Maybe I've just missed it, but the single biggest feature I've missed since switching from fvwm to E is the ability to bind keys and clicks to "contexts". Sometimes it makes sense to have keybindings and special clicks for the root window or the title bar of a window...and I REALLY miss the ability to have key bindings which work everywhere EXCEPT in an app window (the use for this is fairly obvious if you're an emacs user;-)
Is there a way to do this now in E? If not, is it planned for the future?
the problem with the MacOS is that the designers have made it very simple to do the things which they believed were important...sometimes at the expense of ease of doing things which they believed weren't. I find it very easy and quite intuitive to do a lot of things on a Mac. I also find it incredibly frustrating to try to figure out how to do other things (which are blatently simple to do in Unix).
Windows I just never was able to figure out. Every single time (which is not many, mind you) that I have ever tried to use Windows, I have ended up frustrated. After receiving my NT laptop here at my latest job, it took less than 2 days for me to decide to scrub the disk and load Linux on it. There was just no way I was going to be productive in Windows...
Re:No X -- we need a media-savvy, compositing GUI
on
Is X The Future?
·
· Score: 1
spoken like someone who has never had to change the default resolution on a TGX+ frame buffer. there's nothing like running a script to stuff some forth code into nvram.
and don't forget...make sure you know how to correctly use L1-N before you try this, or you'll have a jolly old time trying to get video working on your frame buffer again.
oh yeah, don't even get me started on all that '-dev/dev/fb0 defclass TrueColor defdepth 24' crap...if the frame buffer supports 24-bit color, the default should be 24-bit color.
"...and letting it configure itself"
If the defaults are what you want, every system is easy to set up...
Well, I don't know where you're coming from. Everyone in my group runs E on their solaris desktops and linux laptops. Only one of us has any crashing problems, and he's running the latest alpha and poking around with all the bleeding edge features...sure, it's gonna crash when you do that.
Solaris 7 on a 24" monitor (HDTV aspect ratio) - no crashing. Redhat 6 with the latest kernel on a Dell Latitude - no crashing.
I love E. there are just a couple of things that I could do in fvwm2 that I miss a little bit, but they are minor. I don't have any issues with its stability.
Exactly! "If he likes the idea" At my last job I was working on writing a replacement for cfengine because enough people there had just gotten so irritated dealing with Mark that it just didn't seem worth it. Unfortunately for them, I found a better job before I finished...
I argued with several people on the newsgroup that setting variables from external commands was almost a requirement before a tool like this could really be useful, but Mark refused to see it as important...at least, I see, it's in there now.
oh, never mind...I just don't want to get started on the rest. I'll just say that Mark has a fairly unique point of view on some things. IMHO
Hmmm, has anyone else used this recently? I've used it in the past, and while it was very cool for some things, it was a pain for others. At the time, the author was very reluctant to add the features we were requesting, though I notice that some of them have been finally added.
Well, this is ancient history, but back when I first started getting into emacs (I had been using other Gnu software for quite some time at that point), I managed to do something that completely amazed me. Three of my first four posts to any gnu news groups drew flames from rms. I was not doing anything which I felt at that time, or now, was out of line. I was just asking questions.
One of the flame wars that ensued from one of my questions got me a personal apology from Tim O'Reilly for RMS' behaviour.
After my fourth post, I stopped posting to any news groups that I knew RMS read, just to avoid drawing more crap from him. Just for the record, in all the posts I've sent to mailing lists or news groups over the last 12 years, I've been flamed probably a total of about a dozen times.
I agree with a lot of what the FSF stands for, but I really think they need a less abrasive leader.
Where to begin? I liked the first printing of the pink camel book better than later pink printings or any of the blue ones...but of course, it's not very relevant any more. I find the blue camel book to be completely readable, and if you are only going to buy one perl book, this is still the one to have.
Perl in a Nutshell is a good reference book. I use it more now than I use the blue camel book, just for convenience, but sometimes I need the more complete details that are in the camel book. This is not a "must have" book. It's just another one.
The book that I found the most useful at explaining tricks and new features in perl 5, was Effective Perl Programming by Joseph Hall. There is some excellent treatment of esoterics in perl in that book. This is not really a very good intro to perl book, but it's a great book.
I found Learning Perl to be a quick pleasant read. I recommend this to everyone who has NO perl experience, just because, like the K&R C book, you can read it in a day. It's easy to follow.
The Perl Cookbook is a nice resource to have for finding alternative approaches to solving problems in perl.
I don't consider the Advanced Perl Programming book to be a must have, but it's useful for finding some details on perl data structures and OO.
The boxed set is a waste of paper.
I don't personally use the regexp book, because I don't feel that I need it...I'm told by some friends that I'm wrong. Whatever.
I personally feel that any perl book which is thicker than my dictionary (like those learn perl in 24 minutes books) just has to be a complete waste of money. This is based on no experience and is totally my own opinion.;-)
I've never opened an idiots guide, dummy's guide, utter flaming moron's guide, etc to perl, so I can't speak about any of those either, but...well, you can guess what I think.
