FVWM-Crystal
http://fvwm-crystal.berlios.de/
-------------------------------

FVWM-Crystal aims to create an easy to use, powerful desktop environment for
Linux or other Unix-like operating systems with lots of eye-candy.

It uses following programs: FVWM as a window manager and "main core", ROX-Filer
or Nautilus as desktop manager (manages icons on the desktop), gnome-terminal,
xterm, aterm, mrxvt or urxvt as terminal emulators, MPD, QuodLibet or XMMS as
music players (there's built-in support for controlling these programs), and
several other tools for different functions, like setting a wallpaper or making
screenshots.


Key features
------------

- Transparent elements of the interface: panels, menus, dialogs
  (pseudo-transparency, doesn't show windows underneath).
  The windows can be made transparent if xcompmgr and transset-df are installed
  (real transparency).

- Window decorations, panel/menu color-sets and desktop wallpaper changeable
  from the main menu; choice saved for next X sessions.

- Flexible window decorations: can have different title-bar buttons layout,
  pixmaps and button functions.

- Different "recipes" (panel placement and functions, desktop
  functions, window icons/thumbnails), changeable from the menu.

- Advanced keyboard support: key-bindings for controlling the desktop
  switching, window management (moving, resizing, focusing, basic operations
  like minimization or closing) - in total there are nearly 90 different
  key-bindings.

- Support for controlling music players by using the keyboard or panel buttons
  and menus; currently AlsaPlayer, audacious. cdcd, cmus, mocp, mpd, mplayer (you
  can also play movies with it), mplayer2 (mplayer fork), Quodlibet, XMMS
  and XMMS2 are supported.

- Advanced support of the terminal windows: special "Quake Console" terminal
  accessible by an Alt+` (grave) keystroke similar to the console found in FPP
  games; terminals can be opened using RMB on the desktop; terminal windows
  don't release focus for newly opened windows (by default).

- A Python script for generating different panels and menus with installed
  applications - automatically finds programs in $PATH and creates specified
  menus and panels.

- Support for nearly 400 different applications - icons, menu/panel database
  entries and window styles.

- Localization support using gettext.


Advanced features
-----------------

- All FVWM configuration is divided into small files in a simple directory
  structure.

- Special functions for loading configuration files – allows for FVWM
  configuration files placed in different directories (for example system-wide
  and user-wide); user files are searched before system-wide files (directory
  structure must be preserved), the first found file is loaded.

- Simple and easy to use system of "user preferences" which adds to the
  configuration files' ability to remember different user choices and recall
  them at any moment, usually at the startup of X session.

- Support for system-wide configuration in /etc/X11/fvwm/fvwm-crystal directory
  as well as user configuration in ~/.fvwm directory - changes in configuration
  files can be preserved between package updates.

- Special files called "recipes" - similar to "standard" FVWM configuration
  model (one configuration - one file), allows for different configurations in
  the same package (for example different music players changeable during
  runtime).

- Support for different icon themes and sizes (similar to /usr/share/icons
  directory), included are many icons in 22x22, 32x32 and 48x48 sizes.

- Special script that will generate the application menu entries by searching for
  application type desktop files and applications icons.
  
