ion-devel

credmp · Posted: Thu Jul 25, 2002 10:57 am Post subject: ion-devel

Hey,

I just emerged ion-devel and I must say that I am impressed... didn't think such a simple wm could make me very happy... but seeing that 9 out of 10 hours a day I am behind my laptop I spend banging on the keyboard, it makes a nice change...

and seeing this:

orochi · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Aug 2002 Posts: 76

i just tried it... and i love it, its supremely functional for stuff like browsers, terms, and editors, and the 0% wasted screen space is great... more ppl should give this little gem a try

orochi · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Aug 2002 Posts: 76

very cool, i would like to see then implement mouse drag resizing tho, but i guess i should post that in their mailing list , im liking this wm more as i use it

woa, looks liek they do have that feature,,, shoulda read the man pages more clearly

chardros · Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 3:53 am Post subject:

I switched to Ion about a week ago (from Fluxbox) and I haven't thought of going back.

chardros · Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 8:25 am Post subject:

Well, for starters - you definately want to emerge ion-devel (as opposed to just ion). All the active development is on ion-devel atm. There are several versions of ion-devel newer than what is in portage, but unless you *really* need something introduced in one of them, the version in portage is fine. Mailing list archive answers a lot of questions: http://rt.fm/ion/archive/

One thing I spent a lot of time on was figuring out how to have certain applications default to opening in certain Ion frames. There's talk of this on the mailing list ('current'), but I can give ya a quick concise overview (you'll want to do this eventually, plus it' nice when you log into X to have your desktop immediatly organized to your taste with all your starting apps):

1) Name the frame - when you create a frame, give it a name by calling the "query_renameframe" function from within the frame (default keybindin for calling an Ion function is Alt-F3).
2) Edit kludges.conf and use an example to create an entry for the application you have in mind, you'll need to determine the Class an Instance name of the app. Use "xlsclients -al" with the app running to determine this. For some windows (like a Gaim chat window) you'll need to run "xprop WM_CLASS", then click on the window to determine it. Anyway, once you've determined the app's class/instance, in kludges.conf you just set the "Target" for that class/instance to the name you gave the frame. All future instances of that app/window type will open in that frame.

BTW - Ion only writes out it's workspace.conf files upon a restart and only reads in changes to things like kludges.conf upon a restart. F11 is the default key binding for restarting. Once in Ion, ALT-F1 will bring up the Ion man page which will describe all these key bindings. All configurable.

Ion doesn't handle all transient windows nicely. Biggest one is XMMS - but there is a fix. This post (http://rt.fm/ion/archive/2001-11/0013.html) details the "fix" which can be applied to xmms to have it work nicely. I did it - it's great.

Once you get it set up, it just all works, and it's great. I use screen a LOT, so I have Ion's functions such as "ssh to host" and "edit file", etc etc configured to open up new screen windows in my primary wokspace frame (which runs my screen session). I also modified my .screenrc to give me a nice screen task bar with the time and a decent window list.

If your interested in any of the changes to ion-ssh, ion-edit, the screenrc or anything, I can provide. I also have an ebuild for ion-20020926 (latest ion-devel) which includes the MetaDoMe patch (for things like a dock, task list, etc).

That was long winded. Hope you can take something from it.

chardros · Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 4:17 pm Post subject:

Here are a few screenshots of my Ion desktop for those not
familiar with how Ion might look.

http://chardros.com/ion-afterlogin.jpg
http://chardros.com/ion-stuffgoingon.jpg

Warning: screenshots are large. Taken from 3200x1200 desktop.

xr31Daisy · Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 4:25 pm Post subject:

Green characters on a dark background. You'd almost thing you're 20 years back, with monochrome terminals. Exactly the kind of thing that would send any newbie screeming for help. I love it :twisted:

I'll stay with gnome/metacity, but I'll keep an eye open.

chardros · Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 4:47 pm Post subject:

Heh. Of course the colors are entirely configurable, and indeed default to something "less retro" looking. I had to work to make it look 20 yrs old

.

OdinsDream · Veteran Joined: 01 Jun 2002 Posts: 1057

So bizzare... it looks very text-based. I dont see any screenshots with Gaim buddy conversations open...mozilla browsers, things like that. Does ION even have a mouse cursor?

heathkit · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2002 Posts: 38

chardros · Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2002 11:55 pm Post subject:

OdinsDream: Yes, Ion has a mouse cursor and yes you can run all the GUI apps you want. It's not limited to text apps in any way; I just prefer them most of the time.

heathkit: I threw my ion stuff up here: http://chardros.com/ion/

ebuild, config samples, scripts and all that stuff is there. Hope it helps.

br14n · n00b Joined: 10 Oct 2002 Posts: 43

I also switched to ion from fluxbox recently, and I'm ecstatic. I thought that the pane-splitting model was crude when I looked at it at first, but that just shows how fooled I was by the overlapping window paradigm. This auto-tiling behaviour is like auto-maximized over the available area. It's great. I had to screw around with my .Xdefaults and stuff to get some reasonable xterm defaults, but now it rocks. Bad behaving applications that open new windows look a little strange, but they work ok.

ShiVa · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2003 7:39 pm Post subject: