From: Simon Wistow Date: 14:54 on 23 May 2005 Subject: windowmaker's backgrounds Changing one's background is one of the fundamental writes of a GUI user. It allows you to express your individuality in much the same way that sticking amusing posters up on your cubical walls do. In 99.9999% of all desktop systems out there it is a trivially easy operation. Windowmaker has, however, fully embraced the Linux Retardo[tm] mindset. Is it part of the configuration menu - NO! That would be entirely too easy! You have to use the wmsetbg command line tool. Because, you know, when you're configuring the look and feel of a GRAPHICAL environment you want to be using the fucking COMMAND LINE. But, I figure it should be quire easy - simply wmsetbg <path>. But oh no, whilst that does change my background it only does it on this desktop. And sometimes only temporarily. Sometimes permanently. How special. To set my background on all desktops I need to do for f in `seq 0 10`; do wmsetbg -u -w $f <path>; done Hurrah! I suppose the point is that I could have different backgrounds on every desktop should I show wish which is clearly a far more common usecase than, say, wanting to browse thumbnails. Or put the image down anywhere other than center.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 15:10 on 23 May 2005 Subject: Re: windowmaker's backgrounds > But, I figure it should be quire easy - simply wmsetbg <path>. Until I started messing around with the Gnome/KDE mess it wouldn't have occurred to me to use my window manager to set my background. The window manager doesn't even own the root window. Look, separate window managers are a great idea. Putting them in charge of other stuff is daft. We had to quit using multiple-window mode on Chameleon and Hummingbird because CDE insisted it owned the desktop... so when you logged in your Windows desktop got covered up with this huge root background that they so conveniently provided. I really really do like how Windowmaker didn't get in my way and try and take over the root when I was using Electric Sheep as my desktop background on FreeBSD. Use xsetroot or xv -root or whatever program you like to set your root, and quit trying to make the window manager a "desktop environment". That's not how X11 was designed, software that tries to shove inappropriate functionality in the window manager is hateful. Windowmaker doesn't do this... in fact it's one of the least hateful window managers I've ever used. Oh, it's not immune, but software I only have to hate a little bit is a Good Thing.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 15:21 on 23 May 2005 Subject: Re: windowmaker's backgrounds On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 09:10:38AM -0500, Peter da Silva said: > I really really do like how Windowmaker didn't get in my way and try and > take over the root when I was using Electric Sheep as my desktop background > on FreeBSD. Well, Windowmaker *is* trying to set the background - the config is stored in the Windowmaker config DB. Philosophical dicussions about ownership of the root window, and whether desktop environments are a good idea, aside we now have the worst of both worlds - a sucky way of organising my backgrounds that also pisses you off for violating an X Windows principle. hate++
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 15:58 on 23 May 2005 Subject: Re: windowmaker's backgrounds > Well, Windowmaker *is* trying to set the background - the config is > stored in the Windowmaker config DB. As far as I can tell that's so you can, if for some weird reason you want to do this, give it different backgrounds for each desktop. Some people actually like this. There's a couple of users here who have CDE setups that make me want to stab myself in the face when I have to use them. Windowmaker isn't a desktop environment, it's just a window manager. This is good. Desktops are hateful.
From: Chris Devers Date: 16:23 on 23 May 2005 Subject: Re: windowmaker's backgrounds On Mon, 23 May 2005, Peter da Silva wrote: > As far as I can tell that's so you can, if for some weird reason you > want to do this, give it different backgrounds for each desktop. I thought that was part of the *point* of different desktops. Back in the days before X11 drove me insane, having different wallpaper backgrounds for each virtual desktop was a useful cue about which one I was coping with at any given time. Even if they're all just different solid colors, I need something like that to clarify which is which. But then I realized that virtual desktops, as appealing as they seemed to be at first, just left me hopelessly confused most of the time, and I came to hate them the same way that I hate the way Windows "helpfully" hides all the menu options that you haven't used in the last 10 minutes. "Out of sight, out of mind" is annoyingly effective on me, and if my UI starts hiding things, I tend to forget that they were available at all.
From: Simon Wistow Date: 17:53 on 23 May 2005 Subject: Re: windowmaker's backgrounds On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 09:58:35AM -0500, Peter da Silva said: > As far as I can tell that's so you can, if for some weird reason you want > to do this, give it different backgrounds for each desktop. Some people > actually like this. There's a couple of users here who have CDE setups that > make me want to stab myself in the face when I have to use them. Well precisely. It's command line app for what I'd argue was an inherently graphical operation (or at least, benefits greatly from being graphical) which is 'optimised' for a condition which is only of use to a few fringe cases. I mean, I'm no big fan of the Mac's molly coddling ways but this is pretty much everything I hate about Unix apps. If it spewed out pages of meaningless (to everyone apart from the developer) debug messages then I'd start suspecting that one of you magnificent bastards on this list had written it just to wind me up. If they'd even just put in an option '-a' which did it for all desktops then I'd be marginally lest hateful.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 18:49 on 23 May 2005 Subject: Re: windowmaker's backgrounds > Well precisely. It's command line app for what I'd argue was an > inherently graphical operation (or at least, benefits greatly from being > graphical) which is 'optimised' for a condition which is only of use to > a few fringe cases. That's probably because that fringe case is about the only reason the window manager would need to know about this operation at all. If that's not good enough, <UI>WindowmakerConf has a themes panel for this kind of thing</UI>. I quit using WindowmakerConf after WPrefs got stable. Insert canonical hate about themes here.
Generated at 10:27 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi