Afterstep 2.0 Beta Includes XML Graphics System

vaevictus writes "Afterstep just released its 2.0 Beta 1, after a long merge from its development branch. One of the most interesting new features is an XML-based graphics system, where any picture for any part of the WM can be a simple chunk of XML, which can do transformations, scaling, gradients and some other nice graphics mods. I've personally used this to cut my 1600x1200 image size from a 2.4mb PNG to a total of about 37kb. This leads to some very compact themes. If you're not familiar, AfterStep is one of the older WMs out there still in active development; all of you WindowMaker fans should check out the WM your WM branched off of, so long ago."

Comments

Already testing it now..

[Shivaji Maharaj]

Looks pretty slick. But the window movement is bit shaky and the screen jitters sometimes.

Re:Already testing it now..

[killthiskid]

So I have a question... when I hear XML and graphics, and I instantly think SVG... does this format have anything to do with XML? Is it compatiable? Is there an XSL transformation you can do to turn it into SVG?

Re:Already testing it now..

[killthiskid]

I'm a dork: should read 'does this format have anything to do with SVG?' instead of 'does this format have anything to do with XML?'

Re:Already testing it now..

[sashav]

No, its not compatible with SVG, and actually has different goal. Afterstep's XML images merely provides interface to powerfull functionality of libAfterImage, including image overlaying, scaling, tiling, cropping, and so on. It has many uses, such as compiling complex icons from simplier clipart, creating scaled down thumbnails, changing colors of images to match that of colorscheme, and so on.
It is very usefull in different fields, such as web design, where you can create a script that generates all of the website's images from some clipart ( including text rendering ).
Note that AfterStep does not need to keep multiple copies of the same image for different pourposes, which is what KDE does with its icon themes, etc.

Re:Already testing it now..

[smallpaul]

SVG can do overlaying, scaling, tiling, cropping and so on!

Re:Already testing it now..

[sashav]

dude, SVG is vector graphic, and has completely different purpose.

Also I'm yet to find any usable image in SVG format.

Re:Already testing it now..

[smallpaul]

dude, SVG is vector graphic, and has completely different purpose.

That's fine. XML had a completely different purpose when it was developed also. Did you look at the "overlaying, scaling, tiling, cropping" features of SVG? It's all there! You can do amazing things with transformation, filter effects etc.

Masking, clipping, etc. in SVG

Filters, transforms, etc. in SVG

You should have seen SchemaSoft's amazing "swell magnifier" at SVG Open! (described a bit on the musings page of http://jibbering.com/)

Also I'm yet to find any usable image in SVG format.

What does that mean? What is a "usable image?" Download SodiPodi and draw something. That's a usable image. You should use SVG to have AfterStep leap ahead of competitors in standards compliance and sophistication. If you want to talk about it more, you should join one of hte SVG mailing lists like SVG=developers.

mirror, maybe muahhaa

[digitalsushi]

i got some nice downloads off it, but here's a mirror.

echo "http://digitalXuXhi.com/aX2/www.afterXtep.org/"|s ed s/X/s/g

why'm i being a tool? cause only the people who want to visit will paste. mirrors take 10x the bandwidth with a link. so, if anyone translates my url into a link that gets modded over 1, i'll just remove the mirror :D buwahahaaaa

Re:mirror, maybe muahhaa

[donutz]

http://digitalsushi.com/as2/www.afterstep.org/


Don't be a karma whore. Go ahead and remove the mirror, and get modded down -1 Dumb. Bwahahaha!

Re:mirror, maybe muahhaa

[Anonymous Coward]

949-725-3796

Re:mirror, maybe muahhaa

[DrSkwid]

it would be a good plan if it defeated /.'s word splitting in long urls

like this :

echo 'http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/13/19182 28&mode=nested&tid=104&tid=106&tid=185&tid=189 ' | tr -d ' '

Re:mirror, maybe muahhaa

[dspeyer]

Fool!

You posted with a karma bonus, so no one has modded you up, and no one is now likely to. Grandparent said he'd pull the mirror if the post was modded above 1.

Windowmaker + AS

[flikx]

Seriously folks, it's about time WindowMaker merges back with AfterStep. Dividing the great AS WM is the sole reason why KDE and GNOME dominate at this point.

If the WindowMaker project rejoined AfterStep, AfterStep could actually become a viable window manager on it's own terms. As opposed to relying on the publicity of the GNUStep project, and WindowMaker for support in the first place.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Arker]

Assuming you're trolling, let me point out that WindowMaker isn't a fork of AfterStep, it's a from-scratch window manager in the same style. AfterStep on the other hand is a fork of another wm, twm was it?

I've always wondered why AfterStep still exists, actually, having tried both AfterStep always struck me as being a bit clumsy and crufty in comparison. Maybe some AfterStep fans want to explain what they like about it compared to WindowMaker?

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Anonymous Coward]

you must be an idiot. or a very good troll.

kde/gnome are desktop environments, not window managers. KDE includes KWM window manager, and gnome prefers sawmill, but both will work with most any window manager.

But there's no reason for afterstep and windowmaker to merge. They split for a reason. If AfterStep isn't "a viable window manager on it's own terms", maybe it should disappear.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[guacamole]

They tend to list some idiotic vanity features like transparent menus and such. Personally, last time I have used AS, which was years ago, it was clumsier and harder to use than WindowMaker which was amazing considering that Window Maker was 0.20.x and AS was supposed to be a lot more mature. In any case, both are irrelevant to me as I tend to stick with the default Gnome Window manager (whatever it is this year).

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[homer_ca]

Afterstep was a fork of fvwm2 (a very old school window manager; think Redhat 4.2 and earlier). Both Windowmaker and Afterstep are recreations of the Nextstep GUI. When I tried AS (admittedly years ago), it still showed its clunky fvwm2 roots. All configs were in text files including the Wharf (called Icon Dock in Next). The dock on the Next had draggable icons which was pretty cool for its time (first came out in 1989), and WM had that too, so it was a closer imitation of the Nextstep GUI. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the AS Wharf supports drag and drop for launching files, but not for application icons.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[cbv]

Actually, more like a fork of bowman, which in turn was a fork of fvwm.

See this page:

AfterStep is based on Fvwm, but it is designed to emulate some of the look and feel of the NEXTSTEP(R) user interface, while adding useful, requested, and neat features. It started life under the name of Bowman, by Bo Yang, but has since moved past simple emulation and into a niche as its own valuable window manager.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[sashav]

I don't really see how WM could join AS. I mean WM's codebase is so messed up, that I would not want to take even a tiny bit of it into AS.
Besides AS can do most everything WM does and plus much more already.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[sashav]

AfterStep 2.0 is a complete from scratch reimplementation, Its much more flexible then WM, its graphics subsistem is much more advanced and powerfull, resource management is better ( consider the fact that AS now compresses images in memory - something no other desktop environment could do).
It was redesigned to be compliant with new window management specs, and as different from WM it is actually being developed right now.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it was the problems with the AfterStep codebase that resulted in the WindowMaker fork in the first place. As an active WindowMaker developer, I can say that many improvements have been made over the original AfterStep codebase.

AfterStep is much like the Enlightened Window Manager, which is an offshoot of TWM. Like TWM, Enlightened is full of crufty features, such as, flamboyant, heavy graphical interfaces, missing features, and frequent crashes. AfterStep is similar in that respect, but it is very nice to see some development.

Perhaps in the future, AfterStep will shake it's troubled roots in the NeXT system. But it may be nice to see it return to supporting a few of the older features, like display PDF.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

gnome prefers sawmill

Gnome seems to change the 'preferred' window manager every now and then. I believe the current favourite for Gnome2 is Metacity, although I could be mistaken.

YLFI

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[fault0]

> kde/gnome are desktop environments, not window managers. KDE includes KWM window manager, and gnome prefers sawmill, but both will work with most any window manager.

You seem to be stuck back in 2000. KDE 2.0 replaced KWM with kwin, which is completely from the ground up.

GNOME 2.0, similiarly, changed it's perference from Sawfish to Metacity. The two are completley independent.

Sawmill itself was the old name for Sawfish.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[fault0]

> As an active WindowMaker developer

If you are indeed an active WindowMaker developer (which I doubt, judging from your comment), you should know that WindowMaker was never a fork of AS, but rather a complete new window manager. It was made because indeed, there were problems with AS 1.0's codebase. Ultimatly, WindowMaker continuted strong because it had different goals and ideals than AS did.

Note that Afterstep 2.0, just released, is a complete new implementation, and I imagine there are not many problems with it anymore. Of course, I have no idea; I haven't mucked in AfterStep source in a loooong time, I'm a KDE user now :)

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[mvdw]

All configs were in text files including the Wharf (called Icon Dock in Next).

And that's a bad thing, how?

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Anonymous Coward]

..its graphics subsistem is much more advanced and powerfull..

..and it has a built in spalling checker! Still beta, tho.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Matthias Wiesmann]

consider the fact that AS now compresses images in memory - something no other desktop environment could do

Actually, this feature appeared in Mac OS X 10.1 as an unsupported feature and in 10.2 as a fixed feature.

Then again, I would not be surprised if NextStep had this feature before...

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[LizardKing]

All configs were in text files including the Wharf (called Icon Dock in Next).

And that's a bad thing, how?

If it still used the same configuration format as fvwm, then you not only had to hand edit some terrible looking pseudo scripts, you then had to run them through a processor (m4 if memory serves). Remember that not all text configuration files are good (think Sendmail). Given the emphasis on XML in this new version of AfterStep, I'd be surprised if the config files haven't been improved if they hadn't been already.

Chris

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Gordonjcp]

I could do with a spalling checker. All this brickwork and so many cracks...

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[andrewski]

Its much more flexible then WM

I don't really think Afterstep is even in the same class as Windowmaker. WM is for GNUstep, which is a mostly finished reimplentation of Openstep, tracking OS X, and Afterstep looks and feels like a Nextstep themed window manager / utility app. It's graphichs system isn't necessarily more advanced and powerfull(sic) than WM, ceratinly not with Display Ghostscript installed (do you claim to have outdone Postscript after almost 20 years? on the screen and on paper?).

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[RedHat Rocky]

No, current (1.x) AS does not have weird config files, nor does m4 come into play, at least not from the user perspective.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[RedHat Rocky]

I've been running Afterstep for the last 4 years. Why? It works, it's fairly light, and it stays out of my way while offering enough features to make my work easier. I'm one of those folks who run X only to get many aterms. Virtual desktop support is good and easily switchable via keyboard. Menu config is pretty simple, all the config is by good old text files. What's not to like?

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Arker]

I corrected myself in a parallel post, but actually, I was in a sense correct to begin with, since fvwm was a fork of twm.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[sashav]

Interesting, although I don't compress window buffers, since window management windows are too small for that. Instead I compress large images, such as root backgrounds, etc.

I doubt that NeXT had this feature, as it makes things abit more CPU intensive, something that is unnoticeable now, but was very noticeable back then.

But then again both OS X and NeXT are proprietary systems - while we are talking about open source stuff.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Arker]

I understand all that, but all of it could be said for WindowMaker too, which seems to run a bit faster and 'slicker' if you will... for me at least. Just was curious what you might see as a positive difference between the two.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[RedHat Rocky]

Ah, but in my opinion, AS runs fast and slicker than WM. At least for my config and the way I work.

So, we're down to user preference, which is why Choice is Good. :)

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[CorwinOfAmber]

I understand all that, but all of it could be said for WindowMaker too, which seems to run a bit faster and 'slicker' if you will... for me at least. Just was curious what you might see as a positive difference between the two.

I've been running AfterStep for about 6 years now. The biggest difference, to me, between AS and WM is in how the virtual desktops are managed. AS has a pager, and it also has a concept of viewports within desktops. It's hard to explain, but think of a workspace that has 4 virtual desktops inside it. You can switch to a different virtual desktop with a keystroke, a mouse click, or by moving the mouse pointer off the edge of the screen. You can move windows to a different desktop by dragging it off the screen, or by dragging it in the pager (there are other ways, but these are what I do the most).

I know that you can now use the Blackbox pager in WM, but AS is what I'm used to, and I see no reason to switch.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Arker]

I want to be clear that if 'AS is what I'm used to, and I see no reason to switch' is what it boils down to that's fine, I'm not trying to criticise other people's choices. I'm just curious.

But, like the earlier poster, everything you're talking about can be done with WM too. I don't know why you cite this as a difference, because it sounds exactly the same. I'm not sure what the maximum Virtual Desktops is, but 4 is default I think, you can make that number larger or smaller quickly and easily, and whatever the upper limit is I haven't found it. You can switch with a mouseclick, a keystroke, or by moving the mouse pointer off the edge of the screen (the last is configurable, I prefer to keep it off as it leads to accidentally changing for me.) You can move windows by dragging them off the screen or by right-clicking the top border and selecting move to --> desktop x. And not only the BB pager but any Gnome compliant pager will work too. Personally I don't use a pager, the other means are more than sufficient for me, but if you like it, it's there.

So it really sounds like it does just boil down to liking what you're used to. I haven't seen any answers yet that indicate AS does anything WM doesn't.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[CorwinOfAmber]

I'm not sure what the maximum Virtual Desktops is, but 4 is default I think

No, you misunderstand. I have 4 workspaces, and each workspace has 4 virtual desktops. Granted, it's a very subtle difference betweeen just having 16 virtual desktops, but it's a nice thing to have.

So it really sounds like it does just boil down to liking what you're used to.

That's most of it, yes.

I haven't seen any answers yet that indicate AS does anything WM doesn't.

I haven't seen another pager that has the same functionality as afterstep's. I can see at a glance where all my windows are, and the title of each window (well, most of it anyway, but if you mouse over the window in the pager, the full title of the window shows in a popup).

Mostly you're right, this is just a subtle nicety that I've become accustomed to. But I haven't seen it anywhere else.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[ShecoDu]

Seriously folks, it's about time WindowMaker merges back with AfterStep. Dividing the great AS WM is the sole reason why KDE and GNOME dominate at this point.

Sorry, I'd rather have a bad ass WM, in my case.. sawfish.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[rjforster]

Afterstep 1.0 was the first window manager I settled on after starting with Linux. BTW I first discovered a proto-dotting Malda on the web with his Afterstep page.

Anyhow. I had a UI feature then that to my knowledge is still not available on any of the 'modern' desktop environments. While most now let you hold down the win key (or alt depending on configuration) and left click anywhere to to drag a window. I used to be able to hold down the win key and right click within a window then sweep the pointer out past the edge to resize the window (if I wanted to make the window narrower or shorter I moved it out then back into the original window area).

I found these move and resize features very very useful. Wish I had them both today.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[Woko]

I haven't seen another pager that has the same functionality as afterstep's. I can see at a glance where all my windows are, and the title of each window (well, most of it anyway, but if you mouse over the window in the pager, the full title of the window shows in a popup).

I'd have to agree. No WM since afterstep has got its pager to be as flexible or functional. KDE decided that it was just all too hard, and gnome that it was too confusing :(

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[CorwinOfAmber]

Wish I had them both today.

Not using AfterStep any more? I use this in AS 1.8, and they are very useful. If you're using AfterStep, just put this in your feel file:

Mouse 1 W M Move
Mouse 3 W M Resize

I haven't figured out how to use the win key as a modifier, though.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[rjforster]

Just found that I'd made a note of how I did this in Afterstep1.0

This is directly from my 6 year old 'linux notebook', so you may need to modify it to fit. YMMV etc.

--------

The .Xmodmap file now contains:
keycode 115 = Hyper_L
add mod4 = Hyper_L

add to .xclients the line:
xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap

add to .steprc the lines:
Mouse 1 W 4 Move
Mouse 3 W 4 Resize

-------

Ie, read up on xmodmap and apply as normal with '4' rather than 'M' to your feel file.

BTW. No, not using AS anymore, after initially being turned off by Bluecurve I find that now I know all the keyboard shortcuts I actually like it.

Re:Windowmaker + AS

[CorwinOfAmber]

Cool, thanks!

XML Image format?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean something like this?

<picture width="100" height="100">
<pixel>
<element x="0" y="0">
<component name="red" value="10" />
<component name="green" value="255" />
<component name="blue" value="10" />
</element> ......
</pixel>
</picture>

Re:XML Image format?

[gfody]

lol, mod this up

seriously, wtf does XML have to do with a windowing system or any other type of rendering gizmo?

Re:XML Image format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doh, that would produce an empty image, of course. Try doing a sed -e 's/pixel/pixels/g'. I am teh suxxors.

Re:XML Image format?

[gregfortune]

No, I assume it's something more vector like...

<picture width="100" height="100">
<instruction x="0" y="0">
<line x="24" y="40"/>
<etc..... />
</instruction>
</picture>

Re:XML Image format?

[zulux]

No.... like this!

</picture type=jpeg>
<data encoding=32_bit_little _endian_binary_written_in_an_acsii_string_in=32_li ttle_endian>
1010101100101001010000111010101010100010001010101 0101010001010101......
</data>
</picture>

Re:XML Image format?

[vaevictus]

Actually you're not too far off...
take a 17KB greyscale tile (defenseless elsie, in this case), and load it with this chunk of xml:

<composite op=tint>
<gradient width=$xroot.width height=$xroot.height colors="BaseDark BaseLight" angle=45/>
<img tile=1 tint="#7Fffffff" src="tiles/DefenselessElsie"/>
</composite>

an d you've got a beautiful 1600x1200 image with a gradient that passes through the entire background , not just a single tile. It will also pull the colors for this gradient out of your current colorscheme, unless you would like to change some simple xml around.

Re:XML Image format?

