[as-devel] Re: AS convert, want to help
Ethan (allanon@crystaltokyo.com)
Tue, 24 Oct 2000 14:44:09 -0700 (PDT)
On Sun, 22 Oct 2000, Woodrow wrote:
> Hello Ethan,
>
> I am writing to you for several reasons. First and foremost is to say
> "thanks, kudos, well done, wonderful, kick-ass, the best" and any other
> praises you wish to include for AfterStep. Please spread them around to
> the rest of the team.
> I tried AfterStep a while back (think it was 1.5.x, may have been
> older), and was very happy with the design, but it was quite buggy (or I
> was quite naive) and so I went on a long search for a window manager that
> would meet my "requirements".
> Over the past year or so I have tried every window manager know to the
> Linux world. And although there are a lot of good, stable ones out there,
> none of them seemed to meet my "requirements". To say the least, I was
> getting quite frustrated.
> I recently switched distros to Mandrake-Linux 7.1. It comes with a lot
> of window managers which it installs by default. For some reason though,
> although it has AfterStep 1.8.1 on the CD, it did not install it.
> Anyway, I tried all the others, and still none seemed to meet the bill.
> A few days ago I was perusing the CD and noticed that AfterStep was on
> it. I figured I'd give it a try. Wow! No, let me re-phrase that.
> WOW!!!!!
> Why isn't AfterStep on every *nix desktop in the world? :-)
> Seriously, it has the best (IMHO) of all the others without the bloat,
> constraints and/or bugs. I just can't understand why I don't hear, see
> and read more about it.
> I personaly like a NeXT style look and functionality. That reduced my
> choices to AS, WindowMaker and maybe BlackBox? And although BlackBox is
> small and fast, to me it's not intuitive, the "toolbar" is an eye-sore and
> useless, and the "Slit" does not support anything but "mini-apps".
> WindowMaker, although a nice piece of programming and quite useable, is too
> limiting. You don't have any choices in the titlebar buttons (unless your a
> programmer maybe) and if you've ever tried to get Gkrellm to "doc", well,
> it's a frustrating experience, to say the least.
> AfterStep has none of these (again, IMHO) drawbacks. So why, I can't
> help but ask, isn't it more widely used? I may be wrong here, but in
> reading in the Linux press, and browsing different Linux websites, I hardly
> ever see a mention of it. Again, nothing against WindowMaker, but it seems
> to get all the press, and AfterStep is so much better.
> Sorry, I don't mean to get on a soapbox with you. You of all people
> know how good AS is. It's just I was so blown away by it that I can't
> understand why it isn't more hailed in user circles.
> Okay, off the soapbox and on to the other reasons I am writing you. I
> would like to help. I am not a programmer, but I am reasonably literate,
> and could possibly help with documentation. If you could forward this to
> Charlie Schmidt or whoever is now in charge of documentation, I would
> appreciate it.
> I also beleive (and pray) that developement is still ongoing, and
> would be willing to "road-test" any new developments. As a "typical"
> end-user I would most likely break anything that could be broken, and
> therefore help to kill some bugs. I admit I've never used or done any
> CVS work, but I am willing and able to start. Please let me know if this
> is desirable.
> And finally, (if you've read this far I'm sure thankfull ;-) I have
> already joined the users mailing list. I will take the time to help
> other users where I can, and make suggestions and/or comments about
> possible future enhancements. That last part will be hard though, as I
> can't think of too many things that could possibly make AS better!
> I know this was a long e-mail, and I spent time on a soapbox, but I
> must say Ethan that I am so tickled with AS I was compelled.
> Thanks for reading this novel. Please let me know if there is anything
> I can do to help.
>
> Robert Boudreau (wfcall@onewest.net)
>
Hehe, cool. User emails like this make my day. :) And also make me
wish I were still active in AfterStep development... unfortunately, due
mainly to time contraints, I pretty much dropped out of AS development
after 1.8 was released and tested. I'll certainly forward this to the
current devel team via the devel mailing list. If you'd like to contact
them directly, I recommend the #afterstep channel on IRC on the EFNet
network, the devel list, the user list, and personal email, in that order.
I agree with you completely on the quality of AfterStep. It was an
awesome window manager when I joined the team (1.4.x), and it has only
gotten better since then. Vast amounts of customizability is AS's
strongest point. And unfortunately it's weak point as well. Here's
the reason I believe the major distros do not use AS any more than they
do: no nifty GUI editor for changing options. AS has a huge number of
options, but unless you're willing to edit your config files by hand it's
nigh on impossible to change anything. And the sheer number of options
can be daunting as well. Fortunately, there's an initiative under way to
update ASCP (the AfterStep Control Panel from v1.0 days) to a brand new
GTK+ driven version supporting the new options and file formats.
Anyways, I'll send this on to the devel list.
----
Ethan Fischer
allanon@crystaltokyo.com
http://members.xoom.com/allanon1