Re: [rox-users] Rox-session vs. window manager

[Matthew W. O. <wei...@gr...>]

-- Albert Wagner <alw...@tc...> wrote
(on Wednesday, 22 January 2003, 11:31 AM +0000):
> Sorry, but this is a very newbie question. 
> (1)I originally set up /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to exec 
> openbox. Then in openbox, I used the main menu to get an 
> xterm and in the xterm entered "rox".
> (2) When rox started I clicked on Rox-Session and selected 
> "openbox" and made Rox-Session the default session 
> manager.
> (3) Now when I startx rox comes up.  But I no longer have 
> the openbox main menu.  Not sure I need it though.
> 
> Which leads to my question.  What exactly is the 
> relationship between Rox-Filer, Rox-Session and Openbox?  
> There are references on the Rox site to "Rox Desktop".  
> Can Rox-Filer/Rox-Session be run without a window manager?
Yes, it can -- any X app should be able to run without a window manager.
However, without a wm, you don't have window decorations, and moving
windows around, closing them, etc, is typically much more difficult.
Typically, you have the following layers when using a *nix-based GUI:
    X-Windows
    Window Manager
    (Desktop Environment)
    Applications
The desktop environment is optional -- it adds a layer of abstraction
between the WM and applications, usually giving a common "look-and-feel"
to the environment. The window manager is usually considered
non-optional -- it provides methods for manipulating windows, as well as
a general look-and-feel to them (placement of maximize/minimize buttons,
drag handles, borders, etc.). Applications, of course, are what you run
in a GUI.

Rox is... Thomas, want to add a few words here? It began as a filer/file
manager, and then got "pinboard" support, which allowed Rox users to
place icons on their "desktop", followed almost immediately by support
for a "panel", then got a session manager, and then...

Basically, with the additions of the pinboard, panel, and session
manager,  Rox had the common features of other common desktop
environments -- look at GNOME and KDE, and you'll see that these are key
components in their environments as well. Thus the idea of the Rox
Desktop -- ROX becomes a lightweight desktop environment that can be run
on top of any (well, almost any) window manager.

Since Rox is so lightweight, a number of us use it on top of similarly
lightweight window managers (like blackbox, openbox, fluxbox, icewm,
etc., just to name a few that come up in the list regularly) to make a
fast, feature-ful desktop.

The problem you're encountering with openbox is one common with the
various blackbox-like window managers. In these wms, you use the
right-mouse button to pop up a menu; when using a pinboard (which is
enabled by default with Rox-Session) Rox wants that button click to pop
open its own menu for the pinboard. There are options in Rox to pass
mouse-clicks to the window manager and to override wm control of the
pinboard and panels (see the Compatibility section of the options for
these) -- you'll need to turn both of these on. I've noticed, however,
in my usage of Rox with blackbox, that even this is somewhat buggy --
you need to keep the right mouse button clicked to keep the menu up.
(This is *not* Rox's fault; these window managers do not yet comply with
ICCWM specifications, and Rox does.) Thus, there's a patch located at:

    http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=652741&group_id=7023&atid=307023

that fixes it for these window managers. You'll need to make sure you
have a source tarball of Rox, and then follow the directions on that
page for applying the patch, compiling Rox, and installing Rox.

Good luck!

-- 
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
ma...@we...