[fedor]

Nah...this one is at least compatible with my very own all-purpose, bloatless, but XML-compliant DTD :

<data>
<![CDATA[
begin 644 xmlgif.gz
M'XL(".[).C\``V)L82YG:68``;`&3_E'248X-V $P`;@`\```````____+```
M```P`;@```+^C(^IR^T/HYRTV HNSWKS[#X;B2);FB:;JRK;N"\?R3-?VC>?Z
MSO?^#PP*A\2B \8A,*I?,IO,)C4JGU*KUBLUJM]RN]PL.B\?DLID%:*1):\3Z
M'4FW`W,Z8'YORQ5U1O_0]V>P!YB0YW97*'@VLM@X"`E!>%@8J 0<9N)'I1S>8
M6-D9&DK(>"%WZ?F6B#KYZ09*NFJWY[I`*BH* 9XF+B>>J-VF7RHGWNKOK6,JG
M>LP:.:K+B]JI^\G,^U!\C&U 875E]'1UG/`J*J*RF78X=W6[>O.UMF;>H[N[@
M#!\_3VE+?F \K&9E:S^09RS>+X#J##"G8*YCM&[U]N9Z-@P41G\#^,;7R;4+H
MB-;";QGIU?N740U)0R57FE2)L:*?C6:LR?/H*>6?:>`H2G@ H$^:ZD<)DTK0(
M,B"ZGT5S_6(FKA]+G:V"7@3442$?6+^P#K UV=1C6HTLYE?U`]NR,M&JG<FNK
M@RW<L7/KVKV+-Z_>O7S[^ OT[X:A<P(17#"Z,.&)7;?T.)WZ<L^C-EDTA6]:(
MTFE,7Y<[ =]L:#QBE0(X]V^WH<ILYK:8OVT3VRF/IUGU/*3K8E;9NL[M[>Y CM
M.SCPX,2+&S^./+GRY<R)#`==(=9B#-(O/6_.X3HYAU\Q4 >].#3N,QG2]XR)O
M4]W;8+#=GKQW2[P):ZGG"8-O<*6D=]#^ :4X[)Y\(J.E#%'SZ`9C03ORYEXI6
M_WT68`<*O03-:,U,9)1 23%GDSUL=>AA9A)JHIYH^FPSE$H8,*C:6@PN&***$
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M8BF2YVWG(1F,*IRQV5]YX!%)S';.*% @&?12M4I6-#4G&(:5&V090-C,NF92-
M+_)FE5E+5C%@9I,]J M^,F1U$H*`N4B;G@S7B)U62LB99&183%EI@JD5:6&)0
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MN01[)5ITX=Y+F+Y<,B+QQ#59C''& &F_,<<<>-U=QHB7$N=^83HF6'GV"A*P,
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M2X P^@2Y^]T5FM:3!.LH*IL["]%J[X1B[*;N!M8AVR0;W(*V\X*8+ =[?O_OKJ
MH:HF(^NZ_/BX,G2@YBK$KBN>"K>KJ@[,]=[^I3K LL.2:U^"CQ<K^S!_>&A;1
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MN5"`,\$O3M3T2 =6WN3HMTE=K7_TG\?CZ+:1T)P>F8O"4G^%R#=EOO+V7CW^<
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M%K#`L<`/+4N 'I4L;K98'%-]!ZUPX:J'^$+=VH"OFIT%3VYS^3)?%8X'J5CT<
M7^M<>*'87=%=GR/C"`LDNC.U,(Z^<^.?PF"];`40>9NY$5>2 UXZU!<UH#>/=
M(:17R+,1,%ZU45^3'`DE2$IRDI2LI"4OZ9O _"0B3SOD;6C@9.)\)#47H01HH
MX_+"(FE0(FD\)0U*54,9LH LSKO32B2AD.!,Y;FOWJR4L<0C,(I[.C+4,00A?
MURNQJ;"8: YG?]%H5)+"`[7/,K*8UKXG-;&ISF]SLIC=OH,G<?1,(L^GE.!T V
M/#_QXWOGM"4KDRF;=KXRBH%4G0_E>0+!B0UE'B0F/D?$-& JNQIS_/.8'SZ,Y
M@OYS7&9:)P^5%VH#A4)T9!.=@D0KBM&,: G2C'!V()]G9433,+*3@;&!!#KBH
M/9%41N_46P8OM5+JT!.+ RCQ83*G'JQK-$G5OO*DD9BK,WO74ITJZXZQ::3Q_
M$A6AT7Q *3J*BU*5*4:H^N"A5>7?5K&IUJUSMJE>_"M:PBG6L9"VK6<^*U K2J
A=:UL;:M;WPK7N,IUKG2MJUWOBE>[%@``.Z[]*V6P!@``
`
end.

]]>
</data>

Re:XML Image format?

[kubrick]

Hmmm... you were in charge of the MS Office XML support, weren't you? :) Even down to the / at the start of the opening <picture> tag...

Re:XML Image format?

[sashav]

consider this small example that implements aterm's icon from two clipart images :

Re:XML Image format?

[csbruce]

<element x="0" y="0">
<component name="red" value="10" /> ...

Yep, the standard XML-bloat joke. Here is the serious solution: binary encoding. I have done some testing by defining a simple demonstration XML image format as:

<XmlDemoImage version="1.1.0">
<Header>
<Width>x</Width>
<Height>y</Height>
<SampleType>byte</SampleType>
</Header>
<Scanline row="i"> <!-- optional attr: filter="diff" -->
<RgbSamples>r g b r g b ...</RgbSamples>
</Scanline> ...
</XmlDemoImage>

If we can avoid the bizarre and hugely self-defeating but all-too-common urge to way-overstructure the pixel representation and use raw binary encoding especially for the dense arrays of numbers, the representation and performance is essentially equivalent to that of PNG format itself (though for some images, BZIP2 compression is significantly better). Here is a study of the issue. On an Athlon-XP1800+ Linux box, I get a raw (Binary)XML reading speed of 188 MB/sec for an uncompressed image. W3C is holding a workshop on binary XML encoding in September, so it may finally be prepared to humour such radical efficiency with XML.

Re:XML Image format?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking hard. It's fantastic! So beautiful and.. well.. so small.

Re:XML Image format?

[MattRog]

Do you not see the huge absurdity of BINARY XML? It's an oxymoron!

XML is 'supposed' to be a nice little data interchange format. It's not a data storage mechanism (because relational DBMSs are far, far superior) yet misguided people like this are trying to use it as one.

Converting XML to binary? Why go to all the trouble to run it through an XML parser etc. first if you're just going to send a binary file? Use a more efficient file format!

Re:XML Image format?

[csbruce]

Do you not see the huge absurdity of BINARY XML? It's an oxymoron!

Lots of people use GZIP encoding with XML data to make it suitable for sending over a network. Surprise, GZIP is a _BINARY_ format! And yet, it interoperates between systems very nicely. The page you are viewing was probably GZIP encoded too on the way to your browser. Most XML parsers will accept an GZIPped XML stream and recover the original content transparently. Binary data can be just as interoperable as text data, and hugely more efficient when done right.

XML is 'supposed' to be a nice little data interchange format. It's not a data storage mechanism (because relational DBMSs are far, far superior) yet misguided people like this are trying to use it as one.

Lots of 'misguided' people are using XML encoding for lots of purposes, such as word-processor documents. Do you propose that word-processor documents be stored and interchanged in a relational-database format? That's pretty bizarre.

Converting XML to binary? Why go to all the trouble to run it through an XML parser etc. first if you're just going to send a binary file? Use a more efficient file format!

The absurdity with the plethora of binary file formats is that people have kept reinventing the same things over and over again. These are the misguided ones. This situation is what gave rise to XML format in the first place: people were tired of inventing one-off formats that all required custom tools to use or edit or parse or transform or whatever. Imagine the flexibility of XML combined with the efficiency of binary encoding.

Re:XML Image format?

[csbruce]

Converting XML to binary? Why go to all the trouble to run it through an XML parser etc. first if you're just going to send a binary file?

Actually, you're misunderstanding this. That would be pretty strange to emit textual XML, parse it back into an internal representaiton and then re-generate binary-encoded XML. You just emit the binary-encoded XML in the first place. Duh! And use a library that does it transparently and can also emit textual XML and/or GZIPped or BZIP2ed output if you so desire. The binary-XML-encoded imagery data in the example was written at a speed of 109 MB/sec.

Re:XML Image format?

[csbruce]

The absurdity with the plethora of binary file formats is that people have kept reinventing the same things over and over again.

I should have said that they keep reinventing the same things over and over again, POORLY.

Re:XML Image format?

[Eudial]

Yes, that way we can make our images 128 times bigger! The 4M image of yesterday is the 512M image of today.

Re:XML Image format?

[Knos]

Have you ever heard of ASN.1 ?

Re:XML Image format?

[csbruce]

Have you ever heard of ASN.1 ?

To quote from the report:

All primitive types that are used in user-supplied textual content are type-identified by a leading-byte indicator, which is collapsed for numbers small enough to fit into the Count type. Identifying the data types in-line removes any reliance on a external schema to identify the content types and allows for great flexibility. Since the validation is defined in terms of lexical equivalence, primitive types may be arbitrarily substituted at the discretion of the file writer. For example, if a schema identified a content field as consisting of a list of double-precision floating-point numbers but the writer is aware that only integers between 0 and 255 are being written out in one particular instance, it can write the list as an array of byte values. Conversely, if a field contains a value that cannot be represented by the primitive types, such as a 200-digit integer, the writer can simply write out the number as string content instead, and the document will still validate and be correct. Allowing a string representation of numbers is no significant imposition on an implementation since most conceivable parsers will also implement XML support so they or the applications that use them need to deal with string representations of anything anyway.

Some might argue that a binary-primitive language such as ASN.1 should be used for representing primitive information. We contend that ASN.1 is a "bloated" specification that is not needed here. Some parts of the ASN.1 standard for string handling have been described informally as being "complete insanity". Given the very limited set of structures that need to be represented in content in XML (only strings, numbers, and lists since most structuring is done using the higher-level markups) and given the lexical equivalence and substitutability of strings for anything that cannot be represented more primitively, a very simple typing system is very appropriate and, in fact, desirable. Ask software developers which typing system they would rather implement and support.

Not being familiar with this...

[I'm a racist.]

I've got a few questions.

• Does the typical "XML bloat" become an issue?
• And, is there much gained by using XML over some/any other scheme?
• Is it very sensitive to errors, like most XML applications? If one XML file/tag gets corrupted, is the whole windowing system fucked until someone goes in on the command-line to fix it?
• Overall, is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[gregfortune]

Not if the "theme" or image is being expressed by transformation rather than single pixels. I can't think of a way XML would beat something like png for representing pixels, but I imagine that their images contain drawing instructions which would consume *far* less space.

