FVWM: New default configuration wanted...

[Thomas Adam]

Hi all,

This intended to be something fairly long-running, and I personally don't
wish to make the UI decisions myself, although I will keep a very close eye
on the FVWM-specific aspects of a proposed config to make sure it's done
"right".

What do I mean when I say "right"? Well, for far too long now FVWM has had
a major thorn in its side -- the default config *sucks* to put it bluntly.
It's been a well known issue for years that it looks like a throwback to
1995 [1] and it's time to modernise it a bit.

There was an aborted attempt at this by Nick Fortune and myself [2] which
you should read before attempting this, as although the thread is a good
five years old now, the concept in there are not. *Please read it*.

I want a few things from a new config:

* It should look "modern" (I'll leave that interpretation open-ended.)
* It should be minimal, but functional -- and not depend on *any* external
dependencies that do not come with FVWM itself.
* The config file should be documented heavily -- as an example to look
towards for new users.

Do not worry about the FVWM-specific things about integrating it with
FvwmForm-Setup and the like -- eventually, that'll be my job as there's
other surrounding problems with that.

I will also help where necessary with the documentation of such a config, as
that's where my interests lie overall in terms of its usefulness.

All I am really looking to see what the interest involved in this is. I
warn you though, I won't hesitate to put a stop to it if this turns into a
shed-painting exercise -- I don't want that. I can already foresee a bunch
of shed-painting, and I won't tolerate it. It needs to be done in a
civilised manner. Come to a consensus amongst yourselves; just don't
involve me in them, unless you have FVWM-specific questions. :P

I'm not expecting anything quick on this -- I'd like to do it in stages, and
I want people to go away and think on it, and come up with ideas,
suggestions, etc.

I know we have projects already like fvwm-{themes,crystal} etc., and they're
great, but completely peripheral to what I am after, really. I want a
config that just makes FVWM not look like a dinosaur out of the box.

So, thinking/creative hats on, guys. This is a great way for someone who
isn't a programmer to contribute.

Any questions, ask.

-- Thomas Adam

[1] As many know, I like the MWM look, but apparently, that's dead now. :P
[2] http://www.fvwmforums.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=205&start=150

[Tom Horsley]

No don't do it! Pretty soon you'll be caught up in the whole
newer is better philosophy that KDE and GNOME are trapped in
and no one on the planet will have any idea how to use fvwm
because it keeps moving everything around and changing
in every release.

I'd suggest my default config, but you obviously wouldn't
want it since it strips out stuff I think is too glitzy
from the current default :-).

[Thomas Adam]

Post by Tom Horsley
No don't do it! Pretty soon you'll be caught up in the whole
newer is better philosophy that KDE and GNOME are trapped in
and no one on the planet will have any idea how to use fvwm
because it keeps moving everything around and changing
in every release.

Heh -- I am not suggesting that! It would be fairly static once in place --
it's a *window manager* after all. Things like:

* New FvwmButtons -- swallowing things like:
- FvwmIconMan
- FvwmScript (maybe a clock?)
- FvwmPager

* Change the window decors a bit -- maybe use colorset gradients?
* Don't look like MWM by default?

etc., etc.

That level of "minimal", but functional.

It should be easy to do -- especially for the menus now fvwm-menu-desktop
uses XDG, etc.

These sorts of changes *would* stand the test of time, unlike GNOME/KDE,
etc., who seem to have it as a pre-requisite that changing the default look
with each release is needed.

-- Thomas Adam

[Kathryn Andersen]

Post by Thomas Adam
Heh -- I am not suggesting that! It would be fairly static once in place --
- FvwmIconMan
- FvwmScript (maybe a clock?)
- FvwmPager

I personally don't care what modules are in there by default; the thing
that desperately needs changing is the aesthetics. At the absolute
minimum, the colour scheme needs to be changed. The existing default
one is horrible.

We don't want to be bikeshedding about what particular colour scheme is
used; just something pleasing to the eye which is neither too garish nor
too boring.

One program I've found helpful in devising colour schemes is Agave.
http://home.gna.org/colorscheme/

Another program which is more oriented towards window managers is
the perl module+script Graphics::Colourset
http://search.cpan.org/~rubykat/Graphics-Colourset-0.01/
This one does more of the work for you - you just have to input a hue,
and it will generate N sets of semi-random but harmonious colours.

Post by Thomas Adam
* Change the window decors a bit -- maybe use colorset gradients?

