Version 3.1.7
-------------
A long wanted release that provide both new features and bugfixes.
- Font and Font Size preferences. That's a big change!
- Full rewrite and debugging of the different maximize functions,
including the full-screened mode. Fullscreen have been extended
with a Disapear function, which give us one of the best feature
of the Amiga OS, the ability to cycle trough the full-sceened
applications and the workbench (dekstop). See that as another way
to cycle trough desktop space.
A new Minimize is includded as well. It will reduce the window size.
- The Amiga recipe is almost fully rewritted.
It provide a double top bar that is more AmigaOS like (mac users
will like it too). The notification aera is moved near the media
button. The swallowing of the trayer application is fixed.
The buttons at the bottom are now in a range, with the possibility
to show only some of them.
- NumLock Fix for the focus policies. The NumLonk interferences on the
Amiga, FVWM-Crystal with raise and MSWindow focus policy styles should
be history now.
- New Wing-Commander recipe by Peter McConnell. Nice and fonctionnal.
- New Fullscreen recipe. A work in progress but still usable, if you
like to have nothing on your desk.
- A lot of style loading order fixes. The FvwmForm and FvwmIdent
windows doesn't need anymore a restart to be readable.
- A few new colorsets and windows decorations.
- The mixer controls are moved into a unique file.
- Music controls in 2 parts, 1 file for the common functions of the
players, and one file per player for their specific functions.
- Media preferences moved to the media button or menu.
- Unified media button with recipes that support it.
- The MPlayer control use now dvdnav. DVB support and capture of MPEG
sources have been added. Capture use the standard MPlayer "c" key.
- Some environment variables, including some preferences, have been
comverted to the new InfoStore FVWM variables. FVWM-Crystal will
check the user preferences and convert them when needed at startup.
- FVWM versions older 2.6.5 are not supported anymore.
- Launch of Info browser using xemacs, tkinfo or pinfo from the developer
menu.
- Fixed the icon generation of fvwm-crystal.generate-menu. Some of
the icons was producing libpng warnings at stderr.
- Dropped habak support, which produced X BadValue Errors at restart, in
favor of feh. As feh is huge, hsetroot is now the first avaible choice.
For a complete list of the changes, please read the ChangeLog file.
Version 3.0.6
-------------
A lot of changes. The bad news is than the bugfixes from the 3.0.5 version
will or not work anymore. So, please, if you don't have 3.0.5, update first
to 3.0.5, and follow the instruction for the 3.0.5 update before updating
to this release.
Now the good news. Some new features (Amiga recipe, font preferences, new
music button, new Amiga focus policy, Icon-Launcher), some important bugfixes
(for better stability when changing the styles like windows decorations and
focus policies), and some minor bugfixes and cleanup:
- The Amiga recipe is in good shape.
It doesn't provide the real look and feel of the Amiga OS. This is a huge mix
of functions from Crystal and from the Amiga.
- New focus policy: Amiga
Click to focus without raise. The desk icons are enter to focus.
- Fixed the focus policy preferences. The reloading of the other styles
was confusing the Window-Remember-*ToFucus functions and some focus policies.
- Icon Launcher: New function that will check /etc/mtab (I hope this is
portable, if not, please give me a clue) and launch the icons
corresponding to the mounted drives or partitions onto the desktop.
Thunar is associated to those icons.
Icon-Launcher is used into the Amiga recipe.
- Improved music button. All the players are now into the same file.
This is an idea from Thomas Adam to put all the players into the same file,
because they share a lot of code in common. I am not sure if this is really
a good idea because it is also a lot of differences.
The result is a huge file, but so it is for the moment. It make the setup
into the recipe easier.
At the same time, I moved the Music Player and Mixer preferences from the
Crystal menu to the music button menu. The emplacement of those 2 menus is
recipe dependant, and it is better so.
- Moved the Mixer and Music preferences into the Music button menu.
