Warning: rand(): Invalid range: 1..1 in /home/www/linuxpower/functions/ads.phps on line 20
Icecast

Home    Contest    Archives    Q&A    Contact   About   
linuxpower.org

Search

Thanks to GreenWitch for hosting linuxpower

Enlightenment: An Interview with Raster, Mandrake and Technoir about E today and tomorrow

by the Linuxpower Staff


Jeremy: Do you see the current feature set of e15 in CVS as being the feature set for the release of E15?

Raster: close - a bit of cleaning up.. I've made a start on menus - a lot of additions aren't quite apparent - eesh (e shell) is an interface (command-line like ashell) to E's IPC mechanism. - so there's a lot more going in the backend of IPC - basically E is beginning to understand more IPC commands. A lot of this I am generating for use in the GUI E configuration I'm writing (in C) for GNOME. - it queries E itself for E's configuration - so you get live settings and when you change things it send IPc back to E telling it to change it's config. This means the configuration applet doesn't have to have any clue what the configuration files look like, where they are stored etc. and doesnt have to tell E even to restart - this is the mechanism that will be prevalent through E's configuration in future.

Mandrake: there will be at least a few more things added in before 0.15 comes out. Containers and some config changes (we're going over that right now), at bare minimum.

Technoir: Pretty much, although Raster added the beginning of the root menu code at the weekend (I thought root menus weren't going to be in DR0.15), so that'll need finishing. Also, containers for iconised windows and docked apps will probably be a rather important feature in the next release.

Jeremy: When do you estimate DR0.15 to actually be released?

Raster: No comment :)

Mandrake: Released? Oh you mean we're supposed to release this stuff? D'oh! I knew there was something I kept forgetting about... Seriously, though, I don't like giving release dates for this stuff any more. Last time I gave out a release date I was 6 weeks off. This year, most likely, at some point. Beyond that I don't know.

Technoir: Considering the release date for DR0.14 was 24th May and it was actually released on the 18th of July, I don't think proposing a release date would be sensible.

Jeremy: What do you currently see as the major problems of E?

Raster: Lack of features. The backend design is now solid and workable. Mainly our work is cut out for adding features in a clean, solid and extensible manner. There is, of course, work to be done in the areas of optimizing internal data tracking code (the list code) that to date has been stable and DAMN useful in being able to generate, database then find later chunks of data easily. This can be optimized by splitting the list into smaller segments based on data type, possibly hashing etc.. we have our ideas for that already... just have to go do it... the other thing we need to do it split the configuration a little more and have e autosave more data and allow the config to "modify" theme provided defaults when it encounters a user-specified components of the same name, using the user-specified values over and above those specified by the theme.

Mandrake: Problems? Well - sometimes the very thing that you like the most about a piece of software is the thing that's also the biggest drawback. It used to be speed was a main concern - but that problem is pretty much taken care of. Nowadays it's just a matter of configuration complexity. Configuration being E's biggest strength, it also causes a lot of people to turn away: "Wow, this is really cool, but it's too hard to make it do exactly what I want." I hear that a lot. I expect a lot of that to be taken care of very soon with the advent of a slightly improved configuration model (don't worry if you're using the current configuration syntax and you want to keep that stuff working! it will (I hope *grin*) there's just some more cool stuff in the works.

Technoir: The main questions on #E about E are probably concerning the required image libraries for E and the configuration code. It would be nice if there was only one image library (imlib) which could process every image format needed by E, then use other, less used image formats, use optional separate libs. This would probably avoid many of those 'Multiple Headers' problems. Although if people who didn't know where headers were installed too used RPMs or .debs it would help.

As for the config system, people always moan about ConfigEdit not being able to create new classes, then when told that they should edit their .cfg files by hand, they just give up.

Another main problem with E is that people, for some reason, lack the ability to read the documents, help files or error messages. People always coming to #E, with say a compile time problem, where the error they get basically tells them what to do. Again people who can't read should use packages of E, and not the source code. No doubt there will be someone who has got the CVS version of E running, then decides to install the RPMs of DR0.15, when it's released, basically stopping anything which uses imlib compiling in the future.

Jeremy: Are you more concerned with having every possible feature or with getting out a timely release for Enlightenment version 1.0?

