1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
|
<!--startcut ==========================================================-->
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<html> <head>
<title>Updates</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFE7C7">
<!--endcut ============================================================-->
<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--===================================================================-->
<center><h1>Updates to Past Reviews</h1></center>
<center>
<h4>By <a href="mailto:layers@marktwain.net">Larry Ayers</a></h4>
</center>
<P> <hr>
<p>The Linux software world has been extraordinarily fecund lately. I could
write all day every day and still not adequately describe and evaluate the
many new software packages released in the past couple of months. But I need
to backtrack a bit and bring up-to-date some of the reviews from past issues
of the Gazette (otherwise I'll be spending much time answering e-mail
concerning broken links, etc.).
<P> <hr>
<p>
<center><h3>Icewm</h3></center>
<p>I LG #21 I wrote a short piece about the first public beta of Marco Macek's
window-manager <strong>icewm</strong>; afterwards I continued to use it from
time to time until it began crashing at random intervals, which discouraged
me. Lately I'd noticed several new icewm releases mentioned on various Linux
web-sites, so I thought I'd try the most recent one (as I write this, the
current version is 0.8.16; they have been incrementing rapidly, so there is
probably a newer one by the time you read this).
<p>I've probably tried just about every window-manager out there; perhaps I'm
becoming a trifle jaded, but the prospect of spending hours, if not days,
learning to configure a WM to my liking isn't too appealing. I did just that
with fvwm2 a couple of years ago and just don't have the time or inclination
to repeat the process. I've tried Enlightenment, Afterstep and WindowMaker,
and though I appreciate their features and configurability, I haven't yet
devoted the time needed to effectively use them. Icewm is by design not as
complex and feature-laden as the above-mentioned managers, therefore
developing a pleasing and usable configuration can be done in a fairly short
time.
<p>Memory usage is another factor to consider. Most window-managers tend to
use about one megabyte of memory, but the various modules (such as fvwm2's
pager and Afterstep's numerous add-ons) add significant amounts. Although
minimalist managers such as wmx are available, they seem to use nearly the
same amount of memory as fvwm2 (in wmx's case, possibly because of the use of
the shaped window X-extension). Icewm uses a remarkably small amount of
memory (averaging about 600-800 kb. on my system), considering that it does
90% of what the others do.
<p>I asked Marco Macek what his original motivations were when he started
coding icewm, and this was his response:<br>
<blockquote>Well, I was using fvwm and while it was quite configurable, there
were lots of little things that I could never get right, even if by hacking
the source. I wanted the wm that would feel right to users used to CUA-style
GUIs (windows, os2, motif). fvwm95 was an improvement (I contributed a few
things to it), but since I wanted a more configurable look, I quickly realized
that writing it from scratch was the right thing to do. The result seems to be
a leaner WM that feels good to use. At least to me (and it seems quite a few
other people). For me, the feel is more important than look. People get much
more used to feel (keystrokes, behaviour) than look. That is the reason for
configurable look but not feel. Changing the look occasionally makes things
interesting while the feel should really stay the same.
</blockquote>
<p>Icewm isn't difficult or time-consuming to set up. Several pre-defined
themes are included, and the configuration variables are split into several
files, making it easy to edit, say, just the colors or menus without having to
wade through a long config file looking for particular sections. The icons
can take some time, as they need to have particular sizes and filenames in
order for icewm to be able to make use of them. Any item in the root menu can
have a mini-icon displayed next to its menu-entry, with the same icon used as
the leftmost titlebar icon. John Bradley's excellent xv graphics program can
be used to resize an *.xpm file to 16x16 and 32x32 pixels, which are the two
sizes needed. The icon files then need to be renamed to
<em>[name]_16x16.xpm</em> and <em>[name]_32x32.xpm</em> and put in the
window-manager's icon directory, which defaults to
<kbd>/usr/local/lib/X11/icewm/icons</kbd>.
<p>The menu configuration file, located in
<kbd>/usr/local/lib/X11/icewm/menu</kbd> has entries in this format:<br>
<p><kbd>prog Xvile edit xvile</kbd><br>
<p>The first word after "prog" is the name as you want it shown in the menu,
the second word is the prefix of the xpm icon-file (that is, the part before
the underscore), and the third word is the command which actually starts the
program. If there are no icon-files named <kbd>edit_16x16.xpm</kbd>
and <kbd>edit_32x32.xpm</kbd> error messages will be displayed on the console
from which X was started but they are harmless and default icons will be used
in the titlebar, while there won't be one at all next to the corresponding
menu-entry.
