Re: Sv: Window Manager configuration utilities

[Paul Warren <pdw ferret lmh ox ac uk>]

On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Michael ROGERS wrote:

> Creating a config tool aimed at those users who want everything to be 
> consistent and intuitive and then risking incompatibility between the program 
> and the config tool seems like a bad idea. Maybe Rasterman and Mandrake would 
> be interested in making a separate "E for Gnome" distribution? (E capplet 
> instead of e-conf, themes without desktop buttons, gmc-friendly mouse 
> bindings, etc)

I understand that insisting that wm's have config tools in capplet form,
places a load on the WM authors, but surely our aim has to be to provide
the best Desktop Environment that we can?  And, to me, this includes
integrated config tools.  Perhaps this should be a second level of Gnome
compliance, but it should definitely be defined.  It is my hope that there
will soon be window managers written specifically to work with Gnome.  As
has been pointed out many times before wm's like E and Window Maker are
not ideal as Gnome WM's because they try to do too much (see Docks,
Pagers, desktop icons, standalone config tools etc).

What I am suggesting is that we shouldn't sacrifice the aim of a really
good, integrated desktop by going out of our way to allow support for wm's
that were written to be standalone window managers.  Gnome already has
many apps written specifically to work with Gnome, why should something as
crucial as window managers not be written specifically for the job?  If
that means a seperate distribution of E just for Gnome, then so be it.  

I am currently working on Mosquito, which is intended to be a Gnome window
manager written specifically for the job.  I suspect that when it, and
others like it, are ready, they will very quickly become the window
managers of choice over standalone managers.  

yours,

Paul