Version 3.0.5 Welcome to yet another, long awaited release of FVWM-Crystal project! This time it's a "development" version, not polished, rather sturdy, but working as usual. There are new recipes, support for new applications and, of course, bugfixes (and new bugs). But before I'll start listing all of the new features, I want to give huge thanks to Dominique Michel, the person who almost single handedy created this version. At first, Dominique started his own fork of Crystal, called "Crystal Audio", but after a while I've asked him to combine his modifications in the main tree, and here they are. At one point in the Crystal's development there were so much different patches in my darcs repository (some of them applied from Michel's emails, some grabbed from his own darcs repo), that my copy of the repository became extremely slow and sluggish. I've tried to resolve the problems, but the easiest way to do that was to abandon my own version of the repository, and just start from scratch using Dominiques version. Because of that those of you, who are using Crystal from the darcs repo, may experience problems on the upgrade; I'm suggesting downloading a new fresh copy of the repository and applying your changes on it. Now it's time to list some of the major features of the upcomming version! - two new recipies: SilentHacker (clean and aesthetic), and Thin (modified version of Nebulae) - new default behaviour of the "Default" and "Default with ACPI" window lists; because many of you wanted to see windows only from the current page, this mode is used as a standard - you can of course modify it in the recipies - some application icons (Mozilla applications, commercial applications like Acrobat Reader and others) have been removed due to the incompatibility with GPL license. I'm planning to release a separate package with additional non-free artwork. I hope that now there will be no problem with including this release in Debian GNU/Linux - if you will find other icons which need to be removed, let me know - Crystal has now support for session management, it automatically recognizes that a session manager is active and gives additional controls for saving and restoring sessions - new supported software: MOC, Audacious and alsaplayer music player, amixer (at last!) audio mixer, stalonetray and mplayer - application database has been reorganized to be more friendly with FreeDesktop.org standards - there are many new applications in the app database There are also many more numerous bugfixes and improvements, if you want, you can check out the ChangeLog. I hope that you will like this version - there are many things which need polishing, but I hope that these issues will be solved in the next release. Right now I'm planning to focus on the Crystal's website and the wiki, to make a good place with documentation on-line. Until next time! Maciej Delmanowski ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0.4 Well, new release after almost three months... What's new: - main configuration is now kept in '~/.fvwm-crystal/'. If you want to keep your settings, you can just rename old '~/.fvwm/' to a new one. If you won't do that, you will start like with fresh installation. - there are now two packages: main 'fvwm-crystal', and a stripped-down version, 'fvwm-crystal-minimal'. In the "minimal" release you will find 4 recipes, a selected set of application icons, and window decorations. Other than that, it's good old Crystal. This version is mainly for LiveCD based distributions (made especially for grml (http://www.grml.org/). You can also use it to try Crystal, and if you like it - install the full version. - in the new version you will find new window decoration - "MicroClear", based on "Clear". There are also two new desktop recipes: "Light", with just pager on the top of the screen, trayer in the corner and menu accessible under the left mouse button (press and hold to open it), and "SideLine", with panels in the lower-left corner and autohiding window list on the bottom of the screen. - in main 'config' file you can find two new variables: $FVWM_DISTROMENUDIR - a directory with application database generated by distribution-based script, for example using Debian Menu system $FVWM_DISTROMENUNAME - name of a menu generated by the script, used to include/exclude it in the app panels or menus. By default it's set to "debian". All recipes are updated to use these variables. Using $FVWM_DISTROMENUNAME you can change the name of the system application menu, and icon used to display it. For example, you can change "debian" to "ubuntu", generate a menu with that name and have it displayed with a Ubuntu logo. - Michael Stilkerich created new Clock scripts. They now get time format from the user's locale settings and properly use it (by displaying 12h or 24h). Using left mouse button you can toggle the display of date/time, right mouse button toggles between 12h and 24h mode. - Szervac Attila created the Hungarian translation of Crystal, thanks! - Crystal now recognizes UTF-8 environment and properly sets fonts in the menus. I left the fonts in window decorations intact, but if FVWM developers won't do something about the UTF-8 support in FVWM, I guess I'll have to fix all of them too... - there's a new Dvorak