Re: the recently updated Gnome dist.

From: Achim Linder (achim.linder_at_nikocity.de)
Date: 09/13/03 

Date: 13 Sep 2003 19:45:18 GMT

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003 14:38:11 -0700, happy wrote:
> Has anyone here installed it yet? If so, was it worth the compile?

I don't think the /desktop/ is worth the compile, (you have to upgrade
metacity, eel2, libgnomeprint22, libgnomeprintui22, eog,
nautilus-cd-burner, gnome-vfs2-extras, xscreensaver and nautilus,
just to install the control-center, and the improvements are not that
big), but an upgrade can be a good idea if some app needs the new
/libraries/. If you don't want to wait for a distribution update, notice
that the gdm setup has changed and that gnome-panel-2.4 has an annoying
bug.

gdm-2.4.1 uses scripts in SessionDir (here /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions) to
start the sessions, the scripts look like this

#!/bin/sh
exec /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession gnome

and the Xsession script starts the right window manager or DE, depending
on the argument (here gnome). You can run gdm-2.4.1 with gnome 2.4 if you
want to keep your configuration.

gdm-2.4.2.95 and later, OTOH, use .desktop files in SessionDesktopDir
(here /etc/X11/dm/Sessions/), eg Gnome.desktop or KDE.desktop;
they look like this

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=GNOME
Name[az]=GNOME
Name[be]=GNOME
...
Exec=gnome
# no icon yet, only the top three are currently used
Icon=
Type=Application

gdm-2.4.4 starts BaseXsession with the argument found in the Exec=
line, ie in this case
/etc/X11/xdm/Xsession gnome

last "session" is stored in ~/.dmrc

The panel doesn't set geometry hints; when I started gnome, the panel
kept jumping back to (0,0) or even to the middle of the screen.
Somebody posted a patch to fix this bug:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121987

In gnome-2.4, floating panels always have grab handles with the default
color (looks ugly if the rest of the panel has a different color).
gnome-swallow-1.1 doesn't seem to work with gnome-2.4 and the gnome menu
editor is *still* disabled in the redhat packages.
www.wse.jhu.edu/newtnotes/main_file.php/sysadmin/55

(BTW the name of the panel has changed from panel_window.Panel
to gnome-panel.Gnome-panel)

An annoying detail is that the mailcheck applet needs a double click
to start the mail client. Patch to get the old behaviour (single click)

--- mailcheck/mailcheckold.c 2003-07-24 03:48:18.000000000 +0200
+++ mailcheck/mailcheck.c 2003-09-13 14:28:14.000000000 +0200
@@ -1209,7 +1209,7 @@
         MailCheck *mc = data;
         gboolean retval = FALSE;
 
- if (event->button == 1 && event->type == GDK_2BUTTON_PRESS) {
+ if (event->button == 1 && event->type == GDK_BUTTON_PRESS) {
 
                 if (mc->clicked_enabled && mc->clicked_cmd && (strlen(mc->clicked_cmd) > 0))
                         mailcheck_execute_shell (mc, mc->clicked_cmd);

HTH,
Achim

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