RE: gnome compliant window managers

["Fox, Kevin M" <KMFox mail bhi-erc com>]

The best solution (In my own opinion) is to have the window manger capplet
check to see if a window manager is defined and if not prompt the user for
his/her choice of default wm on startup.

so,
joe bob installs gnome.
joe runs gnome for the first time
he gets a nice pritty list of all window managers installed on his box so he
can choose which wm he likes

it would be minor (I think) to reprogram the wm capplet to do this. most of
the code is already there

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Jan Gentsch [SMTP:gentsch@ifm.uni-hamburg.de]
> Sent:	Monday, March 22, 1999 3:06 PM
> To:	Maciej Stachowiak
> Subject:	Re: gnome compliant window managers
> 
> Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > 
> > Jan Gentsch <gentsch@ifm.uni-hamburg.de> writes:
> > 
> > > SuSE rpms don't depend on a particular windowmanager, but you are
> > > prompted the first time you startup to choose one of the
> windowmanagers
> > > available on the system (that assumes that at least on is installed,
> but
> > > that assumption will hold true 99.9% of the time unless the person
> > > operating the system nows what he is doing anyhow.
> > 
> > I'd consider that better behavior than what Red Hat does. This could
> > be made to work even better by having a gnome-compliant-wm
> > pseudo-package and having gnome-core depend on it, and all
> > gnome-compliant WM's provide it.
> > 
> > However, I think it would be better to just probe the gnome-compliant
> > window managers in some arbitrary/specified order the first time gnome
> > starts up, and depend ona gnome-compliant-wm pseudo-package. Indeed,
> > one might argue the pseudo-package is not even necessry since users
> > should be able to run with a non-compliant wm oo if they want to, but
> > that is a separate issue. Perhaps a "windowmanager" pseudo-package
> > could be used instead, depending on distributor tastes. The reason I'd
> > suggest this instead is because a "choose your window manager" dialog
> > would confuse the heck out of new users.
> 
> I just consider it polite not to force a slightly more knowledgeable
> user to first use a windowmanager that he doesnīt want to use. Just make
> use of the help system (which at some stage should finally be more than
> a button labeled help) and to make extra sure add something along the
> line of: īIf you donīt know what this is about, just press defaultī.
> 
> Also that gives the user an indication why her desktop looks so much
> different from his. Now that would be a real puzzle if you donīt know
> anything about windowmanagers. Take the chance for a gentle introduction
> of important UI-Concepts ;-) .
> 
> Really, this points out one of the biggest bugs in gnome as is: The Help
> system is not being used, or it is often not used to provide real help
> (sorry, the help is so seldom mapped to something I canīt remember where
> I last found the later).
> One of my biggest wishes would be that we end up with a help system
> which doesnīt confronts you with such deep thought of the kind: īThe
> change windowmanager applet allows you to change your windowmanager.ī.
> 
> Jan
> 
> > 
> > I see now that this has already been suggested in the
> > "Windowmanager in session.wm" thread; I wasn't aware of that thread
> > until now because I didn't subscribe to gnome-list until I saw the
> > cross-posted message that started this thread.
> > 
> > Further discussion should probably take place on the other thread.
> > 
> >  - Maciej Stachowiak
> > 
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> 
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