<p>If you happen to try editing any of the theme configuration files (where
the various frame and title-bar colors are set) you will notice that the
colors are specified in hex format (such as "rgb:E0/E0/E0"), which isn't too
intuitive. After configuring various X windows programs for a while, you
probably will be able to remember several favorite color-names from the rgb.txt
color-database file, such as darkslateblue and navajowhite. This isn't
mentioned in the icewm docs, but I've found that these easily-remembered
color-names can be substituted for the hex names and will work just as well.
Just remember to put the names within double quotes.
<p>One feature of fvwm which I've grown accustomed to, and which icewm can
also do, is displaying certain windows without a titlebar and/or appearing on
all desktops. The icewm docs explain these settings. A pager isn't included,
but the Afterstep-like "workspaces" icewm provides perform a similar
function. The win95-like taskbar, complete with a start-menu, is a help while
gaining familiarity with the window-manager, but its functions are available
using either the keyboard or the root-menu, and it can be turned off by
setting <kbd>ShowTaskBar=0</kbd> in the preferences config file.
<p>Admittedly, this sort of desktop configuration is much easier with KDE
beta4, but you pay for the ease of using and configuring KDE; it uses a
quite a bit of memory and takes an awfully long time to start up. Of
all the window-managers I've used, icewm and Chris Cannam's wmx seem to be the
quickest to start.
<p>I think that with the release of version 0.8.16 icewm is stable enough for
heavy use and deserves wider exposure. Marco Macek is currently adapting icewm
to the GNOME desktop, and further enhancements are likely.
<center><h3>Maxwell</h3></center>
<p>Naturally, as soon as LG #27 appeared, the link I had provided for the
binary Maxwell word-processor distribution was no longer valid. The Sunsite
incoming directory was cleaned up for the first time in many months and the
file was moved. Here are two links which hopefully will work for a while:
<ul>
<li><a
href="ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/linux/apps/maxwell/maxwell-0.5.2.tar.gz">British site</a>
<li><a
href="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/wp/maxwell-0.5.2.tar.gz">US site</a>
</ul>
<p>Still no news on whether Maxwell's source will be made available or not.
<center><h3>NEdit</h3></center>
<p>NEdit version 5.02 was released recently. It's available from the home
<a href="ftp://ftp.fnal.gov/KITS/pub/nedit/v5_0_2">site</a>. This Motif-based
editor has become increasingly popular due to its easy-to-learn interface and
intuitive mouse support. Its CUA-style menus and keystrokes are easy to learn
for users coming from a windows or mac background, and it's a good choice for
people desiring a powerful, syntax-highlighting editor complete with a native
macro language. If the prospect of learning Emacs or VI is daunting, NEdit is
ideal.
<center><h3>XaoS</h3></center>
<p>Version 3.00 of the fast interactive fractal zoomer XaoS was released
recently by its maintainer Jan Hubicka of Czechoslovakia. Xaos is now
officially a part of the GNU project; I'm not sure just what this means beyond
receiving Richard Stallman's blessing and new availability from the
<a href="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu">GNU</a> FTP site.
<p>This version has many new features, though the interface to them is still a
series of text-based information panels. An interesting animated tutorial is
now included which can be accessed by typing <b>h</b> twice. There are
now so many new options and filters that the tutorial is very helpful in
gaining an overview of XaoS's powers. Check out the "motion blur" filter,
which really makes you feel like you are plunging headlong into the fractal
depths. Here's a small screenshot:<br>
<p><img alt="motion blur screenshot" src="./gx/ayers/motion.gif">
<p>Another nice effect is gray-scale embossed fractal zooming, which looks
like this:<br>
<p><img alt="embossed fractal" src="./gx/ayers/emboss.gif">
<p>XaoS has really come a long way since the first version I tried. Keep up
the good work, Jan!
<center><h3>Tcd</h3></center>A non-beta 2.1 release of Tcd and its GTK version
Gtcd is now available from the home
<a href="http://flow.ml.org/tcd">site</a>. This has become one the nicest
CD-players available, with theme support using pixmap backgrounds. Several
sample themes are included, several of which were contributed by users. The
bug which caused the GTK version to crash at the end of a CD has been fixed,
and the CDDB support has been enhanced.
