Tinkering w/ Haze WM

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#61 Post by samira »

I leave this forum for a day or so and mazewm is released.. Good work goingnuts..
By the way, i just remembered that mlvwm has the ability to have interactive menus based on the particular application it's running. So here I'm wondering if haze & maze WM has that same ability to do so?

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#62 Post by goingnuts »

So here I'm wondering if haze & maze WM has that same ability to do so?
I believe they have although I haven't tested. No active effort has been done to remove this feature.

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#63 Post by samira »

So i was thinking..
If the custom menu bar feature was available, definitely we can create menus for each application (for convenience and uniformity).
However, this leads to:

1. Slower startup, due to the fact that mlvwm/haze/maze has to read multiple custom menu entries for each application with a graphical menu. And,

2. Redundancy, having a menu bar with the menus related to the particular application, when the app already has a in-window menu bar (eg. leafpad, galculator, etc.. Though for apps like firefox & abiword, their in-window menu can be disabled). Unless, there is a way to disable their in-window menus.

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#64 Post by samira »

P/S: though it would be so cool to have custom menus just like in a mac.. I bet there would be alot of people thinking maze wm pc's are some kind of hybrid macs..

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technosaurus
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Re: Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#65 Post by technosaurus »

samira wrote:So i was thinking..
If the custom menu bar feature was available, definitely we can create menus for each application (for convenience and uniformity).
However, this leads to:

1. Slower startup, due to the fact that mlvwm/haze/maze has to read multiple custom menu entries for each application with a graphical menu. And,

2. Redundancy, having a menu bar with the menus related to the particular application, when the app already has a in-window menu bar (eg. leafpad, galculator, etc.. Though for apps like firefox & abiword, their in-window menu can be disabled). Unless, there is a way to disable their in-window menus.
I have done this stuff in jwm already - instant package manager, partition manager, image browser (though maze/haze/mv would need scaling support for image browsing or a really slow script to autogenerate them)... works great now that jwm has a -reload function to update menus without restarting. The package manager is previewed in jwm_tools and the drive manager was posted to scottman's akita thread.
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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#66 Post by goingnuts »

If I understand right (I have never used a mac) the window manager menubar change menus depending on which applications window is in focus. So if you start gtkedit the menus on menubar would be File, Edit, Format, Help - and clicking on Help would give menu About. Changing window focus to rxvt would probably give no rxvt-related menus on the menubar.

I cant evaluate the coolness of this but if above describes the scenario correct...its complicated. All apps should communicate with the window manager and also being controlled by it. And they should have no menus them self.

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#67 Post by samira »

Exactly, it would involve some major overhauling of source code for multiple applications.
I tested maze wm on browserlinux last night, i noticed that the menubar is blue. So is the menubar colour option available in .mazewmrc already?

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technosaurus
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#68 Post by technosaurus »

goingnuts wrote:If I understand right (I have never used a mac) the window manager menubar change menus depending on which applications window is in focus. So if you start gtkedit the menus on menubar would be File, Edit, Format, Help - and clicking on Help would give menu About. Changing window focus to rxvt would probably give no rxvt-related menus on the menubar.

I cant evaluate the coolness of this but if above describes the scenario correct...its complicated. All apps should communicate with the window manager and also being controlled by it. And they should have no menus them self.
for gtk apps we can monitor window-state-event for GDK_WINDOW_STATE_FOCUSED and change the symlink for the top bar to its jwm menu

ex.
...
<include>/root/.jwm/topmenu</include>

when mygtkdialog gets focused, use the event to ln -sf /path/mygtkdialogtopmenu /root/.jwm/topmenu && jwm -reload

(use $HOME instead of root in the scripts)

Note: this will only change the opened menus, the icons and text on the tray will remain until jwm -restart (still flickers AFAIK), but this should be fine if a unified interface is used ... File|Edit|... and so on
Check out my [url=https://github.com/technosaurus]github repositories[/url]. I may eventually get around to updating my [url=http://bashismal.blogspot.com]blogspot[/url].