- New maximize functions. Needed for the Amiga recipe. Use FvwmEvent and
some environmental variables. The variables are used to restore the
original or mouse customized sizes. Not sure if it would be a good move
to generalise the use of those new functions to all the recipes, but I think
so because they work better than the old ones (they remember the windows
dimensions even after a mouse resizing, the new dimensions become the new
*default" dimensions).
Kaffeine 0.8.8 (kde 3.5) get confused but it was already the case with the
old functions. It sucks, but I still use it because I didn't get the time
to figure out how to get the sound from kaffeine 1.0 into jack without
installing the whole of kde 4.4.
- New button model: Amiga
Just try it. It use the new maximise functions and many of them are toggling
the dimensions: 2 consecutive clicks onto the same button will give back the
original window dimensions.
- Amiga recipe: New mouse binding: MMB will toggle the visibility of the top
bar between top and bottom. Usefull when in fullscreen.
- Fixed the Window-Remeber-ClickToFocus and SloppyFocus. Still not perfect
after a restart, but work better.
- Fixed the styles. They was loaded at different times and in different orders.
This was confusing Fvwm at different times.
- Removed some environment variables and added some other ones. :)
- Fixed all the recipes for use with the new music button and the font
preferences.
- Improved wallpaper preferences: global and per page wallpapers with FvwmBacker
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.6
-------------
Important information:
----------------------
- I committed a POSIX bugfix release. It was really important to fix it as fast
as possible because it can have severe consequences for your system (read
system breakage).
The problem was the use of "-" into some environment variable names. That breaks
POSIX. The only solution in the short term was to change the name of the
environment variables and replace all the "-" by "_".
I applied the fix provided by gentoo into portage for FVWM-Crystal-3.0.5 and
ported it to the new functions. Thanks to the gentoo devs for providing this fix.
See http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210580 for a discussion about this.
The consequence of that change is that it will break your user configuration.
I modified the envfix.sh provided by gentoo in order to be able to apply it to
the user user configuration. I splitted it into 2 files for commodity.
Put varfix.sh into ~/bin and searchvartofix into $[FVWM_USERDIR] (usualy
~/.fvwm-crystal). Change into $[FVWM_USERDIR] and run "./searchvartofix".
This will change all the "-" into "_" into all the fvwm-crystal-3.0.5
environment variable names, and that into all the files in $[FVWM_USERDIR].
When it is done, you can remove varfix.sh and searchvartofix.
If you added custom env variables with "-" into their names, you must change
them by hand (or add them into varfix.sh before you run searchvartofix).
Present and future work on the svn:
- Important POSIX bugfix. Done : changed all the - to _ into the environment
variable names.
- Amiga recipe (almost done, already working) and associated styles (work in progress).
- Font preferences (Work in progress, some parts work only with the Amiga recipe and
style for now).
- Removing of the non needed UTF-8 tests. (Work in progress)
- Removing of most of the environment variables. (Future work)
- Initial svn commit with the content of the 3.0.5 release. Well, almost, because
all the FVWM-Crystal files into the svn are using UTF-8 when it is not the case
with the file into 3.0.5. Done.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.5
-------------
New release after a while. What's new:
- Changed the application menu so that its structure is compatible with
FreeDesktop specification.
- New command fvwm-crystal.generate-menu that will generate the missing entries
in the application menu. For that, it will use the applications type desktop
files and icons files installed by the applications.
- New recipe "Thin" based on on the Clean, Dock and Nebulea recipes.
- Support for 2 more media players: AlsaPlayer and mplayer. Their control do
have 3 buttons instead of 2 like the other players. The ability to control
the speed of those 2 players is included.
- Improved some of the Mixer controls in order to use volume control in db. This
will work only if the ALSA driver of your soundcard support it (most of them, if
not all, will work at that time of writing).
- And more, I forget sorry. I am writing this almost one year after the release.