-- Owner of the Virginia license plate "PERL HKR" (which doesn't mean I am one, just that I paid money so I could claim it...;-)
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Maybe I've just missed it, but the single biggest feature I've missed since switching from fvwm to E is the ability to bind keys and clicks to "contexts". Sometimes it makes sense to have keybindings and special clicks for the root window or the title bar of a window...and I REALLY miss the ability to have key bindings which work everywhere EXCEPT in an app window (the use for this is fairly obvious if you're an emacs user ;-)
Is there a way to do this now in E? If not, is it planned for the future?
the problem with the MacOS is that the designers have made it very simple to do the things which they believed were important...sometimes at the expense of ease of doing things which they believed weren't. I find it very easy and quite intuitive to do a lot of things on a Mac. I also find it incredibly frustrating to try to figure out how to do other things (which are blatently simple to do in Unix).
Windows I just never was able to figure out. Every single time (which is not many, mind you) that I have ever tried to use Windows, I have ended up frustrated. After receiving my NT laptop here at my latest job, it took less than 2 days for me to decide to scrub the disk and load Linux on it. There was just no way I was going to be productive in Windows...
spoken like someone who has never had to change the default resolution on a TGX+ frame buffer. there's nothing like running a script to stuff some forth code into nvram.
/dev/fb0 defclass TrueColor defdepth 24' crap...if the frame buffer supports 24-bit color, the default should be 24-bit color.
and don't forget...make sure you know how to correctly use L1-N before you try this, or you'll have a jolly old time trying to get video working on your frame buffer again.
oh yeah, don't even get me started on all that '-dev
"...and letting it configure itself"
If the defaults are what you want, every system is easy to set up...
IMHO,
Michael
Well, I don't know where you're coming from. Everyone in my group runs E on their solaris desktops and linux laptops. Only one of us has any crashing problems, and he's running the latest alpha and poking around with all the bleeding edge features...sure, it's gonna crash when you do that.
Solaris 7 on a 24" monitor (HDTV aspect ratio) - no crashing.
Redhat 6 with the latest kernel on a Dell Latitude - no crashing.
I love E. there are just a couple of things that I could do in fvwm2 that I miss a little bit, but they are minor. I don't have any issues with its stability.
Exactly! "If he likes the idea" At my last job I was working on writing a replacement for cfengine because enough people there had just gotten so irritated dealing with Mark that it just didn't seem worth it. Unfortunately for them, I found a better job before I finished...
I argued with several people on the newsgroup that setting variables from external commands was almost a requirement before a tool like this could really be useful, but Mark refused to see it as important...at least, I see, it's in there now.
oh, never mind...I just don't want to get started on the rest. I'll just say that Mark has a fairly unique point of view on some things. IMHO
Hmmm, has anyone else used this recently? I've used it in the past, and while it was very cool for some things, it was a pain for others. At the time, the author was very reluctant to add the features we were requesting, though I notice that some of them have been finally added.
comments?
Well, this is ancient history, but back when I first started getting into emacs (I had been using other Gnu software for quite some time at that point), I managed to do something that completely amazed me. Three of my first four posts to any gnu news groups drew flames from rms. I was not doing anything which I felt at that time, or now, was out of line. I was just asking questions.
One of the flame wars that ensued from one of my questions got me a personal apology from Tim O'Reilly for RMS' behaviour.
After my fourth post, I stopped posting to any news groups that I knew RMS read, just to avoid drawing more crap from him. Just for the record, in all the posts I've sent to mailing lists or news groups over the last 12 years, I've been flamed probably a total of about a dozen times.
I agree with a lot of what the FSF stands for, but I really think they need a less abrasive leader.
Where to begin? I liked the first printing of the pink camel book better than later pink printings or any of the blue ones...but of course, it's not very relevant any more. I find the blue camel book to be completely readable, and if you are only going to buy one perl book, this is still the one to have.
;-)
;-)
Perl in a Nutshell is a good reference book. I use it more now than I use the blue camel book, just for convenience, but sometimes I need the more complete details that are in the camel book. This is not a "must have" book. It's just another one.
The book that I found the most useful at explaining tricks and new features in perl 5, was Effective Perl Programming by Joseph Hall. There is some excellent treatment of esoterics in perl in that book. This is not really a very good intro to perl book, but it's a great book.
I found Learning Perl to be a quick pleasant read. I recommend this to everyone who has NO perl experience, just because, like the K&R C book, you can read it in a day. It's easy to follow.
The Perl Cookbook is a nice resource to have for finding alternative approaches to solving problems in perl.
I don't consider the Advanced Perl Programming book to be a must have, but it's useful for finding some details on perl data structures and OO.
The boxed set is a waste of paper.
I don't personally use the regexp book, because I don't feel that I need it...I'm told by some friends that I'm wrong. Whatever.
I personally feel that any perl book which is thicker than my dictionary (like those learn perl in 24 minutes books) just has to be a complete waste of money. This is based on no experience and is totally my own opinion.
I've never opened an idiots guide, dummy's guide, utter flaming moron's guide, etc to perl, so I can't speak about any of those either, but...well, you can guess what I think.
-- Owner of the Virginia license plate "PERL HKR"
(which doesn't mean I am one, just that I paid money so I could claim it...