Note that the feature in the feature list says
5. XML image scripting

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[vaevictus]

Is it very sensitive to errors, like most XML applications? If one XML file/tag gets corrupted, is the whole windowing system fucked until someone goes in on the command-line to fix it?

It typically just fucks up that image... and so far it's been pretty lenient to me.

Does the typical "XML bloat" become an issue? And, is there much gained by using XML over some/any other scheme?

XML bloat as in too many tags or not streamlined data? I've not noticed this. XML was the chosen scheme mostly because of it's strict heirarchy. There may be better schemes.

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll? I was meaning that as XML in this case represents vectors that can be done in hardware, rather than just pushing pixels around like most GUIs. That therefore, it the overhead does good.

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[code_martial]

• Does the typical "XML bloat" become an issue?

It shouldn't. Since the XML is used here only as a configuration file, it's going to be interpreted only once while loading the theme. It might be that this slows down theme switching a bit but I'm skeptical. Metacity themese switch quite fast and they're all XML based.

• And, is there much gained by using XML over some/any other scheme?

The end user doesn't gain much since the XML is anyway hidden from him but it's much easier for someone to tweak a pre-existing theme to suit his purpose if it is written in XML. This screenshot (136 kB), for example, shows a mod of Metacity's Metabox theme. I could do it because the config file (seen in the maximized terminal) was not too difficult to understand and I didn't have to learn new syntax rules for manipulating it.

• Is it very sensitive to errors, like most XML applications? If one XML file/tag gets corrupted, is the whole windowing system fucked until someone goes in on the command-line to fix it?

Depends on the interpreting application. XML is no more difficult to screw than any other format. This includes breaking well-formedness of the document.

• Overall, is it a good thing or a bad thing?

For me it's OK. As long as I get to tweak things to my preferences without much ado, it doesn't matter.

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[code_martial]

XML is no more difficult to screw...

Darned double-negatives! I meant to say, XML is no more easy to screw....

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[MattRog]

But even as a developer you don't gain anything over something like an INI file or another plain-text configuration file.

This is just another misuse of a poor technology.

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[Tepic]

Well known, ready built parsers/writers which you do not have to maintain, a flexible format which is easy to extend and the basics of which are known by many people.

For the simplest configuration files I think it is overkill, but if you include image operations which may need to be nested and added to...

Re:Not being familiar with this...

[code_martial]

Well, till recently even I couldn't see the point in using XML for config files.

The point I see now is that for rather complex configuration files, using XML saves you the headache of writing and maintaining your own parser and cooking up an API for accessing the information within. It helps you get things done quick and not dirty. Besides, a third party who would ever need to peek at your configuration files has two less things to ask from you -- syntax and API for information extraction.

XML syntax is a monstrosity to write but XML sepcific editors can help there :)

XSLT to convert to SVG

[stonebeat.org]

Any XSLT available to covert the AfterStep XML to SVG???

Re:XSLT to convert to SVG

[stonebeat.org]

sorry i meant SVG to AfterStep XML. Thanks.

Re:XSLT to convert to SVG

[Russ Steffen]

Which raises the question - why didn't they use SVG?

Re:XSLT to convert to SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you frig your mother with those fingers?

Re:XSLT to convert to SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they didn't know about it and/or XML is just too cool.

Re:XSLT to convert to SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, FYI, SVG is XML

Re:XSLT to convert to SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

Since, it is an interface to Afterstep image lib. Not a general purpose graphics format. It is suppose to be use to script the afterstep image lib.

The good news

[The Bungi]

I've personally used this to cut my 1600x1200 image size from a 2.4mb png to a total of about 37kb.

That's the good news. The bad news is the WM now eats up 300MB of memory, instead of 30.

Re:The good news

[vaevictus]

Actually, AfterStep 2.0 typically consumes less than 8mb ... slimness is one of its strong suits... still.

Re:The good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Fdisk is a dos program.

Re:The good news

[Anonymous Coward]

8mb isn't slim for a windowmanager. It's piggish.

Re:The good news

[vaevictus]

That includes the payload for my background image, which is kept in AfterStep for manipulation, instead of cluttering up X.

Re:The good news

[scotch]

Great idea, that way, the background image gets stored two places!

Re:The good news

[torpor]

Yeah, one for transportation (the 8meg install), and one for actual use. Cool trick, nice integrated-backup!

Re:The good news

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

iDesk does this as well. It's convenient when you want to manipulate windows relative to the desktop image ( for example in iDesks mouse-over transparency ). I seem to recall that just pulling in the root window gives you a snapshot of the entire desktop, including other windows, wm decorations etc.

If you need a pristine copy of the background, there's really no other way you can do it except for keeping a copy in memory at the time you set it I think.

I think a better way would be to use Shaped windows. I wrote the glow code a long time ago and it was a dirty hack then, and it's a dirty hack now. I really should fix it one of these days.

YLFI a.k.a. curious

Re:The good news

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

I think a better way would be to use Shaped windows.

Err.. I'm thinking about two different iDesk problems here. *blush* Disregard!

YLFI

Re:The good news

[Anonymous Coward]

i seriously doubt that that is all resident. any program will take up a bitchload of memory, the OS caches it.

Read 'design and implementation of the 4.4BSD os by McCusick et al. to really understand modern virtual memory. and caching.

Re:The good news

[andrewski]

iDesk. When you need a window manager that's just BARELY a window manager, that's your choice.

At least, now that they're updating Afterstep.

Re:The good news

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

When you need a window manager that's just BARELY a window manager, that's your choice.

I don't think it's a very good choice though, because iDesk doesn't manage windows or do other WM functions. It just draws icons into the root window and launches programs.

YLFI

SVG?

[SynKKnyS]

Why don't they use SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)? It would be neat to use a SVG editor to produce a theme.

Re:SVG?

[Anonymous Coward]

there's some SVG GNOME themes out in the gnome-themes-extra package

What about gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't gnome 2.4 (when it comes out in the autumn) based on an svg based graphical system?

Nice homepage moron.

[Anonymous Coward]

You weren't kidding with the name I guess.

I'm not sure how this all works

[hether]

Does the scaling maintain a copy of the larger image and just publish the smaller, scaled version to a web page? If so, it would seem you'd be using a lot more storage space than is necessary to keep that large image around. Probably not a problem in today's world of huge hard drives, unless your hosting limits you. It would be cool for scalable designs though.

It's got some good looking screenshots, and the link to http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/922/?topic_id=9 22 leads some to some pretty nice themes.

Boo advancement!!!

[Admiral Llama]

Dang, Afterstep might be becoming too advanced for my tastes. Time to switch to TWM!

On a more serious note, 8 years ago I used Afterstep. It was the easiest thing to hack through the config files and make it do what ever I wanted to with a minimum of fuss, real estate, processor time, or color space allocation (a big thing on a Sun Classic sporting only a CG3).

Between then an now I've lived with Enlightenment, Window Maker, Gnome, KDE and OSX, yet for my work box I still use Afterstep. Maybe it's because it has a minimal number of doodads to distract me from doing actual work?

Re:Boo advancement!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You laugh, but CTWM is still the most memory efficient, perfectly customizable window manager available. No stupid/useless XML graphics, no icons, "docks" or other dumb distractions that get in the way of my work.

Re:Boo advancement!!!

[Admiral Llama]

Hmmm, I'll have to check that out. Honestly, TWM isn't all that pretty to me, and I have to have sloppy focus and autoraise or else life just isn't worth living. Autosnap is a wonderous thing, but I can survive without it. Other than, the more minimal the better.

Re:Boo advancement!!!

[killmenow]

it has a minimal number of doodads to distract me from doing actual work

Yet it obviously still has a web browser for that.

Re:Boo advancement!!!

[Tyreth]

Afterstep was my first windowmanager. At the time it was the most popular, but very shortly after Enlightenment became the "in" thing.

Since afterstep I've switched through many things, but there's something about it as my first windowmanager that makes me want to go back to it.

I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[blitzoid]

After trying all the major and some not-so-major Window Managers/Desktop Environments for Linux, I have to say that Fluxbox is the one that has captured my intrest for the longest, with Gnome being a close second.

Not to be flamebait, but I just prefer Gnome over KDE because it seems cleaner, faster, and more usable (God bless the HIG). KDE is good for beginner users, however.

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[gregfortune]

he he, I'm a filthy beginner ;o)

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[Feyr]

KDE, Gnome, good for beginners, bloatware (15 megs for the simplest app? no fuckin way!)

Fluxbox. configurability, useability, and damn nasty memory leaks i never could track down

Blackbox, nice, small, clean, easy to use. but lacking on-top windows :\

countless other WMs: unuseable, bloated, ugly, etc..
bleh,

i have yet to find a WM that fits all of my needs. for now i'm using blackbox

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[robson]

i have yet to find a WM that fits all of my needs. for now i'm using blackbox

Since you're already in the box family, have you tried Openbox?

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[lightcycle]

Have you tried fvwm?
configurability: To the end of the universe and back (although everything is in hard to understand textfiles)
rock solid, even the development branch
nice appearance (if you tweak it a bit. The factory presets has to be the most godawful I've ever seen)
fast, with a small memory footprint
extremely usable with the right configuration

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[Xoid629]

I use Openbox with the ROX Desktop... much lighter than KDE or GNOME, and a nice balance between features and speed.

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[Xabraxas]

Have you tried Window Maker? I was a big fan of Fluxbox for a while but then I tried Window Maker. It starts up quicker than Flux for me and on top of that there are many more features. I love the fact that it is highly configurable yet still very light. Configuration is a snap with the graphical menu but if you prefer text files, those are fairly straight forward too.

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried em all, but I've kept going back to IceWM for years now. It seems to be the most customizable for my tastes, and with Rox Filer, it seems like a complete desktop solution for me -- just much much leaner than Gnome and KDE

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[arose]

It's always nice to see people with 512MB machines complain about the 15MB bloat. Here's a tip for you Linux is bloated with all it's drivers and multitasking, run FreeDos.

Re:I've tried quite a few WM/DEs...

[andrewski]

It's only because these same people fail to understand demand paged virtual memory and modern disk caching policies. That, and they can't comprehend the output of top or ps.

Really, people,

45 processes: 1 running, 44 sleeping
CPU states: 6.2% user, 0.0% nice, 3.9% system, 0.0% interrupt, 89.9% idle
Mem: 67M Active, 160M Inact, 83M Wired, 348K Cache, 73M Buf, 312M Free
Swap: 1044M Total, 1044M Free

isn't that hard to understand.

wait, this sounds familiar...

[CoughDropAddict]

One of the most interesting new features is an XML-based graphics system, where any picture for any part of the WM can be a simple chunk of XML, which can do transformations, scaling, gradients and some other nice graphics mods.

Oh, you mean like SVG?

I guess this could be justified if it were significantly lighter-weight than SVG. Otherwise, why not reuse?

Nah..

[msimm]

Gnome and KDE lead because they are Windows-like. Great for transitioning people who don't want to jump in feet first. WindowsMaker was my first DE of choice, until I discovered BlackBox (simpler, cleaner and fast and arguably better looking!). IMHO of course.

Correcting myself.

[Arker]

Oops I meant assuming you're not just trolling.

Also I just checked, AfterStep is a fork of fvwm.

Y DIY?

[JB72]

I'd like to write more on the topic but I'm currently busy trying to compile my own light-bulb. I'll have a beta ready in less than two years, or sooner if I can get some more help from the open source community.

Linux rox!

ps - don't tell anyone I actually spend 90% my free time in Windows playing embarrassing adolescent video games.

Re:Y DIY?

[Anonymous Coward]

My mumma is ya papa

Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks awfuly familar to me

<img src="http://www.afterstep.org/images/Translunacy-b ig.jpg">

Re:Hmmm.

[mindsuck]

Windows 95 Plus! flashback! Oh god! Make the hurting stop, make the hurting stop! Now, seriously, I liked that theme but on such a high resolution that wallpaper just looks bad. Something nifty like that but rendered in glorious 3D would be neat.

Re:Hmmm.

[mnemonic_]

I was thinking the same thing. Brings back memories...

Looks like Windoze wallpaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or does this wallpaper look like one from computer W9x theme?

Link

Lamous Front Page Editing :-(

[euroderph]

Key simple question: SVG or not SVG?
This is the front page we're talkin' about!

Re:Lamous Front Page Editing :-(

[torpor]

The answer is: duh, whatever.

blah blah blah

blah blah blah

etc.

Re:Lamous Front Page Editing :-(

[torpor]

The answer is: duh, whatever.

<xml_graph type="svg">
<svg_data>blah blah blah</svg_data>
</xml_graph>

<xml_gra ph type="png">
<png_data>blah blah blah</png_data>
</xml_graph>

etc.

PS {SORRY: should have previewed}

Why switch from WindowMaker?

[ikekrull]

So what does AfterStep do that WindowMaker doesn't? Its not very clear from the website.

WindowMaker CVS has antialiased fonts, and with a little bit of work on icons and tile backgrounds, my desktop looks great.

The menu editor/prefs utility is easy to use, the clip's desktop switching is perfect for what I want, theres nothing obvious about AfterStep that would make me want to switch back.

WindowMaker + GNOME apps/libs + ROX-Filer make up my ideal GUI environment.

As far as I know, theyre both written in C, as opposed to Objective-C for GNUStep, they both attempt to mimic some or all aspects of NeXTSTEP, and WindowMaker was created because the Afterstep crew was too anal about incorporating features that did not appear in the original NeXT system.

So now theyre adding features to Afterstep - dumping the whole idea behind what AfterStep was - 'Its strictly a clone of NeXTSTEP', and somehow this is a step (STEP?) forward?

So why switch from WindowMaker, when AfterStep is clearly just playing catch-up now?

That being said, there are a few rough edges in Window Maker, so perhaps competition from AfterStep will smooth them out.

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[sashav]

Its not just the text antialiasing, although AfterStep 2 can antialias both TTF fonts and good old X bitmap fonts. AfterSTep has a very powerfull graphics engine with things like in-memory image compression, high quality image rendering with dithering, high quality and fast scaling, 15 ways to overlay image on top of each other (similar to GIMP) Hue Saturation Value manipulation, etc. Note that all of it is very fast and memory efficient.

Now AfterStep's desktop model is much more flexible then Window Maker's

Menu editor/prefs thingy is probably the only absent thing in AS 2, but I'm working on it.

Originally AS was anal about being too NeXT strict, which prompted creation of WM, and if you'd look into possibilities of WM's titlebar and frame decoration configuration, and compare it to AfterStep - you'll see enough advantage in AS.

both written in C, but let me tell ya, that you don't want to be messing around with WM's codebase - it sucks.

AfterSTep does not plays catch up - in 2.0 version we have several things that no other desktop environment has - XML images, Menus adjusting to use pattern, Colorschemes, to name just few.

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[marcovje]

So essentially they integrated half a GIMP engine
in AS to save a few kb of .png on your 120 Gb HD,
and added a lot of dependancies like xml parsers etc. (or reinvented the wheel again) ... but FORGOT to make a prefs menu?

Gee.

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, theyre both written in C, as opposed to Objective-C for GNUStep, they both attempt to mimic some or all aspects of NeXTSTEP, and WindowMaker was created because the Afterstep crew was too anal about incorporating features that did not appear in the original NeXT system.

This is untrue. Before I released AfterStep 1.0, both Alfredo Kojima (the other contributor to the project) and I began work on new window managers. The AfterStep code had built up too much cruft and required a good ground-up rewrite. I chose to use Objective-C while Alfredo chose to stick with C. His version (WindowMaker) was ready more quickly and was a great piece of work from the start so I abandoned the Objective-C version, released AfterStep 1.0 as the final version, and jumped on the WindowMaker bandwagon.

Only months later did someone pick up the AfterStep codebase and begin hacking it again. I still do not quite understand why people are using it. :)

One more clarification is in order. AfterStep was never intended to be a strict clone of NEXTSTEP. The windowshade functionality (the first X wm with that feature), drawer-style dock, different focus models, and gradient titlebars are proof of that.

--frank

PS: Personally, I use pekwm now. ;^)

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[sashav]

Dude, Image manipulation code in AS 2.0 being as advanced as it is is much smaller then in older versions, and is actually much smaller then venerable ImLib.

Saving few KB of png files is not an issue. Issue is when you need to convert all your icons from one colorscheme to another. I can do it with one click - can you ?

there are no new dependancies. built in xml parser takes like 50 lines of code ( as it does not do much of traditional XML bloat parsing )

Making prefs menu is not as easy as you think, and before you can do that - you need to fix all other basic parts of the system. Which we done. And now we can implement prefs menu, that will blow you away.

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Menu editor/prefs thingy is probably the only absent thing in AS 2, but I'm working on it.

I don't suppose there's any chance that it's going to aim to play well with the freedesktop.orgDesktop Menu Specification?

If there's one thing that irks me about having a multitude of window-managers/desktop-environments, to chose from(don't get me wrong, I love that they're there), is all the menu maintenence needed to keep everything up to date. (I know, some linux distros attempt to duplicate all that menu data for each wm, but that seems like a hack to me, all those redundant files...and if you install something not pre-packaged by your distro...it never shows up in the menu system. grrr...but I digress)

Anyway, I'm glad to see that a common menu system spec is being worked on... it would be nice to see it put to some use. (GNOME already does, I think, and KDE is going to? Anyone else?)

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since your window manager hasn't blown me away, I doubt your preferences menu will do much to change that.

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now AfterStep's desktop model is much more flexible then Window Maker's"

It's THAN, dammit, not THEN.

THEN is the opposite for now.

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[Queuetue]

THEN is the opposite for now.

Oh. Than what is later?

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[swdunlop]

This incurs the inevitable question: how does this help me use my computer? I understand that it provides remarkable flexibility for allowing me to customize how my desktop looks, and coloring the window titlebars, but to be honest, are there any compelling usability-related features in AfterStep 2.0 when compared with more venerable window managers, like Blackbox, which is much lighter weight for me?

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[sashav]

Large number of such. You would need to try it out to really get a scoop of it.
For example AfterSTep maintains a database of styles to be used for different classes of windows, for example having vertical tbars on some, no move/resize handles on others, no decorations at all on even different windows. AS supports layers. Avoid Cover attribute could be assigned to some windows, which will make sure that this windows will never be covered. Window placement is very flexible - you can have smaller windows placed in one part of the screen, while bigger windows in another, or place certain class of windows on certain desktop only.
Wharf the button bar is highly configurable, can virtually take any shape, based on your needs.
Complete flexibility in how keys are mapped allows you to resolve conflicts with your favorite applications. Menus are treated as separate windows, allowing you to pin them to desktop, move/resize/shade them. there are 4 ways of switching between windows, depending on how you like it. AS does not depend on too many libraries, and in fact can fully function without any ( it has its own parser of XPM and XCF files image files). I can go on like that forever...

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[sashav]

Have you even tried it ?

Re:Why switch from WindowMaker?

[swdunlop]

Thank you for your response, Sashav; the mentioned features do appear to be compelling for me. When I get time, I'll give Afterstep a try; the Avoid Cover feature has my curiousity.

simple animations

[Anonymous Coward]

this sounds like it could be great if you were able to script events. you could animate vector translations of shapes and colours for some really crazy UI effects!

Re:simple animations

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that would be real interesting ... for a couple of minutes.

Re:simple animations

[Trolling4Dollars]

Remember, there is no point in computing if you can't do it with flair and style. That's why I was always impressed with Caldera's ability to allow you to play a game of Tetris during the install of the OS. Now THAT'S stylish...

Re:simple animations

[CaptnMArk]

I'd rather play q3a on my other computer :)

Re:simple animations

[Hatta]

Try gentoo. While portage is doing it's thing you have a working system on your other virtual consoles. you can run nethack or any other text based game, play music and essentially have a working computer during the install process.

Re:simple animations

[Trolling4Dollars]

I dont' know because I haven't tried it yet, but I imagine there is no GUI though. :( If there is, then that is pretty damn cool.

How many pictures does a person need?

[Anonymous Coward]

XML pictures - who cares. I see too many pictures already. I don't care to see much more.

National Geographic magazine once a month, Life Magazine onec a week -- a person doesn't need more pictures than that.

Re:How many pictures does a person need?

[sashav]

ON eof the purposes of using XML is to reduce number of images. I mean look at icon themes for KDE - they have many copies of the same image and many images that essentially look the same or could be compiled from simplier images. We solv that problem with XML.

SVG to XML convertor

[mnemonic_]

Is there an easy way to convert SVG graphics to XML?

Re:SVG to XML convertor

[Nicolas MONNET]

Hm, yeah, cat should do the job.

Re:SVG to XML convertor

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure.

cat input.svg > output.xml

Re:SVG to XML convertor

[Anonymous Coward]

SVG is XML!

Re:SVG to XML convertor

[NumbThumb]

try this:

cp image.svg image.xml

clicky...

Re:SVG to XML convertor

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can really say is WHY? NeXT's Display PostScript did it the *right* 15 years ago. Same code for display and printing.

When everything is in XML, no humans will bother reading XML or creating XML by hand, while it chews up 10x the bandwidth and cpu time over domain-specific formats. XML is Lisp s-exprs with really fat parentheses. McCarthy made data/code representation duality concrete in 1959.

<troll/>

Re:SVG to XML convertor

[TummyX]

If you're on windows then I'd be happy to write a simple shareware application that does this -- complete with 10 minute timeout nag screens (etc).

Let me know...

Hrm

[lvdrproject]

Hm, well, i'm a big Window Maker fan, myself. The whole *Step thing intrigues me, though, be it AfterStep, GNUStep, WinStep, or whatever. I just like the way the system works. However....

I realise that Window Maker and the like are pretty much designed to be "minimalist", but they seem to be lagging very far behind KDE and GNOME in terms of interface design. For example, just looking at the AfterStep screen-shots on the site (before it gets Slashdotted, heh), i'm liking the way the system is designed, in general, but it looks hideous. The graphics used in the interface are jagged, the window frames and buttons are almost industrial in their simplicity and lack of creativity, and the icons still look like really bad GIFs. And, like i said, i'm a fan of Window Maker, and prefer it over any other window-manager, but it's guilty of this too. They all look like something you might see running on a Commodore or an Amiga.

I know that they're constantly being improved and updated, and i realise the importance of laying down a proper foundation before you go around making things look nice and anti-aliased and all that jazz, but i think a lot of the reason GNOME and KDE each have such a huge following is because they're very pleasant to look at. I think WM and AfterStep and the like could benefit very much from trying to add in a little "eye candy" here and there. You don't need any gimmicks, but i really don't think it would negate the intended minimalism of the system if there were just "themes" and icons and what-not of the same calibre as those you might find looking at Nautilus or Konqueror.

Regardless of all that, Window Maker will remain my favourite window-manager, and i'll continue to recommend it to those looking for a good UNIX interface. And the whole XML graphics thing sounds really neat, also. Just wish they were "up there", in terms of what i mentioned, with GNOME and KDE. :/

Re:Hrm

[Genghis Troll]

Check out Xfce4. It doesn't seem to be as customizable as *box/fvwm/afterstep/windowmaker, but looks much more "slick", and is fairly lean, compared to KDE and Gnome anyway. I use either fluxbox or fvwm2 myself, but they are definitely in your "industrial" category.

Re:Hrm

[Solosoft]

http://chris.thesmartone.net:81/~chris/snapshot56. png
I don't need a big advanced wm or anything. One of the things I like is the more "true" multiple desktops of windowmaker. When you goto the 2nd desktop nothing of the first remains in your way and the ablity to drag windows over is GREAT. This is good when I do alot of things such as "web devel" in one and my basic IM's in the other. Also I am running it all on a Pentium 166MMX with 128mb of RAM. So Gnome2 is useless to me cause of GTK2 (Even with all the GTK settings down it still runs like ass. KDE was nice, it honestly runs good on a 166MMX as long as you have RAM. The one thing I didn't like was the size (im on a 6gb HDD) so I tried Windowmaker. In debian I just apt-get the wmaker conf utility. This gives me all the goodies I would ever need. The one thing about fluxbox and blackbox I didn't like was the confusion I had when I ran many xterms. I kinda lost them. On a 800x600 screen (monitor issues) it's hard to keep all that shit in my view.

Just my little opinion

Re:Hrm

[venom600]

but i think a lot of the reason GNOME and KDE each have such a huge following is because they're very pleasant to look at

Not a flame.....but, I completely disagree. I think the reason that KDE and GNOME are so popular has everything to do with the fact that they are the default window managers in the most popular Linux distros (*cough*RedHat*cough*Suse*cough*). Another plus is that they bring that 'Windows'-ish feel, which new Linux converts crave......it gives them something somewhat familiar while investigating a whole new world (read: Linux/*BSD/your-free-unix-like-OS-of-choice)

Re:Hrm

[scotch]

(*cough*RedHat*cough*Suse*cough*) ... that 'Windows'-ish feel ... whole new world (read: Linux/*BSD/your-free-unix-like-OS-of-choice)

I'm a linux user, but listening to people like you makes me want to puke. Do you really talk like that? Shut the fuck up already.

Re:Hrm

[tgrigsby]

For example, just looking at the AfterStep screen-shots on the site (before it gets Slashdotted, heh), i'm liking the way the system is designed, in general, but it looks hideous. The graphics used in the interface are jagged, the window frames and buttons are almost industrial in their simplicity and lack of creativity, and the icons still look like really bad GIFs.

Until you click on them with the little "magnify" cursor. Then they expand and all the jagged edges smooth out and the icons look like really good GIFs. I too thought it looked awful, as though it was captured on a laptop with resolution problems, but then I figured out the zoom-in/zoom-out feature on the pictures this web site shows.

Re:Hrm

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

Re:Hrm

[WWWWolf]

Several years ago I switched from FVWM2 to Window Maker.

Among my first reactions was "hey, the titlebar can't be customized that much."
The conclusion: "Doesn't matter. I can change its color to whatever I want, and that's enough."

Nowadays, I think it's simple, elegant and functional. Just my kind of WM.

After a while, I realized what the coolest part of the Window Maker titlebars was: They always look the same and behave the same way, but can be customized. Easily.

Sure, it may be bad in your opinion that you can't "go wild" with the theme design and do "creative" user interfaces and play with the "eye candy". But the thing is, Even when WM is minimal, it can be customized and it works the same way all the time.

I had a problem with Enlightenment, specifically, there were a lot of cool themes and all, but most of the time, the buttons in those themes were wrong. "Gee, sure this is a good theme, but why the hell it has those buttons?" or "...why is that bar on the side? Outrageous" or whatever. Window Maker themes change appearance but won't touch the functionality - the theme and UI are separate items.

And I believe Window Maker has antialiasing in CVS already =)

Afterstep site...

[ErisCalmsme]

I went to the after step site hoping to find some reasons that I might want to switch, but their site is very minimal. Is that stylistic or something? Or are they just not eager to convert people? I use fluxbox now, and have tried window maker, enlightenment, sawfish and metacity (GNOME isn't a window manager?)... Each window manager has its good points I guess. I dunno I'm just a little disappointed. I was hoping to at least find a little something along the lines of "heres why you should use this instead of __" any advocates here? so far afterstep doesnt look to popular;)

Re:Afterstep site...

[sashav]

We don't have too many ppl working on AS.
I mean I do all the development, clipart design, support, and pretty much everything else.
I don't have no time whatsoever to work on web site, and it was rather dead for quite a while, and only recently got revived by Remmy. One of the purposes of releasing this beta was to attract more ppl to the project, and get some help.

You can take a look at my devel site on SourceForge:
http://afterstep.sf.net
and screenshots on
http://afterstep.sf.net/afterstep20beta/

After Step

[BrookHarty]

Other then looks, what keeps people using Windowmaker or Afterstep? Are there software that locks people in to a *Step gui? I have software that needs CDE on solaris, but thats it. Myself, I use Windowmaker or IceWM when I want a good little lightweight window manager, but no software locks me into it.

Not trolling, just curious. Other than the ease of use and good looks, what is special about Afterstep or Windowmaker?

