry if I got some mailing list things wrong. Being aware
of fvwm
IRC FAQ I would still mention I'm pretty much noob and Nth generation Linux
and fvwm user, so what I say might seem strange.
To my mind what a default config should be like depends mostly on what the
developers would like to achieve. Would you like the userbase to be
small and
somewhat elitist, or would you like to make fvwm more popular and tolerate
(clueless) newcomers?
I happened to fall in love with fvwm a couple of years ago having a typical
ubuntu background and went like 'wow, people, check this out, I've found
such a beautyful thing!' and started to propagate it.
Since that time I hacked together a configuration for myself, keeping in
mind I
would once need to share it with anyone who would like to try fvwm but
would not
have time to read through a whole manual or is less common with
programming a
window manager to meet his needs or whatever, or, what's worse, review
and edit
it myself. I've been under strong impression of archlinux+openbox setup
described
in details in archwiki. I wanted to get an article which would get me
rolling fast and let
me make minor tweaks later, but I found all the articles one could reach
with a
search engine query to be stale (written in early 00s and not updated
since then),
forums down and screenshots section on the official website look like
circa mid 90s.
What I, being a new baptised standalone wm user, thought to be useable and
good looking was absolutely flat window decors and menus not pretending
to be
3d - it took me a lot of time to get rid of 3d everywhere - but rather
look good with 2d
and maybe some pixmaps and gradients, left click root window menu,
ClickToFocus
policy, predictable Alt+Tab behaviour, no desktop icons until explicitly
asked for some,
no window borders for panels/trays/desktop widgets and _[]X window
buttons layout.
That surely would not demonstrate fvwm's unique features and long
tradition, but it
would not make someone feel completely lost from the start. Sure, one
must read the
documentation in order to get the best user experience, but one should
be willing to
read documentation which comes with this particular window manager in
the first
place, because there are *boxes around, and devilspie, and whatnot.
So If I was told to make fvwm famous in desktop Linux users community
the way we
have it now, to convince a definite sort of people - hobbyist
programmers, newbies
willing to learn new things, people tired of DE developers thinking them
to be guinea
pigs and other nice people to use fvwm, I would come up with a
configuration which
would feature:
- pixmap window decorations looking rather minimalist but fresh
- _[]X window buttons layout and 0 window decor button popping up a
window options
menu with some advanced options
- right-click root window menu featuring some pipe menus (maybe a
calendary or directory
browser) to showcase menu scriptability and encourage people to come up
with
something of their own
- mainstream keyboard shortcuts for window management
- some sort of quick pop-up help window with keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet
- distributed configuration file for ease of editing and sharing small
useful functions between
users, but it's the matter of personal taste
- some sort of convention on naming and hierarchy of window decorations
pixmaps allowing
to change window decors quickly editing a single environmental variable
- would be nice to handle gnome/kde icon themes somehow, and probably
xdg-open as well,
but it does not seem to meet zero dependencies requirement
I would ask devotee *wm users what particularily do they love about
their window manager of
choice and try to implement it - this is how I learned about autoshade
function my config
features and this is how I learned about 'smart launch' concept I've
heard ubuntu unity now
ships with and everyone is so happy about.I would learn from
crunchbanglinux developers
- it's interesting how they managed to develop such a nice distribution
featuring standalone
window manager - and from people who wrote archwiki openbox article - it
provides some
great answers to that 'how do I...' questions quite a lot of people tend
to ask.
Long story short, the default configuration must not scare people and
must still demonstrate
that they can change everything if they want to - but they should have
an option to stick
with the defaults if they feel like it and only do some minor tweaks.
And it has to feature a
couple of fancy thingies just to illustrate what can be done - IMO,
given that we want new
some new users.
Configuration files with quite a lot of comments:
http://box-look.org/content/show.php?content=123415
A sort of promotional video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoUu7KrMSYQ
