A short outside history of Xfce

[Joe Klemmer]

On Wed, 2006-05-03 at 18:17 +0200, Stefan Stuhr wrote:

> I have just tried to see how close I could get to make my Xfce
> installation look like CDE, based on Solaris screenshots[1].
> The result:
> http://www.sstuhr.dk/screenshot1.png

	The result is very good.

>       * The window manager theme is "Mofit".

	Got it.

>       * The GTK2 theme is Xfce-stellar.

	Don't got it.  Where is this?  I've only got the 4.4b1 version of Xfce
installed.  Where did you find this theme?

>       * The backdrop is xfce-stellar-tile.png, which is included with
>         Xfdesktop.

	Got it.  I actually have one that I think looks better which came with
xfce 3 somewhere.  If I find it I'll do a screenshot.

>       * The icon theme, Tango, isn't CDE-ish at all, but it should be
>         possible to find and/or make a CDE-ish icon theme.

	I don't have Tango.  I'm not terribly picky about the icons, though.

>       * The only non-Xfce part of the screenshot, beside the Tango icons
>         and some of the minimized applications, is the panel pager,
>         which is the GNOME panel pager applet running in Xfapplet.

	There's a panel plug-in in xfce already to do this.

> It could look more like CDE:
[...]
>       * The launcher arrow buttons could be on top of the launcher
>         buttons (maybe there should be a global CDE compatibility option
>         that could be used for this, among other things; panel global or
>         Xfce global?).

	Agreed but if Jas (or anyone else) isn't up to doing it I can probably
live with the menu arrows where they are.

>       * The pager could either get optional support for showing desktop
>         names instead of miniature windows, like the GNOME pager, or a
>         CDE-like desktop switcher plugin with real buttons could be made
>         as a goodie. The later seems to be most CDE-like.

	Jas might try and make a plug-in for this.  There's also still a chance
I'll try, too.  Maybe if it's done (by whomever) I can maintain it.  But
don't hold your breath.

>       * The Xfce-stellar GTK2 theme doesn't draw the panel handles at
>         all.

	Those are nice but I think they might need to be implemented as a panel
plug-in.