A complete list of changes is included into the Changelog.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.4
Well, new release after almost three months... What's new:
- main configuration is now kept in '~/.fvwm-crystal/'. If you want to keep
your settings, you can just rename old '~/.fvwm/' to a new one. If you won't
do that, you will start like with fresh installation.
- there are now two packages: main 'fvwm-crystal', and a stripped-down
version, 'fvwm-crystal-minimal'. In the "minimal" release you will find
4 recipes, a selected set of application icons, and window decorations.
Other than that, it's good old Crystal. This version is mainly for LiveCD
based distributions (made especially for grml (http://www.grml.org/). You
can also use it to try Crystal, and if you like it - install the full
version.
- in the new version you will find new window decoration - "MicroClear", based
on "Clear". There are also two new desktop recipes: "Light", with just pager
on the top of the screen, trayer in the corner and menu accessible under the
left mouse button (press and hold to open it), and "SideLine", with panels
in the lower-left corner and autohiding window list on the bottom of the
screen.
- in main 'config' file you can find two new variables:
$FVWM_DISTROMENUDIR - a directory with application database generated by
distribution-based script, for example using Debian Menu system
$FVWM_DISTROMENUNAME - name of a menu generated by the script, used to
include/exclude it in the app panels or menus. By default it's set to
"debian".
All recipes are updated to use these variables. Using $FVWM_DISTROMENUNAME you
can change the name of the system application menu, and icon used to display
it. For example, you can change "debian" to "ubuntu", generate a menu with
that name and have it displayed with a Ubuntu logo.
- Michael Stilkerich created new Clock scripts. They now get time format from
the user's locale settings and properly use it (by displaying 12h or 24h).
Using left mouse button you can toggle the display of date/time, right mouse
button toggles between 12h and 24h mode.
- Szervac Attila created the Hungarian translation of Crystal, thanks!
- Crystal now recognizes UTF-8 environment and properly sets fonts in the
menus. I left the fonts in window decorations intact, but if FVWM developers
won't do something about the UTF-8 support in FVWM, I guess I'll have to fix
all of them too...
- there's a new Dvorak keyboard layout you can use. There's no menu option for
that, so if you have Dvorak keyboard, you can either put the commands below
to the '~/.fvwm-crystal/userconfig' file:
Include components/desktop/Keyboard-Dvorak
Include components/desktop/Keyboard-Dvorak_NumLock
or modify the recipe you're using.
Well, that would be it. As usual, you can find complete list of changes in the
ChangeLog. Have fun, and see you next time!
Maciej Delmanowski, <harnir@linux.net.pl>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.3
Again a very quick release, but at least this one should be ok now - at least
I hope... What's new:
- There's a dedicated Debian menu support - if you will create
/Applications/debian category, it will be specially treated on the app
panels and menus (there will be a category icon shown, instead of an
application icon). /Applications/debian category is not included in the
database by default, instead it will be created using Debian menu system and
available in the FVWM-Crystal's .deb package.
- I've added "Mouse Bindings Reference" in the documentation - now you can
know everything about your desktop bindings. :-)
- 'fvwm-crystal' startup script has been changed, now it looks in the
'../share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm' for the config files - that means, if you have
Crystal installed in /usr/local directory, script must be in /usr/local/bin
and configuration files must be in /usr/local/share/... directory; similar
situation with the /usr installation. On the bright side, there's no need
now to edit the startup script.
- Makefile has been cleaned up, it should now work smoothly. Installation
parameters are changed a little, instead of 'PREFIX=' you need to use
'prefix=' in the command line.
Well, I guess that's it... If there will be any problems to fix, just let me
know on <harnir@gna.org>. Have fun! :-)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.2
Bugs hunt me with each version :-) This is a "quick fix" release, just with
small fixes and improvements:
- Makefile script was modified to support different directories with
'fvwm-crystal.desktop' files, some distributions use /usr/share/xsessions
and some use /etc/X11/Sessions; make will check which one is available and
put the .desktop file in it. Also there's new 'make dist', so there should
no problems with file permissions from now on.