YES.

Post by Thomas Adam
* Don't look like MWM by default?

Certainly not that clunky, no. But I do think using vector buttons for
the titlebar buttons is a good idea; for a default config, it is better
if it doesn't depend on images for buttons. There are lots of great
examples of vector buttons on the fvwm website to choose from.

Kathryn Andersen

[Julien Guertault]

[we need a new default config]

[at very least the colour scheme]
One program I've found helpful in devising colour schemes is Agave.
http://home.gna.org/colorscheme/
Another program which is more oriented towards window managers is
the perl module+script Graphics::Colourset
http://search.cpan.org/~rubykat/Graphics-Colourset-0.01/

On the choice of colorset in particular, I have found the following
website particularly useful:

http://colorschemedesigner.com/


On the topic of renewing the default config, launching the topic is a
very good initiative. I believe it would benefit to FVWM if it looked and
felt good enough out of the box.

Does this have to be some underground task with someone motivated
enough to get it done, or is there any way it gets a more collaborative
direction? I am thinking of the way a Wiki page may start from a rough
draft and slowly improve as people change things here and there.

Maybe a first step could be to gather people's opinion on what such an
out of the box configuration should provide and look like?

Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing what this will lead to.


P.S.: congrats on releasing 2.6. ;)

[Thomas Adam]

Post by Julien Guertault
Does this have to be some underground task with someone motivated
enough to get it done, or is there any way it gets a more collaborative
direction? I am thinking of the way a Wiki page may start from a rough
draft and slowly improve as people change things here and there.

You can use the wiki (fvwmwiki.xteddy.org) if you wanted, although
just using this email thread is also desirable for me, rather than
having to track two disparate places.

-- Thomas Adam

[Nathaniel H. Stickney]

[we need a new default config]

[at very least the colour scheme]

[ it would benefit to FVWM if it looked and
felt good enough out of the box.]
Does this have to be some underground task with someone motivated
enough to get it done, or is there any way it gets a more collaborative
direction? I am thinking of the way a Wiki page may start from a rough
draft and slowly improve as people change things here and there.

Perhaps an incremental process would be best; I think that Nick
Fortune's "Config from Scratch" forum post might provide some insight
into how that might evolve:
http://www.fvwmforums.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=188

Maybe a first step could be to gather people's opinion on what such an
out of the box configuration should provide and look like?

Let the shedding begin.

P.S.: congrats on releasing 2.6. ;)

Seconded. Thank you to everyone involved for all the hard work.

God Bless,
Stick

[d***@verizon.net]

Post by Thomas Adam
All I am really looking to see what the interest involved in this is. I
warn you though, I won't hesitate to put a stop to it if this turns into a
shed-painting exercise -- I don't want that. I can already foresee a bunch
of shed-painting, and I won't tolerate it.

Shed painting?

Is that anything like a can of worms?

Some ideas:

Right now we offer 2 easy defaults:

Setup Form
Setup 95

The first gives a pager and menus for launching,
icons for minimized applications, and commented out
skeletons for other modules and customization.

The second gives a taskbar.


Of course, neither suits me but if I had to start
over I'd start with the Form. It would be nice
if there was only one setup path.

There is more to this than just appearance.
Each choice involves key bindings, appearance,
window button function, mode of operation (task bars,
icons, pagers).

Whatever we do, there has to be a way for users to avoid it.
That was the logic behind the customization thing I posted about
a while ago, each thing that installed itself provides a
hook that un-installs itself.

[Thomas Adam]

Hi Dan,

Post by d***@verizon.net

Post by Thomas Adam
All I am really looking to see what the interest involved in this is. I
warn you though, I won't hesitate to put a stop to it if this turns into a
shed-painting exercise -- I don't want that. I can already foresee a bunch
of shed-painting, and I won't tolerate it.

Shed painting?
Is that anything like a can of worms?

Not really -- you might know it termed as "bike-shedding" as well? :)

Post by d***@verizon.net
Setup Form
Setup 95
The first gives a pager and menus for launching,
icons for minimized applications, and commented out
skeletons for other modules and customization.
The second gives a taskbar.
Of course, neither suits me but if I had to start
over I'd start with the Form. It would be nice
if there was only one setup path.

