Cannot change settings for Metacity

["Huaxin Xu" <hxu the3rdeye com au>]

Hi all,

 

I have a system set up this way: kernel 2.6.31.5-127.fc12, no desktop environment (no gnome or kde), metacity 2.28.0-14.fc12.i686 (installed by yum), and my own application (full-screen) which may generate some dialogs when certain operations are performed.

 

I could not change settings (such as num_workspaces, action_right_click_titlebar) for matacity.

 

`gconftool-2 --type=int --set /schemas/apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 1` reported no errors or warnings, in fact, nothing.

`gconftool-2 --get /schemas/apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces` would return the value I had set (in this case, 1).

 

However, right click on the titlebar of a modal dialog would still show the menu item of “Move to Another Workspace” and “Workspace 2/3/4” on a menu one level down.

 

Similarly for action_right_click_titlebar

`gconftool-2 --type =string --set /schemas/apps/metacity/general/action_right_click_titlebar none` reported nothing.

`gconftool-2 --get /schemas/apps/metacity/general/action_right_click_titlebar` would return the value I had set (“none”)

 

However, right click on the titlebar of a modal dialog would still prompt a menu, as if no change has been made on action_right_click_titlebar.

 

I could tell metacity was involved in the running of the application from the cursor - when metacity was started before the application started the cursor for the root window would be XC_left_ptr, otherwise it would be a black “X”.

However, as gnome (or any other desktop environment) was not running, I am not sure if gconftool-2 can enforce the settings on metacity.

Another issue, which may be related is

Changing the theme of metacity by 

`gconftool-2 --type=string /schemas/apps/metacity/general/theme Nodoka`  (Nodoka is only used as an example, using any other theme would give the same result).

or changing a particular value of a theme by editing the XML file (/usr/share/themes/Nodoka/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml)

would not make any difference whatsoever in appearance (e.g. titlebar’s width, height, padding height, etc)

Any advice on how I can apply changes on metacity, or at least how to set num_workspaces = 0 and action_right_click_titlebar = none?

Thanks very much!

Huaxin