Suggestions RE: JWM

[Member loosewheel]

I had a little play with all three window managers, but ended up concentrating on JWM. I managed to get it to do what I want, but it was a little bit broken. I fixed up the broken bits, and threw in my two cents to get JWM to work a bit better for me. I noticed that one of the updates tried to overwrite one on the files I changed. It would be better to have a fully working system out of box so future updates don’t break anything. Is this the place to put forward suggestions, and if not, does anyone know where that would be?

Thanks.

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[Anonymous]

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Your screenshot looks nice.
Go ahead and post your suggestions here. One of the moderators can easily move the topic to a different category if it fits better elsewhere.

one of the updates tried to overwrite one on the files I changed.

System updates should never disturb any of your
~/.jwm/*
-pathed configuration files. If you edit any of the files pathed under /usr/share/… yes, we can (should) expect they’re subject to being overwritten during system updates. JWM (and most other programs) will first check the presence of the config files pathed under your home directory. Only if those are absent will it fallback to using the generic//global config files.

[Member loosewheel]

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Thanks skidoo.

First the bugs:

The file update-jwm-themes.sh appears to be missing. A call in the terminal resulted in not a command. This command updates the theme-list file with the sub-menu structure for the installed themes. I reproduced this file in my install, although it works a little differently.

The menu command Update Menu breaks. This calls desktop-menu to reconstruct the window managers’ menus. This appears to be called when upgrading with apt, as the last three lines is what this command puts out. This command updates the files:
/usr/share/desktop-menu/.fluxbox/menu-applications
/usr/share/desktop-menu/.icewm/menu-applications
/usr/share/desktop-menu/.jwm/menu-applications
which the various menus under the user’s directory just link to. This works during updates because the update is called with root privileges, but fails with a call from the user’s space. I fixed this by giving write access to all on these files.

The suggestions:

Rather than select the theme and then restart JWM separately, I incorporated them in the single menu option. You can just append && jwm -restart after the file copy as it does work, but jwm -p issues warnings as it is not well formed xml. So I made a bash script, jwm-set-theme, to do the copy with an option to restart JWM, so the menu contains a single command call. The theme names then can contain spaces, but not double quotes.

I don’t know what the original update-jwm-themes.sh did, but the version I made also calls jwm -reload. This made the restart option on the theme menu redundant, so I dropped it.

All the icons for main menus and trays are specified as full path. This means the icons remain static when you change the icon theme in gtk, but JWM has a tag to specify paths to search for icons. I made a file called iconpaths and included it in ~/.jwmrc. I made a script, jwm-icon-paths, to produce this file with a list of the directories for the currently selected gtk icon paths. Then follows, hard coded in the script, the paths to the Faenza-Cupertino-mini icons as fallback, then to /usr/share/pixmaps as fallback-fallback. Then to .jwm/images (more below). And took out the directory paths and extensions from the icons in the menu and tray files.

JWM can have images for the title bar buttons. These entries have to be full path qualified to work, but being under the user’s directory they are not easily transported. This is where the directory .jwm/images (under the user’s directory) comes in, placing all theme images here. Then in the theme file only the image file name (including the extension) is needed, making the theme transportable.

After the icon theme in gtk is changed JWM has to be updated and restarted. Rather than have two options (Update Menu and Update Icons) on the menu I made a script, jwm-update-components, to incorporate them as a single call.

I have no experience with bash script. I had about 20 tabs open because I had to look up each command. I couldn’t attach them to the post. If you want them to look at/use/whatever, just let me know how to get them there. I placed them in /usr/bin.

Cheers.

[Anonymous]

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The file update-jwm-themes.sh appears to be missing.

That file is provided by the package named menu-jwm-antix…
but I’m uncertain that script (or that .deb package) is still used.

[Member loosewheel]

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The menu-jwm-antix package is in the repository but not installed, and does contain that file. I don’t know why its not included in the install. The theme list menu option Update themes list makes a direct call to it, and without it does not function. There are a couple of other scripts in that package, perhaps they break something.

[Anonymous]

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Until anticapitalista or antiX-Dave can reply to say whether the non-installed package is no longer used, or is something brand new, I found this: desktop-session-antix (as seen at github.com or gitlab.com)

Maybe that would be the appropriate package to provide your additional scripts. (idunno, I am a fluxbox user, rarely touch JWM.)
If so, instead of juggling file attachments in forum, you could just fork the git repo, add your changes, and issue a pull request.

I have no experience with bash script. I had about 20 tabs open because I had to look up each command. I couldn’t attach them to the post. If you want them to look at/use/whatever, just let me know how to get them there. I placed them in /usr/bin.

“20 tabs open because I had to look up each command.”
Same here. 20 browser tabs, plus 6+ terminal emulator tabs displaying manpages…

The git process, the workflow, is quick but if you would prefer to post attachments in forum, maybe zip or gzip the files and retry. I don’t remember whether the forum software rejects based on blacklisted file extensions, or parses uploaded files to check for #! line but I doubt it unpacks archivefiles to inpect the contents.

[Member loosewheel]

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Thanks skidoo for the information. I’ll have a look at that.

I’ll try and attach them as a zip.

If you’re downloading them you’re probably going to inspect them first, but just as a heads up:

You can try:
jwm-set-theme –help
jwm-icon-paths –help

but calling:
jwm-update-components
update-jwm-themes.sh
will just do it.

Attachments:

1. scripts.zip

[Member devilalice]

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Hi ! Just made a fresh installation of Antix i386 19.2 full to my old laptop. I also use JWM-ROX, so I can confirm the problem of missing update-jwm-themes.sh still exists. Without it I can’t get my own custom theme appeared in the list (Menu -> Themes -> Update themes list [not working]). I also solved it with “apt-get install menu-jwm-antix” like I did it in past with Antix 17 (I thought it was so because base iso was chosen that time). I suppose it’s bug actually and the package should be added to the full/base Antix iso’s.

UPD: It seems fixed now – while apt-get upgrade I had to upgrade this package explicitly:

Start-Date: 2020-04-20 01:19:59
Commandline: apt-get install desktop-defaults-jwm-antix
Requested-By: ****
Upgrade: desktop-defaults-jwm-antix:i386 (0.5.17, 0.6.0)
Remove: menu-jwm-antix:i386 (0.4.0)
End-Date: 2020-04-20 01:20:06

The required script is in desktop-defaults-jwm-antix now: checked it with dpkg -L

Thank you !

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by devilalice.

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Thanks to loosewheel!

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

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