keyboard layout you can use. There's no menu option for that, so if you have Dvorak keyboard, you can either put the commands below to the '~/.fvwm-crystal/userconfig' file: Include components/desktop/Keyboard-Dvorak Include components/desktop/Keyboard-Dvorak_NumLock or modify the recipe you're using. Well, that would be it. As usual, you can find complete list of changes in the ChangeLog. Have fun, and see you next time! Maciej Delmanowski, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0.3 Again a very quick release, but at least this one should be ok now - at least I hope... What's new: - There's a dedicated Debian menu support - if you will create /Applications/debian category, it will be specially treated on the app panels and menus (there will be a category icon shown, instead of an application icon). /Applications/debian category is not included in the database by default, instead it will be created using Debian menu system and available in the FVWM-Crystal's .deb package. - I've added "Mouse Bindings Reference" in the documentation - now you can know everything about your desktop bindings. :-) - 'fvwm-crystal' startup script has been changed, now it looks in the '../share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm' for the config files - that means, if you have Crystal installed in /usr/local directory, script must be in /usr/local/bin and configuration files must be in /usr/local/share/... directory; similar situation with the /usr installation. On the bright side, there's no need now to edit the startup script. - Makefile has been cleaned up, it should now work smoothly. Installation parameters are changed a little, instead of 'PREFIX=' you need to use 'prefix=' in the command line. Well, I guess that's it... If there will be any problems to fix, just let me know on . Have fun! :-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0.2 Bugs hunt me with each version :-) This is a "quick fix" release, just with small fixes and improvements: - Makefile script was modified to support different directories with 'fvwm-crystal.desktop' files, some distributions use /usr/share/xsessions and some use /etc/X11/Sessions; make will check which one is available and put the .desktop file in it. Also there's new 'make dist', so there should no problems with file permissions from now on. - I've added a ViM syntax hilighting file, 'addons/fvwm.vim'. If you use vim, you can put it in ~/.vim/syntax/ directory. Also almost all configuration files have now vim modeline, so they should be recognized as FVWM configuration files. Recently BerliOS servers have become voulnerable - they had world-readable password files. Here's the full story: http://metawire.org/~parasitical/vulns/berliospass/ Because of that I'm planning to move FVWM-Crystal project to another server, http://gna.org/, so this will be the last release on the BerliOS servers. When that happens, I'll let you know on the website and the mailing list about the change. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0.1 It's been 3 months since FVWM-Crystal 3.0, there are now few interesting changes in the code, so I decided to release new version. Changes are not yet complete, for example localizations are not updated... New, simplified installation procedure -------------------------------------- Michael Stilkerich created new 'Makefile' script, cleaner and simplified. Now all you need to install Crystal is to issue command: make [PREFIX=/usr] install The [PREFIX=] part is optional and can be used to change default installation directory. You can now also uninstall Crystal by issuing command make [PREFIX=/usr] uninstall "NumLock Hell" is over ;-) -------------------------- From the beginning Crystal users suffered because of the problems with NumLock - FVWM recognizes it as another keyboard modifier, so when it was on, many keyboard bindings or mouse functions didn't work. This version will eliminate that problem. I couldn't use "IgnoreModifiers" function (didn't work as expected), so I literally copied each binding and added NumLock as another modifier - for example there are now "Alt + grave" and "Alt + NumLock + grave" bindings. This system is transparent and can be easily turned off, because NumLock bindings are in separate files. Currently NumLock affects only numeric keyboard - when it's on, you can write numbers; when it's off, you can use window controls. All other keyboard and mouse bindings work in either NumLock state. Icons from The Tango Project ---------------------------- I decided to use icons from the Tango Project (http://www.tango-project.org/) on desktop panels and in the menus. Also application categories got their own icons, visible in the application menus. You will have to update your recipes if, for example, you will not see icons on the panel because of the filename changes. This also results in colorset changes, one colorset ($[cs-panel-inactive-MiniIon]) is removed, because it's not needed anymore - it was used to "colorize" b&w icons on the panels. Rearranged application database (again) --------------------------------------- Sorry for that, it probably drives you nuts by now... ;-) I moved the app categories around, so they will be "compatible" with Tango Project's icons and probably with GNOME/KDE application categories. Of course there are new applications and icons supported, as usual. GDM login manager support ------------------------- If GDM is installed and running, it's used to shutdown or reboot the computer instead of the 'sudo' command. You can also create new session, fullscreen or nested, from the Exit menu. If GDM is not present or running, old 'sudo' commands will be used instead. Updated audio & music player support ------------------------------------ - You can now select preffered music player and audio mixer separately, for example use 'mpd' to play music and 'aumix' to control audio volume. - There's added support for XMMS2 player, however it's not yet complete. - There's new key binding: Alt + Shift + /. It toggles between random and sequential playback. Changes in the recipes: ----------------------- - "Nebulae" recipe has now "FVWM-Crystal" submenu in the main applications menu. - There are new recipes: "Clean" is similar to "Clean Vertical", but has horizontal desktop placement; "TopDown" has bigger pager window on the top edge of the screen, and application panel on the bottom edge. Changes in window focus system: ------------------------------- - There is now different focus method for 'ClickToFocus' and 'SloppyFocus' options; the difference: while using SloppyFocus when you switch desktops, at first window which has mouse pointer is focused, if there's none, last used window is focused. ClickToFocus uses "old" method, without checking which window has mouse pointer. - There is now small resistance when you try to move windows off the screen edge - that should prevent the "desktop switching bug" a little, because it will be now harder to move a window off the screen. New keyboard bindings --------------------- - Alt + Home - moves mouse pointer to the top-left corner of the screen - easy way to get rid of it when it stands in your way. - Alt + h, j, k, l - moves windows to the respective desktop edges (like movement keys in Vi), centered on the edge. - Alt + Shift + h, j, k, l - moves windows to the desktop corners (h - top left, j - bottom left, k - top right, l - bottom right). Other minor changes: -------------------- - Transient and "Untitled" windows have now titlebars, except of "OpenOffice.org" windows, because of the toolbar system - "Urgency hint' functions in FVWM are cleared, so now gajim should work as expected (it will not focus it's window when on each received message) - Menus with long creation time (like the wallpapers menu) will show the "busy" cursor for an indication that something is happening. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0 Well, here it is... I would like to thank all the people who helped me with this project, for their ideas and support... Thanks :-) OK, enough with the small talk... There aren't many drastical changes from the previous release. Many bugs were hunt down and crushed, there is new window decoration (for all those dark-desktop lovers out there), there is some new documentation (description of the new application database). What you can notice pretty fast is lack of titlebar on the transient windows. That's because of new OO.org 2.0 and it's detachable toolbars - they just had double titlebars, so I've had to do something with that and this was the only solution. I hope that you will like the idea. You can now put wallpapers in '~/.fvwm/wallpapers/' directory as well as in '~/wallpapers/'. That makes Crystal configuration even more consistent, I guess... I know that you have sometimes small changes, which you had to put in a recipe, but these changes are good for most of them (for example new keybindings). There was no easy way to add them - but now it is. If you create a file called '~/.fvwm/userconfig', it will be loaded after all Crystal configuration and recipes. Now everything can be in one place :) Well, that's it. I'm packaging and releasing a full version, hope that you will like it. Have fun :-) Maciej Delmanowski ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0.RC3 What's new: * New application menu/panel generator -------------------------------------- At least, Rafal Bisingier brings new version of his application panel generator, completely rewritten and with new database system. Here are it's most interesting features: - database is based on a directory and file structure. Each menu and submenu is a category, each file is the program entry. Metainformation about installed programs is included in the file name. Basically, each "file" in the database is a script which is executed by FVWM when a program from a menu or panel is selected (therefore all files need to have executable flag set). In the script itself you can put any command(s) you want. You can find more information about the database structure by executing 'fvwm-crystal.apps --help' - you can combine different "database trees" into one large menu system - system-wide database and user-wide database can be easily created and maintained - menu and panel generator is very flexible, allowing for example creation of submenus that popup upwards instead of (standard) downwards, or creating different menus for different places * New recipe, "Nebulae" ----------------------- If you like Windows-like Start menu and toolbar, you