- I've added a ViM syntax hilighting file, 'addons/fvwm.vim'. If you use vim,
you can put it in ~/.vim/syntax/ directory. Also almost all configuration
files have now vim modeline, so they should be recognized as FVWM
configuration files.
Recently BerliOS servers have become voulnerable - they had world-readable
password files. Here's the full story:
http://metawire.org/~parasitical/vulns/berliospass/
Because of that I'm planning to move FVWM-Crystal project to another server,
http://gna.org/, so this will be the last release on the BerliOS servers. When
that happens, I'll let you know on the website and the mailing list about the
change.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.1
It's been 3 months since FVWM-Crystal 3.0, there are now few interesting
changes in the code, so I decided to release new version. Changes are not yet
complete, for example localizations are not updated...
New, simplified installation procedure
--------------------------------------
Michael Stilkerich created new 'Makefile' script, cleaner and simplified. Now
all you need to install Crystal is to issue command:
make [PREFIX=/usr] install
The [PREFIX=] part is optional and can be used to change default installation
directory. You can now also uninstall Crystal by issuing command
make [PREFIX=/usr] uninstall
"NumLock Hell" is over ;-)
--------------------------
From the beginning Crystal users suffered because of the problems with NumLock
- FVWM recognizes it as another keyboard modifier, so when it was on, many
keyboard bindings or mouse functions didn't work. This version will eliminate
that problem. I couldn't use "IgnoreModifiers" function (didn't work as
expected), so I literally copied each binding and added NumLock as another
modifier - for example there are now "Alt + grave" and "Alt + NumLock + grave"
bindings. This system is transparent and can be easily turned off, because
NumLock bindings are in separate files. Currently NumLock affects only numeric
keyboard - when it's on, you can write numbers; when it's off, you can use
window controls. All other keyboard and mouse bindings work in either NumLock
state.
Icons from The Tango Project
----------------------------
I decided to use icons from the Tango Project (http://www.tango-project.org/)
on desktop panels and in the menus. Also application categories got their own
icons, visible in the application menus. You will have to update your recipes
if, for example, you will not see icons on the panel because of the filename
changes. This also results in colorset changes, one colorset
($[cs-panel-inactive-MiniIon]) is removed, because it's not needed anymore
- it was used to "colorize" b&w icons on the panels.
Rearranged application database (again)
---------------------------------------
Sorry for that, it probably drives you nuts by now... ;-) I moved the app
categories around, so they will be "compatible" with Tango Project's icons and
probably with GNOME/KDE application categories. Of course there are new
applications and icons supported, as usual.
GDM login manager support
-------------------------
If GDM is installed and running, it's used to shutdown or reboot the computer
instead of the 'sudo' command. You can also create new session, fullscreen or
nested, from the Exit menu. If GDM is not present or running, old 'sudo'
commands will be used instead.
Updated audio & music player support
------------------------------------
- You can now select preffered music player and audio mixer separately, for
example use 'mpd' to play music and 'aumix' to control audio volume.
- There's added support for XMMS2 player, however it's not yet complete.
- There's new key binding: Alt + Shift + /. It toggles between random and
sequential playback.
Changes in the recipes:
-----------------------
- "Nebulae" recipe has now "FVWM-Crystal" submenu in the main applications
menu.
- There are new recipes: "Clean" is similar to "Clean Vertical", but has
horizontal desktop placement; "TopDown" has bigger pager window on the top
edge of the screen, and application panel on the bottom edge.
Changes in window focus system:
-------------------------------
- There is now different focus method for 'ClickToFocus' and 'SloppyFocus'
options; the difference: while using SloppyFocus when you switch desktops,
at first window which has mouse pointer is focused, if there's none, last
used window is focused. ClickToFocus uses "old" method, without checking
which window has mouse pointer.