Yes -- I'm all for opt-in/opt-out and toggling components on and off via a
single interface using FvwmForm -- I didn't necessarily want that to go away
which is why I was ignoring it for now, and wanting to let people come up
with aesthetics; I can then split up such a config into different parts,
much like what FvwmForm-Setup currently offers. I just didn't want to
burden someone with that as a requisite for coming up with a config.

Post by d***@verizon.net
There is more to this than just appearance.
Each choice involves key bindings, appearance,
window button function, mode of operation (task bars,
icons, pagers).

Yep -- that's where I depart, and let others think on this. :)

Post by d***@verizon.net
Whatever we do, there has to be a way for users to avoid it.
That was the logic behind the customization thing I posted about
a while ago, each thing that installed itself provides a
hook that un-installs itself.

See above, hopefully that covers this.

-- Thomas Adam

[d***@verizon.net]

Post by Thomas Adam
Hi Dan,

Post by d***@verizon.net

Post by Thomas Adam
All I am really looking to see what the interest involved in this is. I
warn you though, I won't hesitate to put a stop to it if this turns into a
shed-painting exercise -- I don't want that. I can already foresee a bunch
of shed-painting, and I won't tolerate it.

Shed painting?
Is that anything like a can of worms?

Not really -- you might know it termed as "bike-shedding" as well? :)

Nope, but I think I have it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality

[Thomas Funk]

Post by Kathryn Andersen
I personally don't care what modules are in there by default; the thing
that desperately needs changing is the aesthetics. At the absolute
minimum, the colour scheme needs to be changed. The existing default
one is horrible.

The first impression decides whether a newbie use fvwm or not. 
It depends on two things:
1. the look. We live in the 21th century. The times of MWM, TWM or CDE are over.
   Whether it suits us or not the most user compare the look with KDE, Gnome, 
   Xfce or LXDE. It is not important if there is transparency, 3D effects or other
   eye candy things implemented. But the colors should look fresh, the buttons 
   not too glunky and the borders not too fat.
2. the key bindings. There are "standards" which used in other WMs or DEs. 
   We should create a list depending on other environments to hit the most
   popular key bindings.
 

Post by Kathryn Andersen
... I do think using vector buttons for
the titlebar buttons is a good idea; for a default config, it is better
if it doesn't depend on images for buttons. There are lots of great
examples of vector buttons on the fvwm website to choose from.

Vectors are an interesting thing of fvwm. It's gentle of resource and it
adjusts to the screen resolution. Yep :-)
 
Over the years I've worked with fvwm the most configs I saw in the forum are
mostly clear, tidy and reduced to the basics. The default config should go 
this way also. Only a clock and a pager should available. Perhaps other parts
can be activated over a setup - light and clean ;-)
 
Thomas

[Roman]

First of all, sorry if I got some mailing list things wrong. Being aware
of fvwm
IRC FAQ I would still mention I'm pretty much noob and Nth generation Linux
and fvwm user, so what I say might seem strange.

To my mind what a default config should be like depends mostly on what the
developers would like to achieve. Would you like the userbase to be
small and
somewhat elitist, or would you like to make fvwm more popular and tolerate
(clueless) newcomers?

I happened to fall in love with fvwm a couple of years ago having a typical
ubuntu background and went like 'wow, people, check this out, I've found
such a beautyful thing!' and started to propagate it.

Since that time I hacked together a configuration for myself, keeping in
mind I
would once need to share it with anyone who would like to try fvwm but
would not
have time to read through a whole manual or is less common with
programming a
window manager to meet his needs or whatever, or, what's worse, review
and edit
it myself. I've been under strong impression of archlinux+openbox setup
described
in details in archwiki. I wanted to get an article which would get me
rolling fast and let
me make minor tweaks later, but I found all the articles one could reach
with a
search engine query to be stale (written in early 00s and not updated
since then),
forums down and screenshots section on the official website look like
circa mid 90s.

What I, being a new baptised standalone wm user, thought to be useable and
good looking was absolutely flat window decors and menus not pretending
to be
3d - it took me a lot of time to get rid of 3d everywhere - but rather
look good with 2d
and maybe some pixmaps and gradients, left click root window menu,
ClickToFocus
policy, predictable Alt+Tab behaviour, no desktop icons until explicitly
asked for some,
no window borders for panels/trays/desktop widgets and _[]X window
buttons layout.

That surely would not demonstrate fvwm's unique features and long
tradition, but it
would not make someone feel completely lost from the start. Sure, one
must read the
documentation in order to get the best user experience, but one should
be willing to
read documentation which comes with this particular window manager in
the first
place, because there are *boxes around, and devilspie, and whatnot.

So If I was told to make fvwm famous in desktop Linux users community
the way we
have it now, to convince a definite sort of people - hobbyist
programmers, newbies
willing to learn new things, people tired of DE developers thinking them
to be guinea
pigs and other nice people to use fvwm, I would come up with a
configuration which
would feature:

- pixmap window decorations looking rather minimalist but fresh
- _[]X window buttons layout and 0 window decor button popping up a
window options
menu with some advanced options
- right-click root window menu featuring some pipe menus (maybe a
calendary or directory
browser) to showcase menu scriptability and encourage people to come up
with
something of their own
- mainstream keyboard shortcuts for window management
- some sort of quick pop-up help window with keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet
- distributed configuration file for ease of editing and sharing small
useful functions between
users, but it's the matter of personal taste
- some sort of convention on naming and hierarchy of window decorations
pixmaps allowing
to change window decors quickly editing a single environmental variable
- would be nice to handle gnome/kde icon themes somehow, and probably
xdg-open as well,
but it does not seem to meet zero dependencies requirement

I would ask devotee *wm users what particularily do they love about
their window manager of
choice and try to implement it - this is how I learned about autoshade
function my config
features and this is how I learned about 'smart launch' concept I've
heard ubuntu unity now
ships with and everyone is so happy about.I would learn from
crunchbanglinux developers
- it's interesting how they managed to develop such a nice distribution
featuring standalone
window manager - and from people who wrote archwiki openbox article - it
provides some
great answers to that 'how do I...' questions quite a lot of people tend
to ask.

Long story short, the default configuration must not scare people and
must still demonstrate
that they can change everything if they want to - but they should have
an option to stick
with the defaults if they feel like it and only do some minor tweaks.
And it has to feature a
couple of fancy thingies just to illustrate what can be done - IMO,
given that we want new
some new users.

Configuration files with quite a lot of comments:
http://box-look.org/content/show.php?content=123415
A sort of promotional video:

[Thomas Adam]

Post by Roman
To my mind what a default config should be like depends mostly on what the
developers would like to achieve. Would you like the userbase to be
small and
somewhat elitist, or would you like to make fvwm more popular and tolerate
(clueless) newcomers?

Elitist? No. That sort of attitude is ridiculous. That's not going to get
you anywhere. FVWM might historically have been "one of the first WMs", but
that does not mean we should dick about with an air of arrogance.

Just make the thing not look like it's from 1995 [1].

Post by Roman
- pixmap window decorations looking rather minimalist but fresh

This is tenuous, because there's absolutely *no* requirement that FVWM is
compiled against XPM support, or PNG, or SVG support. So, stick to vector
buttons, please. I do not want to make any one of those dependencies
mandatory at the sake of a default config.

-- Thomas Adam

[1] It's worth pointing out at this point that should this *really*
necessitate development time on FVWM to introduce some absolutely
cannot-live-without feature that drags this WM out of 1995, I'd consider
that as well, but tentatively so. :)

[Roman]

On 04/27/2011 02:46 AM, Thomas Adam wrote:- pixmap window decorations
looking rather minimalist but fresh

Post by Thomas Adam
This is tenuous, because there's absolutely *no* requirement that FVWM is
compiled against XPM support, or PNG, or SVG support. So, stick to vector
buttons, please. I do not want to make any one of those dependencies
mandatory at the sake of a default config.
-- Thomas Adam

I think it's possible to make a nice looking vector and gradient window
decor. Well I'll try to make something sexy.

Speaking of dependencies, I've heard that in some distros fvwm would
require GTK 1.X, which makes people think (and state) that it is written
with GTK 1 and should be buried real deep because of this.

[Thomas Adam]

Post by Roman
On 04/27/2011 02:46 AM, Thomas Adam wrote:- pixmap window
decorations looking rather minimalist but fresh

Post by Thomas Adam
This is tenuous, because there's absolutely *no* requirement that FVWM is
compiled against XPM support, or PNG, or SVG support. So, stick to vector
buttons, please. I do not want to make any one of those dependencies
mandatory at the sake of a default config.
-- Thomas Adam

I think it's possible to make a nice looking vector and gradient
window decor. Well I'll try to make something sexy.
Speaking of dependencies, I've heard that in some distros fvwm would
require GTK 1.X, which makes people think (and state) that it is
written with GTK 1 and should be buried real deep because of this.