Raster: Features. e 0.15 (under development) CVS is stable nearly all the time. Every now and again we twiddle with a new feature that may break stuff temporarily, but otherwise it's pretty good. This is the development method we wish to keep. So basically any "latest release" will be pretty much stable. 1.0 to me for Enlightenment means I am happy with its feature set and stability - and that I need not keep working on it immediately and can take a rest and let everyone use it and have fun without demanding for new features because the feature is already there. We do wish to get a 1.0 release out - but not just because of the label of "1.0" - it is meaningless if 1.0 is missing things and we need a 1.1, 1.2, 1.5, 2.0 etc. to finally get E to a point of "happiness". beyond 1.0 would be some major additions to E - possibly shift of windowing system if needed / required, and work on X itself to add extensions for possibly new fancy features that X simply didn't allow us to do before.

Mandrake: Right now we have a serious focus on quality of release. I don't think that everything under the sun will be implemented by 1.0, but I expect that's going to be off by at least a year or two. :)

Technoir: Probably the most important consideration in a 1.0 release, which you've not mentioned, is stability. As far as I remember the DR0.14 release had no serious bugs in it, in fact the only one which I even heard of was the $EROOT problem with certain systems.

Jeremy: Do you see any major speed bottlenecks currently in Enlightenment; either due to the current way things are implemented or due to external bottlenecks (such as X servers, etc)

Raster: Most of the speed bottleneck is X - basically X can only move windows and stuff on a graphic's card so fast. The truetype font renderer is hell on overhead just to be able to implement anti-aliasing - so if X did this it would be an instance speedup. The other bottleneck is imlib it can only load/render so fast. Most of E's problems in speed are simply Xserver-bound. A fast Xserver setup properly with all things turned on and imlib with all options turned on will be pretty damn fast.

Mandrake: Well - there are always things that you can do to improve speed in anything - but you're not going to notice it unless the speed improvements are done in the image loading/rendering department at this point. There may be bits that are improvable, but by and large the problems are going to be in X server performance at this point (and maybe the layers underneath imlib - i.e. libpng, libgif, etc). I have a standing offer to buy dinner with whoever can make the Shape Extension use hardware acceleration.

Technoir: The main bottleneck which I've experienced is the use of shaped pixmaps(one reason why the default theme was changed, as for some reason people judge the speed of something by what it does the first time they install it)

Jeremy: From my experience, I have noticed that E seems slow at times. Is this mainly due to the developmental nature of it currently, and in it's final incarnation, do you see it running better on lower-end systems?

Raster: Slow at times? In what sense "at times"? E has lots of knobs and twiddles - an example is when you flip desktops E will dynamically load and render a new background for the new visible desktop if there wasn't one there already. If you dont look at a desktop for more than X minutes E will destroy the background, clear the background, and thus save memory on the server-side - but this means next time you look at the desktop E has to re-load the image. It saves on RAM but eats more CPU - its a RAM/CPU tradeoff. This option is customisable - you can even turn it off so E never unloads and frees desktop backgrounds.

E will tend to run better on low-end systems than most WM's - for one reason. E auto-adjusts all the stuff it does to run at the same speed irrespective of machine speed - so the faster the machine, the smoother things are - not the faster they are - shading speed, sliding, etc. all are based on pixels / second and thus it will perform well on lower systems by keeping up with the machine and user rather than lagging behind.

Mandrake: Well - the biggest slow spots are image caching issues. Typically if you don't go to a desktop that has a different background loaded in it, enlightenment has unloaded that graphic from memory to conserve on memory usage. This helps keep the memory usage down. Going to that desktop again can give you a speed hit.

Technoir: The current release of E is much faster than the earlier releases, and the version in CVS is even faster, mainly due to the new theme.

I saw a rather massive speed increase, especially when it redraws a complete desktop (for example at startup) since I've used mtrr in the kernel. Basically X runs much faster and everything seems a lot smoother.

The only time I find a big slowdown compared to earlier releases is when changing desktops, as Imlib caches the images. It can take a good 2-3 secs for a new desktop to appear in Hand of God.

Emissary: Do you think E will be a default window manager in the near future (for redhat, debian, or any other distribution)?

Raster: I don't know about anyone else, but right now it seems E will be the default WM to ship with GNOME on Red Hat since it is getting all the GNOME support added on a daily basis and has a GNOME integrated configuration program that makes it easy for a user to change common settings for the WM in a very clean manner.

Mandrake: At least not until after 0.15 or 0.16 is out. There's still too much that we don't do yet. Everything from 0.13 and prior was thrown out the door for 0.14, so we're basically coming up on the 2nd release of this shortly :) I'd say you'd DEFINITELY want to wait until after this release or the next one before you thought about doing that.

Technoir: I think it will end up as the default WM for GNOME, and with probably be the default WM for any distributions which bundle GNOME in their system. I doubt this will happen for a while, at least not until GNOME is stable and E reaches towards 1.0.

Emissary: Do you see E DR 0.14 as the last complete rewrite of E?

Raster: Until 1.0 - yes. After 1.0 I have no clue - depends if we stick to X or not. If we stick to X probably not - there is a lot of solid back-end there. I don't see much of a reason to spend time nuking it and restarting.

Mandrake: There's always a nasty habit of saying "damn, I'll never do that again" but you usually end up doing it anyways. 0.14 was written from the ground up because the model from 0.13 and prior just wasn't good enough for where we wanted to go.

Technoir: Most likely, although most of the code could be changed without anyone knowing, assuming the configuration code is the same. I doubt that it will ever be rewritten from scratch, as the current code seems to works as well as most people would expect.

Emissary: Is the current line (E .14 and .E. 15) what the 1.0 release will look like?

Raster: Probably - very similar at any rate.

Mandrake: Internally? probably we'll keep this same structure codewise. Externally? well - there's a new look every couple of months or so. I don't know about you, but I get bored of looking at the same thing every day. I live in front of my computer - it's gotta be pleasant to the eye :)

Technoir: Probably not. The default theme has changed twice since the pre-releases of DR0.14, and I would imagine that it'll be changed for DR0.16 too.

Emissary: Technoir, you run e.themes.org, what made you want to help run E's themes site versus another window manager?

Mandrake: He didn't want to. I had to threaten his computer :)

Technoir: As far as I'm concerned there are very few (if any) other WMs which allow the same level of customization as E. Say, for Window Maker, the themes as basically colour schemes and new application icons. You could easily spot any Window Maker desktop a mile off, as the windows and the general desktop, will retain the same structure. With E, you can make the desktop look and behave almost anyway you like. If you just showed someone a screenshot of both the default theme and of Hand of God, I think it would be difficult for them to accept that they were both using the same engine.

Emissary: Technoir, what do you see as Enlightenment's best features?

Technoir: I have to say, I love the new config system. It's much easier to do things that in the older versions, and allows for much greater variety of options.

Emissary: Technoir, what would you like to see in future incarnations of E (features, looks, etc.)?

Technoir: If menus and containers are up to scratch in DR0.15, the next needed feature will be the pagers. How exactly this will be done, I have no idea, as they are not just desktops any more. They are movable windows, so a simple fvwm style pager (4 desktops in a square) probably won't work as the desktops are not next to each other in the same way as they are in fvwm.

Emissary: What type of system do you test and run E on? Furthermore, what would you like to see as the minimum system requirements to run E well?

Raster: Umm.. sorry to disappoint but I actually test e on PII-30''s with 128Mb and Millenium II 8mb cards (one PCI one AGP) - I dont often sit at any other machine since these 2 are my work and home boxes. I have personally run E on alphas, sparcs and ARM machines quite happily - but I dont actually test it because I simply dont have those machines myself. I'm not wealthy by any means. I only own 1 computer - its no a shabby one, but I don't have the money to go buying 5 different architectures. I'd love to test it on all but as a free software developer doing this in his spare time evenings and weekend I make do with what I have. I need a box in front of me since this is X development I need to SEE whats going on and that means I need to buy a machine and a display for it (running remotely onto another display docent help debug local display bugs / characteristics).