- There is now small resistance when you try to move windows off the screen
edge - that should prevent the "desktop switching bug" a little, because it
will be now harder to move a window off the screen.
New keyboard bindings
---------------------
- Alt + Home - moves mouse pointer to the top-left corner of the screen - easy
way to get rid of it when it stands in your way.
- Alt + h, j, k, l - moves windows to the respective desktop edges (like movement
keys in Vi), centered on the edge.
- Alt + Shift + h, j, k, l - moves windows to the desktop corners (h - top
left, j - bottom left, k - top right, l - bottom right).
Other minor changes:
--------------------
- Transient and "Untitled" windows have now titlebars, except of
"OpenOffice.org" windows, because of the toolbar system
- "Urgency hint' functions in FVWM are cleared, so now gajim should work as
expected (it will not focus it's window when on each received message)
- Menus with long creation time (like the wallpapers menu) will show the
"busy" cursor for an indication that something is happening.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0
Well, here it is... I would like to thank all the people who helped me with
this project, for their ideas and support... Thanks :-) OK, enough with the
small talk...
There aren't many drastical changes from the previous release. Many bugs were
hunt down and crushed, there is new window decoration (for all those
dark-desktop lovers out there), there is some new documentation (description
of the new application database).
What you can notice pretty fast is lack of titlebar on the transient windows.
That's because of new OO.org 2.0 and it's detachable toolbars - they just had
double titlebars, so I've had to do something with that and this was the only
solution. I hope that you will like the idea.
You can now put wallpapers in '~/.fvwm/wallpapers/' directory as well as in
'~/wallpapers/'. That makes Crystal configuration even more consistent,
I guess...
I know that you have sometimes small changes, which you had to put in
a recipe, but these changes are good for most of them (for example new
keybindings). There was no easy way to add them - but now it is. If you create
a file called '~/.fvwm/userconfig', it will be loaded after all Crystal
configuration and recipes. Now everything can be in one place :)
Well, that's it. I'm packaging and releasing a full version, hope that you
will like it. Have fun :-)
Maciej Delmanowski <harnir@post.pl>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.RC3
What's new:
* New application menu/panel generator
--------------------------------------
At least, Rafal Bisingier brings new version of his application panel
generator, completely rewritten and with new database system. Here are it's
most interesting features:
- database is based on a directory and file structure. Each menu and submenu
is a category, each file is the program entry. Metainformation about
installed programs is included in the file name. Basically, each "file" in
the database is a script which is executed by FVWM when a program from
a menu or panel is selected (therefore all files need to have executable
flag set). In the script itself you can put any command(s) you want. You can
find more information about the database structure by executing
'fvwm-crystal.apps --help'
- you can combine different "database trees" into one large menu system
- system-wide database and user-wide database can be easily created and
maintained
- menu and panel generator is very flexible, allowing for example creation of
submenus that popup upwards instead of (standard) downwards, or creating
different menus for different places
* New recipe, "Nebulae"
-----------------------
If you like Windows-like Start menu and toolbar, you should try this recipe :)
Most of the features are there, including trayer and pager window shown/hidden
using a button on the panel. When you click on the "Crystal" menu with LMB,
a menu with available applications pops up, middle click shows the old "system
menu".
* Support for Nautilus file manager
-----------------------------------
If you don't like ROX-Filer, but want to have icons on the desktop, you can
use Nautilus - it's mow selectable from the 'Preferences" menu if you want to
have desktop manager, and which one (of both ROX and Nautilus are installed).
Unfortunately Nautilus has it's own menu under RMB so "instant terminal" won't
be possible... Unless you bind it to the middle mouse button which works as
usual. And of course you can change desktop wallpaper using Crystal built-in
menu, while using the Nautilus desktop (gconftool needs to be installed for
this to work).
* Old "Exit" menu brought back
------------------------------
I've been criticized because of the "safe" Exit menu, so the old one is back
by default. If you want to use the safer version, it's still available as
'components/functions/Exit-Safe'.