should try this recipe :) Most of the features are there, including trayer and pager window shown/hidden using a button on the panel. When you click on the "Crystal" menu with LMB, a menu with available applications pops up, middle click shows the old "system menu". * Support for Nautilus file manager ----------------------------------- If you don't like ROX-Filer, but want to have icons on the desktop, you can use Nautilus - it's mow selectable from the 'Preferences" menu if you want to have desktop manager, and which one (of both ROX and Nautilus are installed). Unfortunately Nautilus has it's own menu under RMB so "instant terminal" won't be possible... Unless you bind it to the middle mouse button which works as usual. And of course you can change desktop wallpaper using Crystal built-in menu, while using the Nautilus desktop (gconftool needs to be installed for this to work). * Old "Exit" menu brought back ------------------------------ I've been criticized because of the "safe" Exit menu, so the old one is back by default. If you want to use the safer version, it's still available as 'components/functions/Exit-Safe'. * Changes in the icon system ---------------------------- There is new default application icon, taken from the GNOME default iconset, it looks nicer than transparent X, I hope. :) Image path is now relative to the icon theme directory, not inside it, so you can change the preferred icon size easier. There is also support for user-side icons (you still need to maintain the directory structure in your ~/.fvwm/, including the icon theme name) - if Crystal finds an icon in the user directory structure, it will be used instead of the original one. That are the most interesing changes, I think... There are also many bugfixes, like "black panels" after startup or shadow effect in the FvwmMPD windows. Just updated translations are missing from this release, which I hope will change with 3.0 version. Because of that I'm beginning "call for translators" - if you want to have FVWM-Crystal in your own (or favourite) language, send the translated .po files to harnir@post.pl, I happily include them in the 3.0 release :) I'm giving you time until Haloween, 31st of October. Until then, have fun with new version :) Maciej Delmanowski, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0.RC2 What's new: This time I didn't change directory structure too much, sorry guys ;) * New window decoration system ------------------------------ Basically, window decorations are now defined by two "factors" - how they should look (a theme) and what kind of buttons they should have (a button layout). There are currently 5 different button setups: - FVWM-Crystal - plain old and loved ;) button style, with two Close buttons and several other enhancements - MS Windows - for beginners? Three buttons on the right and a menu on the left - MacOS X - three buttons on the left, looks awsome with Aqua window decoration :) - OS/2 - Close button on the left, iconify and maximize on the right - NeXTStep - for WindowMaker lovers :) All button layouts show the window menu when you press and hold one of them, also titlebar functions are the same (Raise|Resize|Lower). You will find all old window decorations included, from user's point of view there is no change here. 'Aqua' and 'Gentoo' window decorations have new set of button images, there are also new decorations: Clearlooks (3 color versions), DawnSky, Motif and SystemG. Bug which caused window decorations to appear oddly after some changes is removed and shouldn't be a problem any more. * New "Preferences" menu ------------------------ You can find it under the main menu. Currently you can setup preferred "recipe" (moved from "Developer menu"), music player, default terminal (separately for "normal" and QuakeConsole), focus policy and behaviour of the terminals. * New FvwmScript scripts ------------------------ You can now check current date using the clock - click once to see the date in "dd/mm" format, click second time or wait to see the clock. There are new scripts for ACPI functions, like battery status, CPU frequency and temperature. You can see them in action on "Default with ACPI" recipe. * Vertical desktops ------------------- Yup, you can now have vertically aligned desktop pages, that means vertical pager :) There is an example "Clean Vertical" recipe included, so you can try it right away. Keyboard and window shortcuts are automatically updated. * New keyboard bindings ----------------------- For keyboards without numeric part, such as those on notebooks/laptops, you can find new keyboard shortcuts: Alt + minus raise window Alt + Shift + minus lower window Alt + equal maximize Alt + Shift + equal fullscreen Alt + backspace iconify Alt + Shift + backspace close * Secure "Exit" menu -------------------- Now you need to select a submenu entry to perform "dangerous" actions, such as Logout, Shutdown or Reboot. This may sound a bit controversial, so give me a hint if you like it or not. * Updates in the music support ------------------------------ New music players are supported: Quod Libet and cdcd (Audo CD playback). Unfortunately some functions are limited or missing, due to the limitations of these players (well, they don't support everything, you