That's probably a hang-on from FvwmGTK, which I thought had been updated for
GTK-2.x, I might be wrong though.

Another candidate for my hit-list, or to be updated. Someone else can
always look into the particulars for me. Ahem.

-- Thomas Adam

[Thomas Adam]

Post by Thomas Adam
Hi all,
This intended to be something fairly long-running, and I personally don't
wish to make the UI decisions myself, although I will keep a very close eye
on the FVWM-specific aspects of a proposed config to make sure it's done
"right".
What do I mean when I say "right"? Well, for far too long now FVWM has had
a major thorn in its side -- the default config *sucks* to put it bluntly.
It's been a well known issue for years that it looks like a throwback to
1995 [1] and it's time to modernise it a bit.
There was an aborted attempt at this by Nick Fortune and myself [2] which
you should read before attempting this, as although the thread is a good
five years old now, the concept in there are not. *Please read it*.

[...]

Has anyone done any more work on this? I've received nothing off-list to
indicate that's been the case -- and I do not know how, if at all, this is
being coordinated which is slightly annoying.

-- Thomas Adam

[Dan Espen]

Post by Thomas Adam

Post by Thomas Adam
Hi all,
This intended to be something fairly long-running, and I personally don't
wish to make the UI decisions myself, although I will keep a very close eye
on the FVWM-specific aspects of a proposed config to make sure it's done
"right".
What do I mean when I say "right"? Well, for far too long now FVWM has had
a major thorn in its side -- the default config *sucks* to put it bluntly.
It's been a well known issue for years that it looks like a throwback to
1995 [1] and it's time to modernise it a bit.
There was an aborted attempt at this by Nick Fortune and myself [2] which
you should read before attempting this, as although the thread is a good
five years old now, the concept in there are not. *Please read it*.

[...]
Has anyone done any more work on this? I've received nothing off-list to
indicate that's been the case -- and I do not know how, if at all, this is
being coordinated which is slightly annoying.

Remember we couldn't agree on the 1 pixel border?

I think that was the end of it.

What would you think of a dialog that allowed the user to pick the
border width? I think any of us could hack one of those up but
it wouldn't be the ultimate solution for me. My clock, biff, and
perfmeter must have narrower borders than other windows.

So, dialog that lets you set border width with a style option. Only
issue there is that it must be able to manage the sequence of generated
style commands.

Some of us thought that FvwmTheme would be the answer.
It got too big for me to consider.

I still like my setup which allows for a number of default themes,
and does nothing if you don't ask it to.
I thought the "clever" part of the approach I used is that each style
installs a command that allows you to remove the style. Sort of
object oriented in that each style comes with a constructor and
destructor.

A while back I made some of the default colors blue so there is
a difference between 1995 and today. Not a big difference, but
it is different. Also we've slightly grown the default config with
a menu that can invoke XDG compliant programs.

[Thomas Adam]

Post by Dan Espen

Post by Thomas Adam

Post by Thomas Adam
Hi all,
This intended to be something fairly long-running, and I personally don't
wish to make the UI decisions myself, although I will keep a very close eye
on the FVWM-specific aspects of a proposed config to make sure it's done
"right".
What do I mean when I say "right"? Well, for far too long now FVWM has had
a major thorn in its side -- the default config *sucks* to put it bluntly.
It's been a well known issue for years that it looks like a throwback to
1995 [1] and it's time to modernise it a bit.
There was an aborted attempt at this by Nick Fortune and myself [2] which
you should read before attempting this, as although the thread is a good
five years old now, the concept in there are not. *Please read it*.

[...]
Has anyone done any more work on this? I've received nothing off-list to
indicate that's been the case -- and I do not know how, if at all, this is
being coordinated which is slightly annoying.

Remember we couldn't agree on the 1 pixel border?
I think that was the end of it.

Well, if minutiae like that is all that was left to consider, no wonder
we're done. :P

Post by Dan Espen
What would you think of a dialog that allowed the user to pick the
border width? I think any of us could hack one of those up but
it wouldn't be the ultimate solution for me. My clock, biff, and
perfmeter must have narrower borders than other windows.

I think that's a fine idea. But remember that it's not so much about
improving the tools to achieve a replacement for system.fvwm2rc/*, but
rather what FVWM looks like out of the box; that's what my original thoughts
on this wanted to do, and that's still what I'm after.

