Re: matchbox with no pointing device

Hi;

on Mon, May 02, 2005 at 08:40:50PM -0400, Paul Fox wrote:
> hi -- my long-time interest in matchbox is moving from the
> personal to the professional.
>

Cool, :)
 
> at work we're developing a small (dedicated task) handheld on
> which we may manage the (fairly small) screen using X.  there's
> no pointing device, but there is a small keypad (with arrows, one
> meta key, a couple of function keys, and Enter).  since the screen
> is small, matchbox seems a natural.  since there's no pointing
> device, i have a couple of questions:
>  
>  - keyboard shortcuts seem pretty straightforward.  where do i
>    look for a complete list of keynames?  (i assume these the X11
>    names, as used in xmodmap, correct?  i can never find the list
>    when i need it.)
>    

Check /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h

>    the doc pages refer to the following syntax for the kbdconfig
>    file.  the footnote, at least in the html version, is dangling.
>    what does the footnote say?
> 	!$   Launch or raise preexisting application, keeping just a
>     		single instance running.  [1]

Hmm, I think it should say the single instance app should support
startup notification too.

>    (is there a reason that the doc source isn't simply included in the
>    source tarball?)
> 

Not really. I used to squish it into the README in the tarball - I
should probably start doing that again.

I plan to do some overhauling of the documention over the next couple
of weeks to get it nice for 1.0 release. Any thoughts / feedback on
how you think it should work would be great. 

>  - wmctl claims to control an EWMH/NetWM compatible X window
>    manager.  is matchbox such a window manager?  the bit of
>    playing i've done says "yes".  any caveats i should know
>    about?  being able to switch windows, close them, etc, from
>    scripts will be important on this device.
>    
>    i assume matchbox has no concept of "desktop", correct? 
>    wmctl has some desktop-centric features that i'll simply
>    ignore in that case.
> 

Matchbox supports a fair chunk of the EWMH's - stuff thats relevant (
i.e. no workspace support ) and useful without bloating stuff too
much. Mathcbox also has some of its own hints for matchbox specific
stuff.For what it supports see;

http://svn.o-hand.com/repos/matchbox/trunk/matchbox-window-manager/COMPLIANCE
and
http://svn.o-hand.com/repos/matchbox/trunk/matchbox-documentation/developers/matchbox-key.txt

Matchbox does have a concept of a desktop ( think PDA style launcher ).

>    matchbox itself has the concept of "next" and "prev" windows --
>    "matchbox-remote -next" for example.  is there a way to request
>    these operations via wmctl?  (in the interest of using a
>    single tool, rather than a combination.)
> 

The 'next' and 'prev' thing is a matchbox specific thing. It would
probably be quite trivial to hack support for this into wmctl, or hack
extra support into matchbox-remote ( If you do, please send patches :)
).

Many thanks;

  -- Matthew