Hi all!
I use Red Hat Linux 9 with Gnome 2 and till now I was using Sawfish as my window manager instead of Metacity for the following reasons:
1) Metacity doesn't allow "Always on top" kind of functionality 2) Metacity doesn't have kbd shortcuts for running arbitrary commands 3) The close button is right next to maximize so I occasionally ended up closing a window when I meant to max/minimize it.
Well, I figured out how to get 2 & 3 done. Fire up Gconf Editor (run command "gconf-editor") and navigate to apps > metacity > general. To modify the ordering of buttons change the value of "button_layout" parameter. Look at the "Key Documentation" pane for information on how to set the values.
For mapping commands to keyboard shortcuts, first define commands in apps > metacity > keybinding_commands. You'll find keys like "command_1" through "command_12". Set their values to the commands you want to run. Next, go to apps > metacity > global_keybindings and set the keyboard shortcut for each command_.? as the value of its corresponding run_command_.? key.
For example, to lock the screen using key combination Ctrl+Shift+l, do this:
- Go to apps > metacity > keybinding_commands - set value of command_2* to "xscreensaver-command -lock" (without quotes) - go to apps > metacity > global_keybindings - set value of run_command_2 to "<Ctrl><Shift>l" (without quotes, with angle brackets) - try Ctrl+shift+l to test your new setting :)
* command_1 was set to allow logging off using the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combo, but I suspect it was due my prefs that I set earlier.
HTH
On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 11:38:39AM +0530, Tahir Hashmi wrote:
Well, I figured out how to get 2 & 3 done. Fire up Gconf Editor (run command "gconf-editor") and navigate to apps > metacity > general.
Or simply try a better window manager like Sawfish, IceWM, WindowMaker! ;)
Sameer.
Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
Or simply try a better window manager like Sawfish, IceWM, WindowMaker! ;)
As I said in the very beginning, I was indeed using Sawfish but it had a very erratic behavior. Often Alt-Tabbing would cycle rapidly through all windows and return to the one I started with. Keyboard shortcuts were executed but were also sent to the window that had focus which really made working in any text editor a pain. It also caused Xscreensaver to always reject the password for the first time :(
AFA IceWM and WMaker are concerned, I saw them on others machines but either they didn't look good or didn't have some functionality.
On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 12:26:19PM +0530, Tahir Hashmi wrote:
GLUG Meeting on 13th July, 4pm at KReSIT, IIT Campus, Powai.
Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
Or simply try a better window manager like Sawfish, IceWM, WindowMaker! ;)
Well it was meant to be a friendly comment, no religious war implied! :)
As I said in the very beginning, I was indeed using Sawfish but it had a very erratic behavior. Often Alt-Tabbing would cycle rapidly through all windows and return to the one I started with. Keyboard shortcuts were executed but were also sent to the window that had focus which really made working in any text editor a pain. It also caused Xscreensaver to always reject the password for the first time :(
One thing I have done is to map the MS key to "Super" in X. By default it gets mapped to "Meta" but most applications assume the Alt key is "Meta". Now I have placed all my GUI shortcuts on the Super key, such as Super-M for mozilla, Super-G for gnome-terminal, Super-C for a console running mutt and so on ... apps like Xemacs are blissfully unaware of all this and continue to think the Alt key is the Meta key.
Don't know about the Alt-tabbing and Xscreensaver, both work fine on my Debian unstable.
Sameer.
"Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe" sameerds@it.iitb.ac.in said:
As I said in the very beginning, I was indeed using Sawfish but it had a very erratic behavior. Often Alt-Tabbing would cycle rapidly through all windows and return to the one I started with. Keyboard shortcuts were executed but were also sent to the window that had focus which really made working in any text editor a pain. It also caused Xscreensaver to always reject the password for the first time :(
Here are some pages you /might/ find useful for getting to know sawfish better...
http://sawmill.sourceforge.net/prog-manual.html http://www.unfactored.org/sawfish/OPTIONS http://www.ideogram.com/do-nothing/sawfish-expert.html http://dsb3.com/sawfish/
Was using sawfish sometime, till i decided to get back to windowmaker and fvwm.
cheers
Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
Or simply try a better window manager like Sawfish, IceWM, WindowMaker! ;)
Well it was meant to be a friendly comment, no religious war implied!
Of course! :)
One thing I have done is to map the MS key to "Super" in X. By default
[snip]
I did something similar. All functions related to "windows" were initiated by the "Windows" key ;) My problem was, for example, if I pressed <super>i -- the shortcut for iconify -- "i" was sent to the focussed window. The modifiers were never sent. I know it sounds weird but it happened with RH 8 as well as 9. Prolly some Red Hat specific issue.
On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 11:38:39AM +0530, Tahir Hashmi wrote:
Well, I figured out how to get 2 & 3 done. Fire up Gconf Editor (run command "gconf-editor") and navigate to apps > metacity > general.
Or simply try a better window manager like Sawfish, IceWM, WindowMaker! ;)
How does one change the default Metacity Window manager to WindowMaker? I couldn't figure out how to set WindowMaker as the default window manager using gnome-wm. I tried changing it but it still defaults back to Metacity.
Rajen.
Sameer.
Rajen M. Parekh wrote:
How does one change the default Metacity Window manager to WindowMaker? I couldn't figure out how to set WindowMaker as the default window manager using gnome-wm. I tried changing it but it still defaults back to Metacity.
[Untested method] Fire up Gconf Editor. Go to desktop > gnome > applications > window_manager and specify the path to WindowMaker as the value of "default" key.
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Rajen M. Parekh -
Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe -
Sthitaprajna -
Tahir Hashmi