Re: window managers duplicating functions of GNOME

[Tom Gilbert <gilbertt btinternet com>]

* cd bates (cd.bates@virginnet.co.uk) wrote:
> I'm not sure whether this has been mentioned before but why does the default
> window manager with GNOME duplicate so many of its functions? Couldn't some
> code be added to disable these settings when the window manager is running
> with GNOME?

(To be fair, I should point out that the opposite could also be said,
that GNOME duplicates a number of wm features =) Just being devil's
advocate).

I wrote a spec file for Enlightenment 0.16.4 which cripples
enlightenment in various ways to prevent duplication issues with GNOME.

It's in the E cvs server and is called "e.rh.spec". Rename it to e.spec,
make dist and then rpm -tb the tarball. The resulting rpm is the same
old E, without an iconbox, the remember dialog, background setting,
pagers, multiple desktops, and all the other things which make it cool
;-)

I'm sure you can appreciate that those features are all needed if just
running E, and not GNOME too, which is why they're there in the first
place :-)

If you don't run redhat, you can still use the crippled configs. Grab
the cvs code, cd to e/src/themes/configs and rename all the .rh.cfg files
to .cfg and make install.

You can of course omit all that and just edit the configs of your
existing e install. Commenting out one line in menus.cfg will instantly
remove the remember dialog, commenting out one line in control.cfg will
remove the iconbox, another for the pagers. It's all configurable.

If you don't want to go through all that to remove those features from
E, use a window manager which doesn't provide them in the first place,
like sawmill.

> I've been having trouble with backgrounds for some time now because both
> GNOME and enlightenment try to set the background. I can't find any way to
> disable either one from trying and what makes it worse is the fact that
> GNOME only seems to paint the part of the desktop that is visible on the
> screen.

Both enlightenment and GNOME have an option not to set the background,
so I don't see the problem :-)

Seeing as I've always thought root desktop backgrounds was the territory
of a wm, I selected the "Don't set a background" option in gnomecc. You
could, instead, select the "No background" option in E's background
properties dialog, so do whichever you fancy really... The modified spec
file removes the background properties dialog from e, even though it's
much more powerful than the one provided by GNOME.

Tom.
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