Hello all,
There’s nothing definite yet, but myself and Taviso have been making vague plans to see whether or not a few publishers would be willing to publish a book about FVWM.
Whilst it’s slightly a case of preaching to the choir, how would people gague this? Would you find such a book useful?
I know it’s something that I have been considering doing for sometime now.
– Thomas Adam
Well, since I and Hun have once started working on something similar (but gave up on it because of lack of time) I suppose you could say I would be interested in this. I suppose it’s possible to set the book up in such a way that it would be useful for both new users as well as veterans, we all need a good reference and hunting for some things in the manpage(s) can be pretty tedious at times (not to mention that I still prefer books over digital media).
One of the things I was working on, for example, was creating tables of often used things, like modifiers and contexts for key and mouse bindings. While this can of course be done as easily on the wiki it wouldn’t hurt having in printed form (now that I’m writing this: these things would make for an excellent reference card)
In any case I’d be buying the book and I’d be willing to contribute too and I’m sure Hun will be happy to see that there might come a book about FVWM after all.
Yes that would be cool ! Like a bible 
I would buy it !
I plan (after my lcars config) to translate the fvwm tutorial on zensite in french. With some examples and a full config.
It has been done already, a la ‘stationlinux.org’
– Thomas Adam
yes but the site is down, I have wrote an email to the administrator of the site.
I would certainly buy one
What would be really nice in there if at all possible, would be comments (or even a chapter) from dev(s).
I would really like to have such a resource on my hands. I also preffer plain paper over crt to read.
The fvwm documentation (meaning man pages and such) is complete enough in most aspects, overall in which regards grammar and sintax of the language, but to navigate thru certain man pages can be a bit difficult sometimes. And, certainly, there is enough material about fvwm to write such a book.
I printed a couple of man pages, like fvwm and fvwmbuttons, but, certainly is not the most pleasant reading to go through and it is neither usefull as a refference guide unless you know out of memory where each thing is locate.
So, if you have the time and motivation, that would be an amazing work that I would really like and enjoy reading. Go for it.
Regards.
Heh – maybe from devs, but it’s by no means a requirement.
I’ll post some updates here as and when they might occur. But it’s not even in the planning phase yet.
Thanks for the interest though.
– Thomas
I’m pretty sure most people would be familiar with the “* Hacks” series and I think this would be a nice approach for fvwm. Of course some exposition of the official documentation would be great, as would some reference tables, but I’d especially like to see a collection of many of the little tips and tricks that people have put into configs and posted here. I think that would lend a bit of the community feel that has been a big part of fvwm.
It’d also be great to see the un-official beginners guide immortalised or at least some step by step getting started affair.
I think then that the book would appeal to virtually the whole community.
Since this is definitely a timeless issue, I am not hesitating for a second in seconding the others in saying that yes, I would certainly buy one, too. I would absolutely love that. But how are things going, given that it’s been nine years since your first posting? I would not be surprised if you simply could not find a publisher (apart from, well, the “there is so much else to do…” problem). But in that case, have you considered a books-on-demand scheme? Crowdfunding? If you need any cheering, just let me know. (Unfortunately, I am anything else but an expert on fvwm, so I can’t offer to help - I doubt my own modest hacks would be of interest.)
Best regards,
Florian
PS: No, I am not being sarcastic, but half self-ironic, since I stick to such an unfashionable window manager. (Just have a look at the icons… What kind of impression does that make?) But I really think fvwm is very akin to Emacs, in that it has never, ever been the hype, but it’s just so good it’s used even despite the unwieldy documentation. (My own impression here is that you sort of have to read the whole manpage to find what you’re looking for.) [Edit: No, sorry; Emacs has fantastic, even visionary documentation. But the unfashionable part applies.]
I would buy it too!
As TheblackDragon said it would be nice if it was like a bible, a good reference book with short examples on as many functions as possible.