<center><h3>XEphem</h3></center>
<p>Version 3.1 of XEphem, Elwood Downey's astronomical program which I wrote
about in LG #25, has been released. Noteworthy is the announcement on the
XEphem <a href="http://iraf.noao.edu/~ecdowney/xephem.html">home</a> page of
recent successes compiling XEphem with Lesstif rather than Motif. Here are
some of the other new features:<br>
<p> Sky View:
<ul>
<li>improved grid
<li>improved DSS FITS networking code
<li>improved layout and drawing
<li>separate limiting magnitudes for deep sky and stars
</ul>
<p> General:
<ul>
<li>brighter color scheme is now the default
<li>printing includes Mars, Moon and Sky View images
<li>support for network Proxies, SOCKS and firewalls
<li>support for Delta T
<li>simpler installation
<li>many small but welcome changes
</ul>
<center><h3>Lout</h3></center>
Jeffrey H. Kingston has released the source for version 3.12 of <b>Lout</b>,
an upstart TeX/LaTeX competitor. New in this release is an option to output
PDF documents rather than Postscript. As usual, the GPL-ed source can be
obtained from this <a href="ftp://ftp.cs.usyd.edu.au/jeff/lout/">FTP</a>
site.
<center><h3>WordNet</h3></center>
<p>In my review of the WordNet dictionary/thesaurus package last issue I
mentioned that it would be useful to be able to compile the source, and that
success had eluded me. <a href="mailto:rdn@tara.n.eunet.de">Christopher
Richardson</a> e-mailed me a suggestion which enabled the WordNet files to
build here; it's worth trying this if you have installed the package. The
change is small, just a couple of lines in the top-level Makefile.
<p>Try commenting out line number 101 (<kbd>LOCAL_LDFLAGS = -static</kbd>),
then change line 135 from<br>
<p><kbd>#WNB_LIBS = -ltk4.2 -ltcl7.6 -lX11 -lm -ldl -lsocket -lnsl</kbd><br>
<p>to<br>
<p><kbd>WNB_LIBS = -ltk4.2 -ltcl7.6 -lX11 -lm -ldl # -lsocket -lnsl</kbd>
<p>The other changes needed in the Makefile are explained well in the
comments. A natively compiled WordNet wish interpreter is only 61 kb.,
whereas the included statically-linked interpreter is 1.39 mb.
<center><h3>S-lang</h3></center>
<p>John Davis, developer of the S-Lang programming language and a collection
of excellent programs which make use of it, has released a new version of the
S-Lang library package, along with new versions of the <b>slrn</b> newsreader,
the <b>jed</b> emacs-like editor, and the <b>most</b> pager. One of the most
interesting changes is the inclusion of exhaustive and readable documentation
in a variety of formats for the S-lang language. If you install the new
S-lang library and header files any applications which use S-lang will have to
be recompiled.
<center><h3>Bomb</h3></center>
<p>Scott Draves has released a new version of his Bomb interactive visual
stimulus package, which I reviewed in LG #18. The svgalib and X programs have
been merged into one executable, and it now works in X windows on 8, 16, and
32 bpp displays. An interesting new feature is the addition of Scheme-based
scripting. GNU Guile is the Scheme-variant which Bomb needs, and a compiled
libguile and other necessary files are included in the archive along with a
script which is supposed to run Bomb with these files loaded rather than with
any Guile version which might happen to be installed elsewhere. I couldn't
get it to work, though it looks to be an interesting development. Several
sample Scheme scripts are included as examples. Rather than needing separate
executables for console use (using svgalib) and X, this new version will
detect the current display-type and adapt itself accordingly. Bomb in an X
session is no longer limited to 8-bit (256 color) displays; I've been using it
in 16-bit X sessions and it works well, though it runs somewhat slower than in
in a full-screen console display. Perhaps when Guile development stabilizes
and a new official release is available (1.2 is the current release),
scripting Bomb's behaviour will be possible for Linux users. Perhaps my Guile
problems with bomb are due to my particular set-up; if it worked for you, let
me know!
<p>Version 1.18 of Bomb is available from this WWW
<a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spot/bomb.html">site</a>.
<hr>
<!-- hhmts start -->
Last modified: Wed 29 Apr 1998
<!-- hhmts end -->
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Larry Ayers <BR>
Published in Issue 28 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, May 1998</H5></center>
<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<A HREF="./lg_toc28.html"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif"
ALT="[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]"></A>
<A HREF="../lg_frontpage.html"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM SRC="../gx/homenew.gif"
ALT="[ FRONT PAGE ]"></A>
<A HREF="./ayers1.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/back2.gif"
ALT=" Back "></A>
<A HREF="./raymond.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/fwd.gif" ALT=" Next "></A>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--startcut ==========================================================-->
</BODY>
</HTML>
<!--endcut ============================================================-->
|