Post by Dan Espen
Some of us thought that FvwmTheme would be the answer.
It got too big for me to consider.

Indeed.

-- Thomas Adam

[Michael Großer]

Post by Thomas Adam

Post by Thomas Adam
Hi all,
This intended to be something fairly long-running, and I personally don't
wish to make the UI decisions myself, although I will keep a very close eye
on the FVWM-specific aspects of a proposed config to make sure it's done
"right".
What do I mean when I say "right"? Well, for far too long now FVWM has had
a major thorn in its side -- the default config *sucks* to put it bluntly.
It's been a well known issue for years that it looks like a throwback to
1995 [1] and it's time to modernise it a bit.
There was an aborted attempt at this by Nick Fortune and myself [2] which
you should read before attempting this, as although the thread is a good
five years old now, the concept in there are not. *Please read it*.

[...]
Has anyone done any more work on this? I've received nothing off-list to
indicate that's been the case -- and I do not know how, if at all, this is
being coordinated which is slightly annoying.
-- Thomas Adam

I think no one in this world today really uses
A) FVWM
*and*
B) FVWM with its default configuration.

I think, because of this, a default configuration is not that important.
I think, a better idea could be to leave the default config as minimal
as it is, and instead of changing the default config, better invest
some time into an idea of offering some example configurations for
new FVWM users.

The use case is this:
A new FVWM user surely has his/her own opinion how FVWM should be
configured. No matter how FVWM is configured by default, the users
would change it anyway. This is the reason, why they use FVWM, because
FVWM can be tailored to become some kind of dream GUI.

When a new user runs FVWM for the first time, the FVWM main menu
could contain a menu entry that opens a web browser and causes
the web browser to load a web page somewhere at "www.fvwm.org".
This web page could contain some example configurations, and
the user could choose one of them to use it as a starting point
of his/her own tailered configuration.

The more features you add to the default config, the more
possibly unwanted features the user has to switch off.

Just my two cents about this...
Michael

[elliot s]

<<
I think, because of this, a default configuration is not that important.
I think, a better idea could be to leave the default config as minimal
as it is, and instead of changing the default config, better invest
some time into an idea of offering some example configurations for
new FVWM users.
It's easier to remove code from a maximal config than it is to figure
out how to to add functionality to a minimal config.

[Dan Espen]

Post by Michael Großer

Post by Thomas Adam
Hi all,

I think, because of this, a default configuration is not that important.
I think, a better idea could be to leave the default config as minimal
as it is, and instead of changing the default config, better invest
some time into an idea of offering some example configurations for
new FVWM users.

Fvwm offers 2 sample configs.
Options 1 and 2 on the built in menu.
The first was my effort from a very long time ago.
The second gives you a "windows 95" like configuration.

Perhaps more work could be done in that area.
I never liked 2 ways to do this. Perhaps
option 1 could do a better job of creating a taskbar like
configuration.

[Thomas Adam]

Post by Michael Großer
I think, because of this, a default configuration is not that important.
I think, a better idea could be to leave the default config as minimal
as it is, and instead of changing the default config, better invest
some time into an idea of offering some example configurations for
new FVWM users.

[...]

Seems you didn't read the entire thread when I originally asked this
question.

-- Thomas Adam

[pebcak]

Yes Thomas,

Thomas Funk worked at this. I did some minor stuff, when I had time.
But I'm off to the sea for a week... will send you Thomas' effort tough.

Cheers,
Christine

Post by Thomas Adam

Post by Thomas Adam
Hi all,
This intended to be something fairly long-running, and I personally don't
wish to make the UI decisions myself, although I will keep a very close eye
on the FVWM-specific aspects of a proposed config to make sure it's done
"right".
What do I mean when I say "right"? Well, for far too long now FVWM has had
a major thorn in its side -- the default config *sucks* to put it bluntly.
It's been a well known issue for years that it looks like a throwback to
1995 [1] and it's time to modernise it a bit.
There was an aborted attempt at this by Nick Fortune and myself [2] which
you should read before attempting this, as although the thread is a good
five years old now, the concept in there are not. *Please read it*.

[...]
Has anyone done any more work on this? I've received nothing off-list to
indicate that's been the case -- and I do not know how, if at all, this is
being coordinated which is slightly annoying.
-- Thomas Adam