Re: Questions from new user

[Toralf Lund <toralf kscanners com>]

> >   1. Is there a desktop pager application that runs in a separate
> >      window? I find that the pager applet is too small to be useful, or
> >      it makes the panel too large, depending on how you configure it.
>
> I think this may depend on your window manager. At a guess, if you
> are new to Gnome you are running Enlightenment, but you may not
> be. Are you? What version of Gnome are you running? Click on the
> "about" option of the panel and that will give you the version
> of your panel. (Why doesn't 'About Gnome' give the Gnome version,
> btw? It brings up info about your system rather than about Gnome.)

I am running Elightenment at the moment, but I've also experimented a bit
with WindowMaker, which I have been using on its own and along with KDE
earlier.

The panel version is 1.0.39. I suspect there isn't really such a thing as a
Gnome version, since most of the components are distributed separately.

>   2. Why can't I use the pager to move windows between the desktops? Or

> >      can I? Is there an alternative pager where this is possible?
>
> I don't use pagers, but from what I've seen discussed on the list,
> this should work! I do recall something about older versions of
> enlightenment not liking to switch between desktops, though.
>
> >   3. It it possible to display the task buttons in a scrollable list or
> >      window rather than having them resized to fit in. The latter
> >      approach makes the whole task list rather useless when you, like
> >      me, have the habit of having at least 20 windows open at any given
> >      time. Of course, this habit is one of the reasons why I'm using
> >      Linux in the first place.
>
> If you mean a list of what windows are currently open, then an
> alternative (which is a bit of a jump just for this, but still) is
> to use Window Maker. (I don't know about Enlightenment). Clicking
> on the third button when not in a window produces a list of what
> windows are currently open and on which workspace. If you click
> close to the edge of the screen, the list appears half on the screen,
> half off, and scrolls out to be visible when you move the mouse to
> the edge of the window, rather like the autohide feature of the
> panel. This keeps it out of the way until you want it. I have
> thirteen windows open myself at the moment, some with very long
> titles, so I can see why you're asking :)

Exactly. Like I said, I have tried WindowMaker, and using its window menu is
definitely better than the task list. I have also tried using the task list
menu of the pager applet, i.e. running it with "Show task list button" on
and "Show task list" off, and this also works fairly well, although there
seems to be no way to distinguish between open and iconified windows. I
still prefer having a separate window for this in the manner of mwm/4Dwm's
"iconBox", though.

>
> >   4. Why can't I put the panel in the middle of the screen? Not that I
> >      want it there, it's just a matter of principle.
>
> You will be able to in the next version of Gnome, I believe. That's
> the version currently in CVS, which is what really brave people who
> like debugging run.

I found out that you can in fact move the panel around using Alt+Drag,
although it will pop back to the corner when the arrow buttons are pressed.
This discovery made me a lot more positive to GNOME in general...

> >   5. Can anyone explain how gnome-linuxconf is supposed to work? In
> >      particular, what is meant to happen when you select an entry from
> >      the list of configuration tasks? - It looks like selecting a task
> >      that has been displayed already has no effect.
>
> I don't use gnome-linuxconf. As I recall, the documentation for
> linuxconf is in what I call "a funny place": /usr/lib/linuxconf/
> rather than a man page. If it doesn't behave the way that suggests,
> then you might want to have a look at http://bugs.gnome.org,
> look through the gnome-linuxconf package list of bugs, and if it's
> not there, send a bug report. There are directions on this at
> the site, or you can use the 'bug-buddy' program, which makes it
> a lot easier (and is really cool and in the event of a crash even
> produces a list of helpful debugging info).

I'll check this out later.

> >   6. Is there an application similar to SGI's iconbook/iconcatalog? I
> >      find this a lot more convenient to use than large, deeply nested
> >      menus. For those of you who don't know this application, here are
> >      some excerpts from its manual page:
>
> I didn't follow the terminology of this too much; but are you asking
> how you can create icons that live somewhere very obvious which you
> can just click on to run? This is certainly possible, and like
> everything else in Gnome, there's lots of ways to do it.

The iconbook can be viewed as a multipage "desktop" running in a window. It
helps keep the desktop tidy while retaining the functionality of desktop
icons. None of the alternatives you mention seem to achieve this. You can
for instance (as far as I know) not drop things on launcher icons.

- Toralf