I’ve messed up my Applications tray under crystal and Googling the problem gives different answers.
One time, long ago, I’d simply edit ~/.fvwm/ApplicationDatabase but I think there’s one of those small typos somewhere in the file because it doesn’t change the trayer. And I don’t know how to debug the thing …
One googled suggestion was to copy /usr/share/fvwm-crystal/Applications to ~/.fvwm/Applications, so I moved the ApplicationsDatabase file and did this, but it doesn’t change the trayer either.
So which is it? did crystal move to a directory structure with executables or is it still using one config file?! Eitherway, the applications finder auto-magic thingy does squat probably because I’m not setting up crystal right …
Add/delete applications from the trayer. Evidently that file I was talking about, ApplicationsDatabase, had been deprecated so long ago because noone remember its. hehe, so much for “don’t fix it unless it’s broken” (because why update it when indeed it “worked”, lol). Anyways, I wound up fixing this via a fellow Gentoo penguin. I traced all the config files back to the culprit: fvwm.
/etc/rc.conf:XSESSION="fvwm-crystal" - OK
/etc/X11/Sessions/fvwm-crystal:/usr/bin/fvwm2 - !!
Switching the later to /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal fixed it (and I have no idea why the Sessions file pointed to the fvwm2 because I never recall changing this; perhaps I’ve been using FVWM2 for 3 years while thinking it was da Crystal! hehe). The trayer loaded with lots of programs and I’ve added a few manually to my ~/.fvwm-crystal/Applications directory. :)
Note: It still doesn’t seem clear how much stuff is built by fvwm itself versus fvwm-crystal. My ~/.fvwm looks like this:
It all works! but I like having some protocol to follow, such as “fvwm handles the desktop layouts; fvwm-crystal [or any theme] handles the Application trayer; modify each appropriately under their respective directories …”, etc. Needless to say – the obvious answer of “don’t use packaged themes” is moot.
I still don’t have a clue what are you talking about. Please, let me know about this “ApplicationsDatabase” file, and tell use if it is something related to trayer, fvwm, or what exactly.
Trayer, as far as I know, is a program that is used to host tray icons, like those of IM applications in kde or gnome, and the like. And it is indeed used in fvwm-crystal. So, maybe that file that you name is just a file of the fvwm-crystal configuration. I never used any pre-made configuration, so, that excludes fvwm-crystal as well.
In any case, the applications that goes, or not, in trayer, as related to trayer, that, regardless of its author, it is not related to fvwm. So, maybe it’s time to read the fvwm-crystal documentation or the trayer man page.
In simple words, so you can understand it: fvwm-crystal is just a “theme” for Fvwm.
Crystal is not different of any other fvwm theme. A bit more polished, fancier, uglier or whatever adjective you want, but, ultimately, it is just like any other fvwm configuration. You can find lots of configs that are also very feature rich (some, in some aspects, even more than crystal). Fvwm is not only powerful, but also lets you use any external language via Piperead. So, you can do almost anything using bash, python, perl, C or whatever language you choose.
And crystal is just another instance of that, like many other ones you can find in the screenshots and configs section in these same forums.
What you ask for is, of course, impossible. That is, unless you decide to learn Fvwm. And of course, it is impossible to do so just looking at fvwm-crystal. You can’t start the house building the roof. Fvwm-crystal is an advanced and big theme. It is complex. If you want to understand fvwm-crystal (which I repeat, is just a fvwm config, like any other one) you first ought to learn Fvwm. Read the man pages for Fvwm and its modules, use them, create simple configurations and look into some other’s configs.
There is nothing that Fvwm-crystal does by itself. There is nothing like a fvwm-crystal language. Ultimately, it’s all Fvwm. Extra knowledge might be needed to understand some of those advanced configurations, because most of them include some bash/perl/python/C stuff, and that is outside the scope of Fvwm.
A RTFM response, aye? Well I’m far too positive to get irritated over something that is working now.
According to this, I can move ~/.fvwm-crystal/* to ~/.fvwm/* and everything will work? That is the “keep it simple, keep it stupid” synopsis of your long-winded response. Well I’m not going to try that. For why? Well I can add and delete Applications to the “trayer” (or whatever you want to call it; everyone’s nomenclature differs – blah), and the inability to add/delete them was the problem (which I fixed by changing the command pointed to by SESSIONS).
Whilst the theory is good, it won’t work in pratise.
Well, “Trayer” has a special context to FVWM-Cryatal in particular in that it is the name for one of many systray utilities to house applications like gaim (pidgin), kopete, etc. However, I know from your original post what it was you were after, because I contribute to FVWM-Crystal all the time – so don’t worry about it. You solved your problem anyway.
No. According to my whole post, that phrase included (feel free to ignore all the moot I wrote, but don’t put words on my mouth then) you need to know how FVWM works, to understand the crystal config and then make the changes, when you know how it works. It is not as trivial as to make assumptions and move files around.
Not that I have the reason (probably not), but I wanted to clarify what I did not say.
As you said, it is working, and that is all that counts, anyway.
Crystal use ~/.fvwm-crystal. So, changes in ~/.fvwm must not affect crystal. If it is the case, you have messed up something in crystal or in your startup sequence.
Again, fvwm-crystal store the user configuration in ~/.fvwm-crystal.
As Thomas Adam already wrote it, the trayer have nothing to do with the application menu. What is your problem, the application menu or the notification aera (what you call trayer. Trayer is a program that dock icons in the notification aera.)?
If you are not sure of what you are doing, a fast and easy solution would be to quit FVWM-Crystal, rename ~/.fvwm-crystal into ~/.fvwm-crystal-broken and restart FVWM-Crystal. If it doesn’t work, rename ~/.fvwm too before restarting crystal.