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#69 Post by goingnuts »

Menubar, menus, windows, text & desktop background can be color-styled. Mazewm is mlvwm+hazewm+my additional styling options & system sound (&bugfixes)...(&new bugs :) ).

Try adding "Read Mlvwmrc-Xterm" to end of /usr/share/mazewm/.mazewmrc. Then copy Mlvwmrc-Xterm from the mazewm source folder sample_rc to /usr/share/mazewm-folder. Start mazewm and whenever you start rxvt (=xterm) your menubar change from standard window shown as second image below to the look shown below. When rxvt loses focus the menubar shift to normal and so on...

Writing the application menus is not hard and already build in - its the rewrite of all applications thats the hard thing. Is it at all practical to work with? If I work in several windows I like to have the action menu close to my workspace and not on top of desktop...

Might be that someone can do a simple application to show the path..
Attachments
snap0002.png
Menubar when open rxvt window is in focus
(493 Bytes) Downloaded 433 times
snap0003.png
Normal menubar
(803 Bytes) Downloaded 444 times

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#70 Post by samira »

goingnuts: do correct me if im wrong..
the parameter for setting the menubar height is MENUBARHEIGHT 32, so if i want to set the colour, would it be MENUBARCOLOUR gray?

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#71 Post by goingnuts »

from /usr/share/mazew/.mazewmrc:

Code: Select all

TITLE_ACTIVE_FG			white
TITLE_ACTIVE_BG			DodgerBlue4
TITLE_INACTIVE_FG		white
TITLE_INACTIVE_BG		gray
DECORATIONS_ACTIVE_BG	DodgerBlue4
DECORATIONS_INACTIVE_BG	gray
DECORATIONS_INACTIVE_FG	white
MENU_TEXTACTIVE			white
MENU_TEXTINACTIVE		gray
MENU_TEXTSELECTED		black
MENUBAR_BG 				DodgerBlue4
MENU_SELECTED_BG		white

## Window buttons style like hazewm - must be "haze" to work
BUTTON_STYLE 			haze

## The below is not used for anything
DECORATIONS_ACTIVE_FG	red

MENUBARHEIGHT  32

## Activate soundtheme - must be "yes"
SOUNDTHEME yes

## Desktop background - if not given no color will be set on rootwindow
DESKTOPCOLOR steelblue
so it would be MENUBAR_BG gray

but I like your syntax better.

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#72 Post by samira »

Apologies, didn't notice the parameter over there in the window layout section.. Though cant get the menu script working. Guess i'll need to find the convert executable..

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#73 Post by goingnuts »

The convert is included in my mlvwm091-hacked_starter.pet

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#74 Post by samira »

goingnuts: Thanks. Anyway, i do have some issues which i experienced, not sure if you had it also. When i exit x, at the command line, when i enter mazewm, i get a message saying 'cant open display'..that's normal when trying to run other WMs. When i run startmazewm, it starts without sound & menus. However when i try to run jwm & lxde after exiting x, it fails to run..

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#75 Post by goingnuts »

Missing sound could be lack of minimp3/mpg123 which is the options in /usr/defaultaudioplayer.

No menus is normally if it cant find the mazewmrc/the pm_mazewm_xdg.sh did not complete...

mlvwm, hazewm and mazewm edit your /root/.xinitrc when started with the startXXXXwm scripts. If one exits wrong this modification sticks and is not good for jwm.

I had a lot of trouble having both hazewm, mlvwm + various hacks of mazewm installed at the sam time. Thats one of the reasons for specifying which mazewmrc to use in my startmazewm-script (/usr/share/mazewm/.mazewmrc).

I do hope you get the mess sort out - you might need a new fresh copy of standard /root/.xinitrc...

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samira
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Tinkering w/ Haze WM

#76 Post by samira »

No problem. Currently i'm just using a live cd. Once everything's sorted out then i can have something permanent.

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#77 Post by goingnuts »


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