Re:After Step

[Azghoul]

One thing WM does that I can't find in any other manager yet is the ability to have everything on one desktop disappear when I move to the next.

I do all my editing in one desktop/workspace, then flip over to the next one to view changes in a browser. Very convenient.

I like to have icons for editing stuff (text editors, etc) on workspace 1, and icons for browser stuff (galeon, moz, etc) on workspace 2. No damn panel that has the same launchers no matter where you are...

Not a branch and not a good idea...

[Xabraxas]

all of you WindowMaker fans should check out the WM your WM branched off of, so long ago.

As it has been mentioned, Window Maker is not a branch of AfterStep. Afterstep was created from fvwm to emulate NeXTSTEP. Window Maker was started from scratch because AfterStep was too bloated and more of a hack.

Someone also mentioned something about merging Window Maker and AfterStep. "Why?", I ask. There is no need. If the features are that great then either people will stop using Window Maker and start using AfterStep or Window Maker developers will incorporate those features into Window Maker.

Re:Not a branch and not a good idea...

[sashav]

The fact that AS was too bloated and more of a hack was the reason for me to rewrite it. It is no more "just a hack" in 2.0

Tried Openbox?

[ShadeARG]

Have you checked out Openbox? It is a minimalistic window manager based off of Blackbox (Similar to WindowMaker), and adds some nice refining touches. These include scrolling your mousewheel on a window titlebar to shade up and down with ease, optimization for remote X forwarding (runs very nice remotely from my PS2), actually.. just read the About section on the site for the details.

Re:Tried Openbox?

[lvdrproject]

I'll respond to you all, heh.

Have you checked out Openbox [icculus.org]? It is a minimalistic window manager based off of Blackbox (Similar to WindowMaker), and adds some nice refining touches. These include scrolling your mousewheel on a window titlebar to shade up and down with ease, optimization for remote X forwarding (runs very nice remotely from my PS2), actually.. just read the About [icculus.org] section on the site for the details.

I'd tried Blackbox and Fluxbox, but i hadn't seen that before. That's actually pretty nice. Thanks for pointing it out; i may just have to try it the next time i feel inclined to mess with Linux. (My interest in Linux is an off-and-on thing.) :)

Check out Xfce4 [xfce.org]. It doesn't seem to be as customizable as *box/fvwm/afterstep/windowmaker, but looks much more "slick", and is fairly lean, compared to KDE and Gnome anyway.

Yeah, i'd seen Xfce before (perhaps on Slashdot), but it didn't strike me as quite close enough to the, um, OpenSTEP... system. It does look nice though. Might have to try that one as well.

I use either fluxbox or fvwm2 myself, but they are definitely in your "industrial" category.

Yeah, they are. :p

http://chris.thesmartone.net:81/~chris/snapshot5 6. png I don't need a big advanced wm or anything. One of the things I like is the more "true" multiple desktops of windowmaker. When you goto the 2nd desktop nothing of the first remains in your way and the ablity to drag windows over is GREAT. This is good when I do alot of things such as "web devel" in one and my basic IM's in the other. Also I am running it all on a Pentium 166MMX with 128mb of RAM. So Gnome2 is useless to me cause of GTK2 (Even with all the GTK settings down it still runs like ass. KDE was nice, it honestly runs good on a 166MMX as long as you have RAM. The one thing I didn't like was the size (im on a 6gb HDD) so I tried Windowmaker. In debian I just apt-get the wmaker conf utility. This gives me all the goodies I would ever need. The one thing about fluxbox and blackbox I didn't like was the confusion I had when I ran many xterms. I kinda lost them. On a 800x600 screen (monitor issues) it's hard to keep all that shit in my view.

Just my little opinion

Surely. I understand what you mean. I know everybody's going to hate me for bringing Windows into the discussion, but... i kind of think that maybe WM could benefit from a "themes" service, like XP has. If you want the bare-bones Window Maker system, you can just turn off the service (or disable the support when you compile it, or whatever). But it would leave room for the people, like me, who think that a pretty interface is very important when it comes to usability. I'm not saying make it more complicated (well, not really); i'm just saying make it look better.

Not a flame.....but, I completely disagree. I think the reason that KDE and GNOME are so popular has everything to do with the fact that they are the default window managers in the most popular Linux distros (*cough*RedHat*cough*Suse*cough*). Another plus is that they bring that 'Windows'-ish feel, which new Linux converts crave......it gives them something somewhat familiar while investigating a whole new world (read: Linux/*BSD/your-free-unix-like-OS-of-choice)

Hmm, yeah, i suppose that's true. Still, though, if you presented a new user with Window Maker or AfterStep as they are now, and then presented that same user with an improved Window Maker/AfterStep that sported a "Windows-quality" interface (with high-colour, alpha-blended icons, and smooth curves or sharp edges, and sleek widgets), your "normal" user would probably go for the latter, right? KDE and GNOME are like Windows in that respect, aside from the fact that they kind of function like Windows.

Re:afterstep and windowmaker

[sashav]

As I noted before AfterStep 2 is complete new rewrite, and all the flaws had been fixed or will be fixed. BTW Alfredo Kojima wrote WindowMaker not becouse AS had flaws (which it did), but becouse he wanted strick compliance with NeXT interface, while AfterStep was moving towards being flexible and allow non-NeXTis features.

Bah, who needs all that glitz

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm *still* running AfterStep-1.0pre6. Originally I ran it on an RS/6000, and stopped for a while when I switched to Linux and Enlightenment. These days I'm back to AfterStep-1.0pre6 though. It's lightwieght, simple and fast. Perfect for running under VNC.

Z

Re:Bah, who needs all that glitz

[sashav]

If you are running X over the net you are better off bnot using any textures at all. In that regards older AS or even things like twm are definately a better choice, since they don't do any text antialiasing and store all the images on the server, and generally use very net-safe Xlib calls.
AfterSTep 2.0 does transfer alot of image data over the wire, although if you do things like transparency, you can't avoid it, and AS 2.0 handles it much better then older versions.

I'm impressed.

[Canthros]

All that work to get a NeXT-like window manager to look nothing like NeXT!. Bravo, I say, bravo.

Seriously, if I don't give a rat's ass about eye-candy, what makes AfterStep 2 any better than Window Maker .80.2? (and AFAIK, Window Maker is under development, they're apparently just very quiet about it).

Re:I'm impressed.

[BZ]

What makes it better is being able to have a 2-d virtual desktop layout. WM could not do it last time I tried it. Can it now?

Re:I'm impressed.

[Canthros]

What makes it better is being able to have a 2-d virtual desktop layout. WM could not do it last time I tried it. Can it now?

Do I care? Hell, I barely ever use virtual desktops. Being able to stack them in two dimensions instead of just in a line matters to me not one whit.

That's not XML

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Some of those attributes aren't in quotes. One has to wonder: What's the point in used a standard if you not going to follow it correctly.

Is this just a quick example you whipped up? Or is this a real sample?

Re:That's not XML

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, the point is buzzword compliance, of course.

You just made my day!

[Anonymous Coward]

You just made my day!

request to window maker users

[Ender Ryan]

I have a request to make of all window maker users. Would you please stop crapflooding all the theme sites with your pathetic themes that all look exactly the same except with different backgrounds.

Actually, this also applies to all users of .*box as well.

Thanks.

Seriously, WM is not nearly as configurable as AS. I don't use AS, but I'm going to check it out just for the heck of it.

Yes!!!

[spazoid12]

Now, the only thing in my life not involving the esteemed XML is my electric toilet!

I'll keep you posted...

Re:Yes!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, the only thing in my life not involving the esteemed XML is my electric toilet!

I've seen lots of XML and DTD's that should interface with it...

Ironic?

[AntiOrganic]

Does anyone else find it ironic that the images on AfterStep's webpage are from Wingdings, a Windows font?

Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[sashav]

1)Colorschemes
2)Window edge snapping while moving/resizing windows
3) better virtual desktop implementation
4) Menus adjusting to your use pattern, by propping up recently used ubitems into higher level menus
5) XML images
6) Better ICCCM compliance
7) Extended WM specs compliance
8) I'm better then Alfredo :)

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[GooTi]

2)Window edge snapping while moving/resizing windows
Got this already!

3) better virtual desktop implementation
When do you "enjoy" it.. while looking at the code? (seriously, what's wrong with wmaker's one).

4) Menus adjusting to your use pattern, by propping up recently used ubitems into higher level menus
I could get used to that

5) XML images
Can't see this as an advantage yet. I'll better try it out sometime.

6) Better ICCCM compliance
7) Extended WM specs compliance
That's lovable. Any drag&drop (XDND maybe) support?

8) I'm better then Alfredo :)
Your spelling says it ;-)

and where is
9) simplicity and elegance
in your list? :-D

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[Canthros]

1)Colorschemes

What, you mean like themes? I used to use themes under WindowMaker. Used them for a long, long time.

2)Window edge snapping while moving/resizing windows

WM has this feature already. I remember distinctly playing around with the edge affinity setting.

3) better virtual desktop implementation

Which is immaterial if I don't use virtual desktops. Or hate the pager. It's a personal thing, but I really don't care about it overmuch.

4) Menus adjusting to your use pattern, by propping up recently used ubitems into higher level menus

Would you believe that this particular feature is one of those things that I happen to positively loathe? Maybe it's a personal thing, but I like things to stay where I left them.

5) XML images

Not to rain on your parade, but I don't see how this is exceptionally better than the functionality provided in Window Maker (specifically the t*gradient functionality). I don't see XML as a selling point by itself.