Mandrake: I have run E on everything from a 486/33 with either 16 or 24 megs of ram (I don't remember) to a pII/333 with 128+ megs of ram. I was shocked when I noticed how well E held up on the low end system, actually. (whilst we were up in northern Virginia a week or two ago, we installed E on a 486 for some guy - simply amazing that it held up so well)

Technoir: I run E on a Dual PII 300 with 320Mb RAM. I generally don't test it, but as I use it a number of problems invariably appear. The minimum system requirements are probably more specific to the theme rather than the window manager as a whole. You could, for example, make a very simple theme, which would probably run fine on a low end system (486/sx or something).

Barath: What is the extent of gnome support in E, as it was one of the first WM's that had some gnome support?

Raster: Well currently ICEWM, E and WindowMaker have GNOME support in order of most extensive / working and useable support E is on the top - ICEWM is close (needs some changes to "catch up") and WindowMaker is um... fairly behind. There have been proposals for gnome WM hints on pages for months and they are free to implement them but haven't yet - gnome.c from E's source tree in GNOME cvs is a pretty good level of documentation and a startpoint for gnome compliance. It's fully commented.

Mandrake: basically, E is the standard of gnome support, seeing as gnome hint stuff goes into E first for testing :)

Technoir: Since Raster wrote the first GNOME hints code into E, it basically defines the extent of the GNOME support.

Barath: Mandrake, do you see the E config editor being able to graphically configure all elements of E?

Mandrake: That is the goal, here. You shouldn't HAVE to ever touch the config file if you don't want to, although there may be some advantages to it, if you're an advanced user.

Barath: How do you make the graphics for the default theme for E? What is your inspiration for its design/look/feel?

Raster: Ummmmm... inspiration.. Don't know.. I just.. um.. drew... :) I use gimp for all of E's graphics. I've always likes dark displays and thus the display is darkish. Apart form that it's all free-form. :)

Barath: What other features do you want to add to E before you release 0.15?

Raster: More IPC, make menus work - cleanup tooltips, a few more toggle options for E's behavior, and a definite config file cleanup. Containers need to get finished too, and all current "features in progress" need finishing. Then comes QA for a while to weed out little buglets and strange stuff before the 0.15 release. Then its time to start on 0.16 :)

Mandrake: Containers - basically a much more powerful concept than the iconbox, but that's where the original concept came from. Imagine smaller desktop-like things that you can drag around like a window (not just like the floating desktops - these can be any size with or without handles) that can automatically or forcefully take windows/buttons/etc. and you can choose the buttons that can go in it, or the windows, etc...

Barath: What res mode do you run E in?

Raster: at home 1280x1024, at work 1600x1200 or 1920x1440 depending on what mood I'm in :)

Mandrake: I don't like to run in anything less than 1280x1024, but we try to make sure everything looks okay in 640x480, too.

Technoir: 1600 x 1200, although I have used it at 1024 x 768, but again, it does depend on the theme. There is no reason why you couldn't run it at 640x480, although how anyone can use X, never mind a WM, at that resolution I don't know.

Barath: Raster, what are your goals for imlib 2?

Raster: Layer-based graphics engine with image loading and rendering abilities, pixmaps and image sharing between clients (so server based), anti-aliased scaling, arbitrary mapping routines to allow arbitrary rotation and scaling of layers and images, alpha channel compositing, speedups here and there.. and more. Also possible threading of rendering routines for SMP machines (ie spawn 4 rendering threads for a 4CPU machine to max out its processing power). This is a big project - ambitious but doable - it will take a long time to see it come to completion though.

Barath: Technoir, as a theme creator, do you find the configuration of themes in E 0.14 and 0.15 to be easier or harder to use? Do you find it to be much more powerful?

Technoir: The new configuration system is a lot more powerful than in earlier releases. It it also much more consistent, in that in earlier releases each file for each part of theme, had it's own specific structure and style. The current .cfg setup is a lot cleaner and due to the way in which the actionclasses and such like are done, duplication of a specific method, be it a class to run an Eterm or to kill a window, is alot easier. If I had, say, 20 buttons which each load gimp, and each used the same actionclass then to make it load xv when you hold down alt could be done a lot quicker as only a single part of the code would have to be altered, rather than 20.





[ Reply to this item ]    [ Flat Mode ]

Anonymous   October 20, 02:49 PM
Subject: Nice job

Extremely good interview.. Everything I ever wanted to know.. except..
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! WHEN CAN WE SEE V.15 RELEASED!!!
[ Reply to this ]

Paul   October 20, 03:19 PM
Subject: Imblib Neccesities

Raster, don't forget about being able to apply realtime GIMP filters with Imlib.

- paul
[ Reply to this ]

Alexandre   October 20, 03:41 PM
Subject: What about theming the rotation of windows?

I havent played with a recent E but i saw that in AfterStep now when minimizing a window it s flipping backward..could we define the movement on that window in E so the windows could flip the way we want it? ;)

(just a crazy idea from someone who has a bad english :)
[ Reply to this ]

Kevin   October 20, 03:45 PM
Subject: Instead of X

What would be used in place of X if you chose not to stick with it? Broadway? What other options are available?
[ Reply to this ]

evarlast   October 20, 03:59 PM
Subject: Welp, I'm sold.

I've used E. I've used WM. I recently made a choice of WM. Unfortunately I wasn't aware of the GNOME standard E seems to have a hold on. As a GNOME user, it sounds like I would benefit from using E. So I will.

I have a question. Those are some high resolutions mentioned above. I'm wondering what kind of displays they are on, and if they are using completely custom fonts. Cuz the 75, and even 100dpi X fonts seem VERY small at those resolutions on my 19" monitor.

[ Reply to this ]

Bilbo   October 20, 04:19 PM
Subject: going going gone

If my ISP ever gets in gear and lets my linux box dial up again im definatly going to try E

i use Window Maker right now, and like it, but I think E has great potential!

Keep up the good work!
[ Reply to this ]

Luyseyal   October 20, 04:56 PM
Subject: Fonts for E

i haven't tested the new E15 TTF engine, but using XFSTT w/ E 14 has made using fonts very NICE.

shamelessplug

Jade Theme home:
http://www.austin.cc.tx.us/luyseyal/linux.html

i'm currently working on a nice Jade Eterm theme to go w/ the Xresources netscape stuff.

/shamelessplug

-l
[ Reply to this ]

roque   October 20, 04:58 PM
Subject: scroll

ACTION_SCROLL_WINDOWS moves all windows on the desktop.
I would like a ACTION_SCROLL_WINDOW to move only the focused window, I dont think its hard to do ;)
[ Reply to this ]

ben   October 20, 07:06 PM
Subject: E window rotation

Having just switched to Linux from '95 I must say E is one of the best pieces of eye candy one can show a '95 user...

the first WM I saw in action was AfterStep. Those flipping windows when minimizing are too cool. I only wish the flipping window was texture mapped with a windowshot... now that'd be cool. (if that were done with open GL or the like that'd be so cool :-)
thanks for everything Raster and all
[ Reply to this ]

Anonymous Coward   October 20, 07:28 PM
Subject: E

Simply put, E 0wnz j00! :-)
[ Reply to this ]

Patrick Lang   October 20, 08:55 PM
Subject: progress of E

I currently run E14, and have used E as my window manager since the fvwm-xpm days, and I have been extremely impressed all along. Just when I thought it couldn't get better around DR11-13, 14 came out and blew everything away for speed.

I like E mainly for the customizability, and it's a nice relief to sit down in front of a beautiful, stable system after using NT and Windows 95 at work.

keep up the good work!
kaotik funk
[ Reply to this ]

ntype   October 20, 09:55 PM
Subject: Good Job!

I found this interview to be very amusing and entertaining. I just want to know when E V15 will come out!
[ Reply to this ]

Michael Nielsen   October 21, 02:08 AM
Subject: E backend IPC as CORBA IDL's


You don't get into specifics about the E backend
IPC mecanism. What I would like to know is, if
E will support CORBA interfaces to its backend.


[ Reply to this ]

heo won   October 21, 08:13 AM

[ Reply to this ]

heo won   October 21, 08:22 AM

[ Reply to this ]

Florian Hars   October 21, 09:34 AM
Subject: Flipping windows

What the world really needs is a X server with
OpenGL and a window manager that uses this
feature to arbitrarily position all windows in
virtual space. See the screenshot at the URL.
[ Reply to this ]

Gio   October 21, 10:07 AM
Subject: E is really enlightenment for me

After tried some WMs, and I found E, I got enlightened and can't get back to use another WM again. Many thanks to Raster, Mandrake, and Technoir you do the very best jobs for free.
[ Reply to this ]

Michael Babcock   October 22, 02:46 PM
Subject: The problem with non-FVWM window managers

Is that, despite all their new features, they don't get the basic brilliance of FVWM right: virtual desktops.