know...). There are also many bugfixes, enhancments and features, you can see them in the ChangeLog. Stay tuned :) Maciej Delmanowski ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 3.0.RC1 What's new: The biggest change - I've rewritten all configuration files, hopefully the last time. I know that I've said this before, you can shoot me in the head for that. Why this is different? Crystal is now more open and flexible than ever before, new additions should be made very easy and in straightforward way. Oh, and of course it's not compatible with older releases, sorry for that (window decorations and colorsets are compatible though). Other major changes: - installation scripts: you can now install FVWM-Crystal using standard './configure && make && make install' and everything should work just fine. No more problems with missing functionality or dependencies, scripts will tell you everything you need to know. That should also make biulding distribution packages easier. - standard, UNIX-like configuration support: during startup Crystal scripts look on three places for configuration files, loading first that is found: a) user directory (usually '~/.fvwm') b) system configuration (by default '/etc/X11/fvwm/fvwm-crystal') c) directory where package was installed (usually '/usr/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm' or '/usr/local/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm') That way users can make their own changes (see below) which affect only their account, system administrators can make the changes affecting all users (but if user will change the same thing, the user's configuration is loaded instead), and things that weren't modified are taken from the original configuration. - "configuration tree": almost all files are loaded using special functions which search in above places for the files being loaded. It works like this: "Include components/functions/Wallpaper" will look for files called: '~/.fvwm/components/functions/Wallpaper', then if it wasn't found, '/etc/X11/fvwm/fvwm-crystal/components/functions/Wallpaper', and if this also wasn't found, '/components/functions/Wallpaper'. That way you can make changes to the original files which will be preserved for further updates, and it will override the original ones. All you need to do is preserve the directory structure. Not all files are working this way yet, see the TODO file for details. - "desktop recipes": configuration is now divided in two "parts": there are small files, usually functions, bindings, etc. located in the 'components/' directory. From these files you can "compose" a desktop using special file called "recipe", located in the 'recipes/' directory. Recipes themselves usually load other files, such as functions and bindings. Desktop panel configuration is also located in the recipe files. Recipes can be selected from a handy menu, so you can decide easily, which recipe to use. Thanks to this system you don't need to have usual FVWM-Crystal features, because they are optional. That way it's easy to build your own desktop from scratch without lose of the powerful features like window decorations or application panel system. Speaking of these panels: they are no longer stored as generated files; instead output of 'fvwm-crystal.apps' script is read directly by FVWM using PipeRead. This way you can make more powerful panels, with other things than just application icons - see the new "desktop layout" or "recipe" called Dock - it's modelled after XFCE/CDE panel. - support for many applications: currently there are two examples of this support: you can use either 'habak' or 'Esetroot' for setting the desktop wallpaper - Crystal will search for them and use the one which is available automatically. The second example is usage of music player: currently there are two, MPD and XMMS. Crystal will look for 'mpd' binary, and load specified functions for controlling the player; if 'mpd' is not installed, Crystal will look for 'xmms' instead and load set of functions for this player. You can easily add support for other music players or different programs, like the screenshot tool or screensaver. - application database was greatly extended, so most applications that you use will be available from the menu. Every application has it's own corresponding icon (although there are missing icons for 48x48 size), so there should be no more "empty" buttons on the panel or in the menus. - 'wallpapers/' directory: now you have 3 different wallpapers at the first startup available, so if you have a wallpaper setting tool like 'habak' or 'Esetroot' installed, you will see a nice desktop at the first startup - no more problems with missing wallpaper or gray desktop panels :) - new "old" icon directories: they are now similar to the '/usr/share/icons' directory, for example: 'icons/Default/22x22/fvwm-crystal/', 'icons/Default/32x32/apps/' and so on. This way you can make your own icon themes or use different icon sizes in the menus and application panels. - FVWM-Crystal uses gettext for localization strings - now it's easier to make new translations and memory usage is smaller. There are also more small modifications included. I hope that you will like this release and give me some good feedback about it :) Maciej Delmanowski