* Changes in the icon system
----------------------------
There is new default application icon, taken from the GNOME default iconset,
it looks nicer than transparent X, I hope. :) Image path is now relative to
the icon theme directory, not inside it, so you can change the preferred icon
size easier. There is also support for user-side icons (you still need to
maintain the directory structure in your ~/.fvwm/, including the icon theme
name) - if Crystal finds an icon in the user directory structure, it will be
used instead of the original one.
That are the most interesing changes, I think... There are also many bugfixes,
like "black panels" after startup or shadow effect in the FvwmMPD windows.
Just updated translations are missing from this release, which I hope will
change with 3.0 version. Because of that I'm beginning "call for translators"
- if you want to have FVWM-Crystal in your own (or favourite) language, send
the translated .po files to harnir@post.pl, I happily include them in the 3.0
release :) I'm giving you time until Haloween, 31st of October. Until then,
have fun with new version :)
Maciej Delmanowski, <harnir@post.pl>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.RC2
What's new:
This time I didn't change directory structure too much, sorry guys ;)
* New window decoration system
------------------------------
Basically, window decorations are now defined by two "factors" - how they
should look (a theme) and what kind of buttons they should have (a button
layout).
There are currently 5 different button setups:
- FVWM-Crystal - plain old and loved ;) button style, with two Close buttons
and several other enhancements
- MS Windows - for beginners? Three buttons on the right and a menu on the
left
- MacOS X - three buttons on the left, looks awsome with Aqua window
decoration :)
- OS/2 - Close button on the left, iconify and maximize on the right
- NeXTStep - for WindowMaker lovers :)
All button layouts show the window menu when you press and hold one of them,
also titlebar functions are the same (Raise|Resize|Lower).
You will find all old window decorations included, from user's point of view
there is no change here. 'Aqua' and 'Gentoo' window decorations have new set
of button images, there are also new decorations: Clearlooks (3 color
versions), DawnSky, Motif and SystemG. Bug which caused window decorations to
appear oddly after some changes is removed and shouldn't be a problem any
more.
* New "Preferences" menu
------------------------
You can find it under the main menu. Currently you can setup preferred
"recipe" (moved from "Developer menu"), music player, default terminal
(separately for "normal" and QuakeConsole), focus policy and behaviour of the
terminals.
* New FvwmScript scripts
------------------------
You can now check current date using the clock - click once to see the date in
"dd/mm" format, click second time or wait to see the clock.
There are new scripts for ACPI functions, like battery status, CPU frequency
and temperature. You can see them in action on "Default with ACPI" recipe.
* Vertical desktops
-------------------
Yup, you can now have vertically aligned desktop pages, that means vertical
pager :) There is an example "Clean Vertical" recipe included, so you can try
it right away. Keyboard and window shortcuts are automatically updated.
* New keyboard bindings
-----------------------
For keyboards without numeric part, such as those on notebooks/laptops, you
can find new keyboard shortcuts:
Alt + minus raise window
Alt + Shift + minus lower window
Alt + equal maximize
Alt + Shift + equal fullscreen
Alt + backspace iconify
Alt + Shift + backspace close
* Secure "Exit" menu
--------------------
Now you need to select a submenu entry to perform "dangerous" actions, such as
Logout, Shutdown or Reboot. This may sound a bit controversial, so give me
a hint if you like it or not.
* Updates in the music support
------------------------------
New music players are supported: Quod Libet and cdcd (Audo CD playback).
Unfortunately some functions are limited or missing, due to the limitations of
these players (well, they don't support everything, you know...).
There are also many bugfixes, enhancments and features, you can see them in
the ChangeLog. Stay tuned :)
Maciej Delmanowski <harnir@post.pl>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 3.0.RC1
What's new:
The biggest change - I've rewritten all configuration files, hopefully the
last time. I know that I've said this before, you can shoot me in the head for
that. Why this is different? Crystal is now more open and flexible than ever
before, new additions should be made very easy and in straightforward way.
Oh, and of course it's not compatible with older releases, sorry for that
(window decorations and colorsets are compatible though).
Other major changes:
- installation scripts: you can now install FVWM-Crystal using standard
'./configure && make && make install' and everything should work just fine.
No more problems with missing functionality or dependencies, scripts will
tell you everything you need to know. That should also make biulding
distribution packages easier.
- standard, UNIX-like configuration support: during startup Crystal scripts
look on three places for configuration files, loading first that is found:
a) user directory (usually '~/.fvwm')
b) system configuration (by default '/etc/X11/fvwm/fvwm-crystal')
c) directory where package was installed (usually
'/usr/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm' or '/usr/local/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm')
That way users can make their own changes (see below) which affect only
their account, system administrators can make the changes affecting all
users (but if user will change the same thing, the user's configuration is
loaded instead), and things that weren't modified are taken from the
original configuration.
- "configuration tree": almost all files are loaded using special functions
which search in above places for the files being loaded. It works like this:
"Include components/functions/Wallpaper" will look for files called:
'~/.fvwm/components/functions/Wallpaper', then if it wasn't found,
'/etc/X11/fvwm/fvwm-crystal/components/functions/Wallpaper', and if this
also wasn't found,
'<fvwm-crystal-installation>/components/functions/Wallpaper'. That way you
can make changes to the original files which will be preserved for further
updates, and it will override the original ones. All you need to do is
preserve the directory structure. Not all files are working this way yet,
see the TODO file for details.
- "desktop recipes": configuration is now divided in two "parts": there are
small files, usually functions, bindings, etc. located in the 'components/'
directory. From these files you can "compose" a desktop using special file
called "recipe", located in the 'recipes/' directory. Recipes themselves
usually load other files, such as functions and bindings. Desktop panel
configuration is also located in the recipe files. Recipes can be selected
from a handy menu, so you can decide easily, which recipe to use. Thanks to
this system you don't need to have usual FVWM-Crystal features, because they
are optional. That way it's easy to build your own desktop from scratch
without lose of the powerful features like window decorations or application
panel system. Speaking of these panels: they are no longer stored as
generated files; instead output of 'fvwm-crystal.apps' script is read
directly by FVWM using PipeRead. This way you can make more powerful panels,
with other things than just application icons - see the new "desktop layout"
or "recipe" called Dock - it's modelled after XFCE/CDE panel.
- support for many applications: currently there are two examples of this
support: you can use either 'habak' or 'Esetroot' for setting the desktop
wallpaper - Crystal will search for them and use the one which is available
automatically. The second example is usage of music player: currently there
are two, MPD and XMMS. Crystal will look for 'mpd' binary, and load
specified functions for controlling the player; if 'mpd' is not installed,
Crystal will look for 'xmms' instead and load set of functions for this
player. You can easily add support for other music players or different
programs, like the screenshot tool or screensaver.
- application database was greatly extended, so most applications that you use
will be available from the menu. Every application has it's own
corresponding icon (although there are missing icons for 48x48 size), so
there should be no more "empty" buttons on the panel or in the menus.
- 'wallpapers/' directory: now you have 3 different wallpapers at the first
startup available, so if you have a wallpaper setting tool like 'habak' or
'Esetroot' installed, you will see a nice desktop at the first startup - no
more problems with missing wallpaper or gray desktop panels :)
- new "old" icon directories: they are now similar to the '/usr/share/icons'
directory, for example: 'icons/Default/22x22/fvwm-crystal/',
'icons/Default/32x32/apps/' and so on. This way you can make your own icon
themes or use different icon sizes in the menus and application panels.
- FVWM-Crystal uses gettext for localization strings - now it's easier to make
new translations and memory usage is smaller.
There are also more small modifications included. I hope that you will like
this release and give me some good feedback about it :)
Maciej Delmanowski <harnir@post.pl>
