[RULE] Windowslike Desktop

[Jason Bechtel]

So Ingo doesn't get the wrong impression of
IceWM, there are a lot of features of IceWM that
you don't have turned on in your screenshot, such
as the clock, various system monitors (net, CPU,
e-mail), the Win9x themes, icons in the "Start"
menu, etc.

Also, the monitors and the clock can have actions
associated with certain clicks, such as launching
xclock or an email client or xosview...

Finally, you can eliminate some of the extraneous
buttons on the taskbar, such as the window list
and the 4 desktop buttons.  You can also have
icons instead of text on the application launcher
buttons (between the window-list button and the
"1 2 3 4" desktop buttons).  So, it would have a
little "terminal" icon instead of the text "XTerm".

All of this is configured in just a few files. 
The master files are in /etc/X11R6/lib/X11/icewm
(or something like that).  I usually create a
link at /etc/icewm to point to this buried
directory.  The main configuration file contains
lots of options, each with a short description,
which is not always helpful.  Then there are
separate files for "menu" "keys" and "toolbar". 
The formats are simple and contain examples.

In addition to the system-wide configuration
files, you can have personal versions of these
files under ~/.icewm.  These completely override
the system-wide files (no merging).  It is
necessary to use personal versions of files if
you are going to implement pop3 or imap mail
checking, however (password storage).

There is no way to change the desktop
interactively.  You have to edit these files and
the restart icewm (which can be done from the
"Start" menu).  There are a couple programs out
there which provide GUI interfaces for the IceWM
configuration files.  I don't remember which one
was the best, though.

Finally, a while back I wrote a login script that
simply compiled several sub-sections of the icewm
configuration file in my personal .icewm
directory with the system-wide settings file and
wrote it to ~/.icewm/preferences.  This
accomplishes a merge of system-wide and
user-specific settings.  It also allows for
setting up of default personal settings for a new
user.  I could dig those up and share them with
the list if need be.

I also wrote some little Tcl/Tk applets to make
the mail notification tray more useful.  I could
share those as well if there's interest.

Jason


---- Begin Original Message ----
 From: Michael Fratoni <mfratoni at tuxfan.homeip.net>
Sent: Sat, 10 May 2003 00:54:38 -0400
Subject: Re: [RULE] Windowslike Desktop

On Friday 09 May 2003 09:24 pm, Michael Fratoni
wrote:
> On Friday 09 May 2003 01:57 pm, Jason Bechtel
wrote:
> > Ingo,
> >
> > Here are some light desktop environments that are
> > more like MS-Windows:
> >
> > <http://www.qvwm.org/> - like Windows by design
> > <http://www.icewm.org/> - has Windows-ish themes
>
> You asked for it, you got it...... ;)
>
> Packages for both available on my server:
> http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/RPMS/

Screenshots:
http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/XFree86/kdrive/9/screenshots/icewm-screenshot.png
http://www.tuxfan.homeip.net:8080/rule/XFree86/kdrive/9/screenshots/qvwm-screenshot.png

Both taken running the stock XFree86 server at
1024x768x16

The kdrive Xvesa server looks the same, and loads
faster.

- -Michael
---- End Original Message ----



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