This is the README file for guichooser-0.1.0 INTRODUCTION The guichooser utility is a tool to ease the changing from one window manager to another as well as to enable easy swithing swicthing complete desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME without closing applications. When started after exiting a window manager or by .xinitrc, .xsession, etc. guichooser will pop up with a pushbutton menu asking the user to choose a window manager or desktop environment to start, or to quit X. When the selection is made, a customizable shell script will run to start the selected window manager and other programs. After the window manager is exited guichooser is then restarted. In addition, guichooser can take command line options that specify a default action and a specified period of time to wait before taking that action. guichooser requires the GTK+ toolkit. INSTALLATION After untarring the guichooser-0.10.tar.gz cd to guichooser-0.10 and do make to build the binary and make intall to install it in /usr/local. To remove it just type make uninstall GETTING STARTED QUICLKY To get started edit your .xinitrc or .xsession file to say 'exec guichooser' whereever it was starting a window manager. Then when you start X you'll see a menu pop up with buttons for fvwm2, windowmaker, ice, twm, KDE, wm2, enlightenment, afterstep, GNOME, or exiting X windows. When GNOME is chosen, you will be prompted again for a window manager. To customize the chioces made available and actions taken by guichooser edit the shell scripts, edit the shell scripts in the directory $HOME/.guichooser. Enjoy. HOW IT WORKS. When started, guichooser will search the directory .guichooser under the users home directory for scripts to run. If the .guichooser directory does not exist guichooser will search /usr/share/guchooser/scripts and then /usr/local/share/guchooser/scripts and copy these to .guichooser under the users home directory. Guichooser will then pop up a pushbutton menu selection of the scripts to run, and an option to quit. When a selection is made, guichooser will exit and start the script selected. A typical script for guichooser should look as follows: --- #!/bin/sh # start window manager but do not exec it so that we will return # to script after window manager is done wmaker # re-run guichooser after window manager is exited. exec guichooser --- The following is script is for starting Gnome: --- #!/bin/sh # start gnome background-properties --init & keyboard-properties --init & mouse-properties --init & panel & # now prompt for a window manager exec guichooser --- As you can see, you can customize the scripts as you need to accomodate the window manager configurations on your system. You also may wish to have guichooser start a default window manager after a specified period of time if no selection is made. This can be done using the -d and -w command line options. For example, the following, when placed in .xinitrc will start Gnome and then prompt for a window manager but will start enlightenment if no choice is made with five seconds: --- #!/bin/sh # start gnome background-properties --init & keyboard-properties --init & mouse-properties --init & panel & # now prompt for a window manager, but with a default to start # Enlightenment must be a script in $HOME/.guichooser exec guichooser -d Enlightenment -w 5 --- BUG REPORTS AND COMMENTS: send to coder@open-systems.com ENJOY!!!