6) Better ICCCM compliance
7) Extended WM specs compliance

In a practical sense, what does that buy me as a user? Better GNOME/KDE support? Anything?

In the meantime, does it "feel" the same as it did in the 1.6 (1.16?) series? (and if it does, that's not a good thing to me). Because it always felt cludgy. I wish I could elaborate that a bit and make it clearer what I mean, but I don't know how else to say it, or exactly what caused it (I'm sure it had some to do with seeming very busy in comparison).

Are the configuration files any easier to deal with? Last time I looked at AS, they were still using the fvwm-style flat files for everything, and it was a comparative pain in the ass to find something and change it, because the various configuration settings weren't especially consistent (this is not entirely something that "Our config files are in XML" will answer).

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man this is too funny. They've spent all this time on a rewrite and it looks exactly the same like it did 3 years ago.

Oh but wait, they've added new options. Menus adjust to your patterns. You know that anonying feature everyone turns off in Windows XP? Well now we got it too!

Bravo Afterstep development team. Job well done!

Seriously though, when WindowMaker was released it too the lead in the NextStepish wm clone and never looked back.

Too late to catch up now, Mr Kojima is long gone!

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[sashav]

Color schemes is not the same as themes. How do you come up with colors in your themes? AfterSTep has nice feature where all you have to do is specify single color, and AfterStep will generate set of 31 matching colors that you can use in different parts of the interface.
Whats more - XML images allow you to adjust colors accordingly even in textures and backgrounds, without actually changing the image.
As the result all this hardle of mixing and matching different colors is gone.

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[sashav]

Obviously you never tried AS 20, yet pretend to know something about it.
Do me a favour and stay with Window Maker.

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[Canthros]

How do I come up with colors in my themes?

Well, typically I don't need very many. One for the text and one for the background in the focused, unfocused and parent titlebars. One for the text and background of menu items, and one for the text and background of selected menu items, and another pair for the menu titlebar. One for the caption text and background for appicons, and one for the background of the appicons/dock icons. And one for the resize bar. WM automagically handles the bevels on the edges, so that's not my problem at all.

Usually, I reuse the focused titlebar colors for the menu title, and the selected item colors fit well for the appicon caption (which I always disable at compile time, anyway). The unfocused titlebar background is also reused as the menu background and the resizebar. That's still several different textures (plus a background), but nothing really taxing: 5 text colors (focused, unfocused, parent titlebars, selected and unselected menu items), and 5 background textures (three titlebars, icons, and a wallpaper).

As regards the XML functionality, this sounds an awful lot like the t*gradient functionality provided in Window Maker, which tiles a pixmap and overlays a gradient on top of the resulting pixmap at a particular opacity. Unless you're actually swapping out the entire palette of the pixmap, but I should think that would only work with things like gifs or other indexed-color image types. I'll have to check it out later, and see what you're talking about. Probably won't happen before tomorrow evening, however.

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[sashav]

If you want to use gradients then colors number grows sufficiently. Overalll I counted about 30 colors required by minimal set. Considering that most of them you have to select matching Hues, and not plain rgb values that does grow into a problem. One could see it by simply browsing the selection of themes on t.o.

XML functionality does not just generates gradient and overlaps it with texture. It can scale,tile,crop,tint,shade,blur and overlay any number of images. It lets you change hue saturation value of the image, or part of it. For example you can convert all the blue pixels in it into red ones, or just saturate yellow pixels till the become almost white. It could do 15 types of overlaying of unlimited number of images ( alpha, tinting, add, sub, overlay, screen , etc. ).
It allows you to draw antialiased text ( there are 6 3-D types of text BTW ). You can draw border/bevel around images. You can generate gradients or solid filled images. You can flip images, and list goes on and on and on.

Re:Cool new stuff in AS2.0 (Re:I'm impressed.)

[Canthros]

*sigh*

Window Maker takes care of everything but the colors/textures I mentioned. All the bevels are handled automatically. Button glyphs are the same color as the text on that titlebar. I don't have to worry about any of the intermediate colors in the gradients, just the ones I want faded to.

If I wanted to tint a pixmap for a Window Maker texture, I can use one of the t*gradient options a specify the same color for both ends of the gradient, or I can tint it before time (which is more likely). Past that, I don't think that you're accomplishing much besides shifting all the work I would normally do in, say, the GIMP into runtime. While interesting in its own way, none of those seem like features I need or want in a windowmanager.

AfterStep problems

[evilviper]

Afterstep is a very interesting window manager, but it is suffering from a few problems...

It is VERY complicated to configure, and the menu system is quite clunky and not easy to navigate. Icons on the desktop move around in unusual ways, sometimes one icon will be on-top of another icon... Sometimes an icon will slide left to fill in for another icon that has been uniconified or moved, and sometimes they will stay where they are.

Afterstep is a huge leap from fvwm, it is BSD-licensed, and it has some subtle features that make it easier to use, like the quick animation that shows you where your windows are being iconified to, but those few nice features just don't make up for how otherwise unweildy Afterstep is.

It would need to change completely to be competitive as a modern window manager, so, for now, I'll continue to use Openbox2.

Re:AfterStep problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree with you that afterstep is a huge leap from fvwm.

There is one feature in fvwm2 that does not seem to exist anywhere else. I am using it all the time so currently I have to use fvwm2. For me this is not a problem because I like it.

The feature? To be able to switch focus in a given direction. I have mapped shift+meta+[hjkl] (the VI keys..) to be able to switch focus to the window left, above, below and right of the currently active one.

It is possible to DL some lisp(?) code to make sawfish do this, but it bugged out on me so I gave up on it.

I don't fancy icons much and the button bar in fvwm2 is enough for my needs.

fvwm2 is also easy to configure. I am using then fvwm-themes add-on so I can easily switch looks and also add my own customizations.

AS has some very nice graphics (Re:Hrm)

[sashav]

http://afterstep.sourceforge.net/screenshot.glass. jpg

let see if you like that.

BTW some of the icons suppliued with AS were borrowed from Rob Malda's excellent collection of PNG icons. Now lets see who will dare to complain :) grrrr

general question

[monk_e_monk]

hey i just now decided to install linux onto a partition on my xp box. im downloading debian right now and i have a linksys WUSB11 ver2.5 WiFi antenna attached to my comp via usb. was wondering how to find out if it will be compatible, cause if i dont have my concection then my comp aint worth crap to me. i sound stupid but i didnt know where to just post this and im basically new to linux im just tyrin to play around with it and see whats up. so yo someone help me out? "Spread Love, it's the Brooklyn Way"

Re:general question

[Zing]

You probably want to look at the OpenSource Linux Driver for Atmel AT76C503A-based Wireless. Although it does not cover version 2.5 it does cover versions 2.1 and 2.6; so you may have some luck.

Having said that, acording to this, your version have a Prism2/2.5/3 chipset. In which case you will want to look at The Linux WLAN Project.

You may also like to know that there is a debian package for this "apt-get install linux-wlan-ng" should do the trick. Note that some kernel fiddeling may be required, in which case have a look at the The Linux Kernel HOWTO.

Hope that is some help...

(Appologies for being completly off topic ;)

Idiotic moderators

[Ed_Moyse]

How is a direct reply to one of the parent questions off-topic?

Although having looked at "I am a racist's" webpage, frankly I think we should all ignore him. I don't think it's a joke (and if it is it's in very poor taste).

It's the looks!

[GooTi]

Seriously, it's just like working among fine art. Not like plastic paintings, but the most delicate, stylish yet functional gui. That's for wmaker at least, 'cause I can't say the same about AS.

I'll try the original NeXTStep any day to see what else I'm missing (didn't like GNUStep look and feel... that's a different animal).

XML in Window Manager is not news

[Ur@eus]

Having the graphics of the windowmanager being definable in XML is not new. Metacity has been doing this for a long time now (it always worked this way). A Metacity theme is just a XML file which either can define gradients etc in XML or you can use pixmaps. The main advantage of using XML defined gradients and graphics is that you are allowed to use gtk colours instead of hardcoding color values. This means that metacity themes done right will follow the colour scheme of your GTK+ themes.

I think the XFCE4 windowmanager works the exact same way.

So no slight to the AfterStep developers, but they where beaten to the punchline with almost a year on this one :)

Yeap, just what the world needs

[master_p]

Another proprietary API used for a single purpose that is wrongly designed (after all, if the xml contains only binary data, why not use a binary format in the first place; on the other hand, if the xml specifies one tag per pixel, the xml files would become huge...), used by a single piece of code for a single purpose...

Before you mark this as a troll, does the word BLOAT mean anything to you ?

There is another thread about our expectations from computers in 10 years or so. What I expect is a lean and mean operating system with the UNIX philosophy (reusable, small components communicating with each other) and not the HUGE BLOAT that Linux has become.

Huh? SVG?

[Ed Avis]

An XML format for images? Why not SVG?

Agreed!

[ArthurDent]

I, too, used AfterStep back when I only had an 8-bit display on my HP workstation (circa 1998). The trouble is that some of the screenshots that are still on that site are the same ones from when I switched, and the new ones don't look that different either!

I've become a blackbox user because it looks nice, is easy to use and theme and it's small. I even use blackbox for windows!

So, congrats to the AfterStep folks on the new version. Too bad it's about 4 years too late!

Ben

SVG "IS" XML

[Mr. McD]

There is no need, SVG is XML. Keep in mind that XML is not a "language" but a specifiation. SVG is an XML application as is XHTML. Hope that clears some things up more that using "cat input.svg > output.xml".

Openbox 3 uses XML configs too.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it fucking rules, man.