I've tried all the other window managers, and even though they often have cool new things I'd like to have on my fvwm desktop, the lack of the virtual desktops ALWAYS brings me back to fvwm.

Virtual desktops are intuitive. I've seen several windows and mac users come to Linux, and comment on how much they like the virtual desktops.

If it's not broke why fix it? Window Makers workspaces are not the same. E's sliding desktops are not the same. A linear sequence of desktops is just NOT THE SAME as having a 2D geometric representation. I know where my applications are geometrically on my 3x3 desktop setup. I can think "I've got my emacs in the top left corner" and instantly slide over there with the mouse, or even faster with the ctrl-arrow combination with one hand. Compare this to the linear arrangement of E or window maker ("was my emacs on desk 4 or 7?").

E seems to emphasize configurability, but I was dissappointed when I read in this interview that ONCE AGAIN they would fail to allow us implement a "simple FVWM pager". Simple does not mean bad. Please prove me wrong and give us the flexibility to have a "simple fvwm-style pager"!

I want to use E for its other great features, but sometimes "feel" is more important than "look".

[ Reply to this ]

`Jag   October 22, 04:46 PM
Subject: Re: The problem with non-FVWM window managers

I can think of two windowmanagers off the top of my head that do pagers like that and aren't FVWM. One of them is Afterstep. I know this was originally based off of fvwm, but it is not fvwm anymore. There is also vtwm which does a great job in my opinion.

`Jag
[ Reply to this ]

Anonymous   October 22, 07:07 PM
Subject: Fvwm pager isnt all that I think

I dont much like the fvwm pager.. I think its kinda annoying just sitting there obscuring a big chunk of the bottom right view... But I Dont like multiple desktops either soo...
[ Reply to this ]

r-z-r   October 22, 09:06 PM
Subject: GNOME & E.

When we see a "gnome-everthing.rpm" is when I think windows will die. :)
[ Reply to this ]

Mithalas   October 23, 11:35 PM
Subject: E

I've been running linux for about 4 years off and on. One of the biggest things that has kept me going to linux was E. I've used fvwm and afterstep (afterstep being better not trying to be 95), E blows them both. The desktop idea is great and better than a pager. If you really think about it the desktops are just like the virtual windows in the pager, just no anoying pager to take up space on my desktop. CONGRATS and MANY Thanks to the E-Team for all the hard work and effort.

Mithalas
[ Reply to this ]

Barath Raghavan   October 26, 04:25 PM
Subject: Re: one question

We interviewed technoir as he is a theme creator and can give a different perspective on E's configurability.
[ Reply to this ]

Dr. Pimento   October 25, 12:11 PM
Subject: one question

who in the hell is technoir? has he contributed anything of value to the whole E project? no. has he contributed a theming/download site? yes. big stinking whoop. seems to me this weenie is trying to ride in on the coattails of people who are actually doing the work.

[ Reply to this ]

Barfman   October 27, 08:15 AM
Subject: Focus!

Before adding CORBA support or animated background pictures, please focus on the fundamental features such as those provided by fvwm1, so I can finally start to actually use the new E in daily work!

Keep up the good work, folks, and thanks!


[ Reply to this ]

Kim Slawson   October 27, 07:14 PM
Subject: OpenGL window manager

Florian,

I have thought the same thing for a long time
(the world needs a GLWM). Are you working on one
or should I go ahead and develop it?