Requirements
------------

- FVWM - version 2.5.31 or higher.
- Python - for some scripts.
- ImageMagick - import and convert are used for screenshots.
- UAM and pmount-gui - automounting of removable medias.
- ROX-Filer or Nautilus - for icons on the desktop and wallpaper.
- XScreenSaver - a screen saver and/or screen locking.
- Systray: at least one of Trayer or Stalonetray.
- Sudo and optionally gksudo configured for running text/graphical
  applications as superuser and reboot/shutdown computer options in the menu.
- Terminal Emulator: at least one of gnome-terminal, konsole, xfce4-terminal,
  xterm, aterm, Eterm, mrxvt, urxvt or terminator.
  Be aware that the Quake console need one of mrxvt, urxwt, aterm or xterm.
- A program for setting a wallpaper such as Esetroot (orphaned here), hsetroot
  or feh (only needed if ROX-Filer or Nautilus are not used as suggested above).
  Habak support was removed due to X Errord st restart. hsetroot will be used first
  if present.
- A music player - At least one of Music Player Daemon (+ mpc), X MultiMedia
  System (+ xmms-shell and XMMSFind) (orphaned now on most distribution, you 
  will be better with another one), AlsaPlayer, cmus, mocp, mplayer, XMMS2,
  Quod Libet or cdcd. You will get video support with mplayer.
- A mixer, one of the precedent if the player support it, aumix or
  amixer (alsamixer, you will get volume control in dB with it).
- Some usual linux utilities like cut, sed and bc. (bc is needed for the speed
  control with AlsaPlayer and mplayer.)

Instalation / Update
--------------------
Please be sure to read the information into the Install file when installing
or updating Fvwm-Crystal. It is a few things you will have to do in order
to get the full potential of Fvwm + Fvwm-Crystal.

Start Fvwm-Crystal
------------------
Fvwm-Crystal work fine with graphical display managers like xdm or gdm.
Choose it in the menu and it will start.

Anyway, the prefered way to start Fvwm is with startx. You will get a fast
and light system without to have to load non needed stuffs at login.

If you choose that way, you may want to edit ~/.xinitrc and add
	exec /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal
if your system is polkit and cosole-kit free.

If it is not the case, something like the following will do the trick:
	exec ck-launch-session /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal

If you want to log Fvwm messages, you can use somethink like
	exec /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal 2>.fvwm-crystal_messages
or
	exec ck-launch-session /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal 2>.fvwm-crystal_messages

Now, run 'startx'.

For Fvwm-Crystal to start at login, edit ~/.bash_profile and add the
following line at the end of the file:
	if ! pidof X &>/dev/null ; then startx ; fi

Contacting authors and other users/contributors
-----------------------------------------------

The original author of FVWM-Crystal project is Maciej Delmanowski.
You can contact with him using:

Jabber (preferred):	harnir@jabberek.net
Email:			harnir@berlios.de
IRC:			#fvwm-crystal@irc.freenode.net (also on #fvwm)

The current maintainer and author of this project is Dominique Michel.
You can contact me using <dominique_libre@sourceforge.net> or on the
mailing list below.

There is also a low-traffic mailing list, where you can talk with other
FVWM-Crystal users and contributors. More information and subscription
instructions can be found on: 
    http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fvwm-crystal-users
You can also look at the archives located here:
    http://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/fvwm-crystal-users/


Contribute to Fvwm-Crystal
--------------------------

The best way to contribute is to take contact on the mailing list.
You can also take contact with me using <dominique_libre@sourceforge.net>

I would never have learn Fvwm myself without Fvwm-Crystal. Its modular
architecture allow you to focus on one thing at a time.

For information on Fvwm, take a look at the Fvwm website: http://www.fvwm.org


Thanks
------

I would like to thank all these people for help with this project (in random
order): Aragorn_Vime, Lucass, Taviso, Hoppke, Ravbc, Myles Green, Esack,
theBlackDragon, Thomas_Adam, Liorithiel, MadCow, LiNiO, fEnIo, KHorne, QsoRiX,
niv, stR4y and all others which I can't recollect now - thanks, guys :)

I would like to thank harnir. Without him and his good work and vision,
Fvwm-Crystal would not exist.

I would also like to thank all the peoples behind Fvwm. Without them,
Fvwm-Crystal would not be possible.


Donations
---------
FVWM-Crystal is and always will be a free software, however if you want, you
can make a donation - I probably will spent it on my electricity & telephone
bills... Anyway, below is the neccesary info to do that.

Account:	PL 90 1140 2004 0000 3102 3664 7363
Name:		Maciej Delmanowski
Bank:		mBank
Address:	90-050 Lodz, Al. Mickiewicza 1, Poland
