[Tfug] holidays with linux

[Claude Rubinson]

On Tue, Dec 25, 2007 at 01:19:05PM -0700, christopher floess wrote:
> > P.S. Are you a regular user of Fvwm? There are a few of us on the
> > list but not many.
> 
> Been using it for a few years now. When I first started to use it, I
> just spliced and modified the rc file that comes with it until I was
> satisfied enough with the results.

That's pretty much how everybody does it.  There are too many options
to start from scratch.

> In addition to working with linux I decided to really hash through
> the fvwm man page, and it's really starting to pay off.

Ahh, fvwm's man page.  The War and Peace of man pages... :)

> There are just so many options that I knew I would have to set away
> a chunk of time to really start to mess with them. I really like
> fvwm though.

The way that fvwm configuration was described to me was: "(1) Write
down everything that you want your window manager to do.  (2) Open the
fvwm man page.  (3) Do it."

Over the years, my method has evolved to: "(1) Notice that something's
bugging me and/or that I'm repeating myself.  (2) Open the fvwm man
page.  (3) Search out the relative commands.  (4) Try to do it, not
understand why my function's not working, and bang my head against the
keyboard for a while until I realize that I've forgotten to include "+
I" in my function (or some equally trivial syntax error) and that it
actually would have worked all along if not for my own ineptitude.
(5) Rinse and repeat.  Maybe it's a personal problem.

The one thing that I really wish fvwm had was a built-in branching
statement.  An in-then or case construct would be heavenly (heck, I'd
settle for just an "if").  Every time I want to do something
conditional, I need to PipeRead a shell command/script which can be a
pain.  In particular, the escaping of backslashes is enough to drive
one to drink (of course, in my case, maybe that's just an excuse).

Claude