Cheers,
Kim
[ Reply to this ]

Gid   October 27, 08:11 PM
Subject: OpenGL window manager

Kim, by all means please develop one. If Florian decides to create one also then great! But there doesnt have to be just one :)
[ Reply to this ]

BrienT   October 28, 12:57 AM
Subject: Techn0ir

Theme maker? Uhmm no. He himself calls his theme "Hand of god" a copy and paste theme (both configuration and images). Taken from other peoples work. I will leave my personnal opinions on his theme and its quality or lack there of, out of this. But he isnt a "theme maker". More-so a "theme recycler".
[ Reply to this ]

Cheesehead   November 03, 08:31 PM
Subject: OpenGL

I've seen in some NT5 Betas that menus no longer slide up and down when you activate them. If you have a GL card, they coalesce and disintegrate. It looks VERY cool. What are the chances of it being implemented in E?
[ Reply to this ]

Andrew   November 05, 08:38 PM
Subject: OpenGL

It's good to see that Microsoft is spending their development money well. While they waste time making NT5 look pretty, you just keep on making E work well.
[ Reply to this ]

Ken Chau   November 10, 10:28 AM
Subject: OpenGL

Okay, why do we even compare E with WinNT? It is inherently better cuz of the UNIX base - so quit thinking about the past (Microsoft) and keep thinking about the present/future (UNIX/Linux/E/GNOME!!)
[ Reply to this ]

mindedc   November 11, 04:02 PM
Subject: fvwm style pagers

You can't beat the fvwm pager, you can easily scoot windows arround and between the desktops. At a glance you knowwhere everything is and if something is on another desktop and you want it on the current one, you just drag it on over... I'm not real crazy about the sliding desktops. It's much less powerfull given the speed problems in rasterizing the background for the window if the background has come out of cache. I jst feels clunky to slide the windows arround too... you have a layering problem.. I know there are some advanced controls for that, but I would like to think that the development crew is looking for some intuitiveness about the environment.
The other trend seems to be the buttons used in CDE and KDE... This is really silly to me... it takes away the ability to look at the pager and see where what and move it without the window manager haveing to actually display the desktop.

As far as the arguement about the pager "taking up a large portion of the screen", buy a larger monitor or run a higher resolution! This isn't windoez, we KNOW better than to try to use a low resolution display for a GUI.
[ Reply to this ]

Speedyj   November 21, 12:48 PM
Subject: E

Have you guys started getting death threats from Microsoft yet?

Once 1.0 is complete, they should seriously start to worry ;). I'm using a computer with E on in my halls of residence, and all of my friends (most of whom haven't even heard of linux) who see me using E or play with it, all comment on how pathetic it makes windoze look.
[ Reply to this ]

grungee   November 29, 09:00 AM
Subject: work to be done

eye candy is great
only usability is lacking --

what happened to virtual floating
menu's ?

it would be great if we could use this
E desktop for real work!

you need some kind of functionality built in
[ Reply to this ]

Jon Rista   December 09, 10:39 PM
Subject: MMX and E

The bit about WinNT5 and the fading menues. I beta-test NT5, and fading menues and window-wipes, etc dont use OpenGL, then use MMX. I personally dont care much for any Microsoft O/S. But MS is smart in that they use MMX to enhance the speed of graphics processes.

I love E, it is absolutly bar-non the prettiest window manager that I have ever seen. It also hase a very complete feature set. Stability is also a non-problem (compared to WinNT). My only problem with it is speed. When compared to BlackBox or Window Maker, E crawls. I know that you cant have your cake and eat it too, but with Unix and E, who knows! I would love to see Enlightenment support MMX. It could help speed up image processing greatly. It would also open possibilities such as REAL transparency for Eterm, fading menues, faster window sliding (when windows slide onto the desktop) and more.

I know platform portability is an issue, but I'm not asking E to solely support Intel MMX processors. Just add support, and use MMX if it is available.

GREAT WORK GUYS! I CANT WAIT TO HAVE MY CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!

Happy Coding!
[ Reply to this ]

Myrridin   January 17, 04:26 PM
Subject: When will E respect the Gnome panel ?

I love E and GNOME, and i use it in my daily work.
I just have one question:

When will E (and other GNOME-complaint wms) begin to respect the GNOME-panel ?

So that you could maximize the windows whitout having to mimimize the panel and resize the windows ?

btw, When (if) shipping it with RH6.0, make sure there are LOTS of themes on the CD :) (and of course, a way of handling these in the Gnome-E-capplet(the same goes for GTK+ themes)

Very very nice work people !

/
Myrridin

Hmm, Mandrake, will the Enlightened inc site be up soon ?
[ Reply to this ]

© Copyright of all documents belonging to this site by linuxpower.org and linuxpower.com © 1998, 1999. For more legal information please look at our disclaimer page.