Thanks Dave!
TL;DR: The grid is best. We almost agree on the hot-keys, I think.
Dave wrote:I have thought about text based display manager several times. I like the idea because you can fork to X. This means if there is a problem with X you still have Console to fall back on, without needing to know the"add a 3 to the end" or"press control alt f*".
It would be trivial to add chvt commands to the WM menus. I've already done that here so I can get from X to another vt via the desktop menu. I'm not sure what you gain by forking because the other consoles are available. I will think about it. My plan was to not fork X so when you exit X, control comes back to the DM at a specific place in the code. That is how I was planning to implement a WM menu that allows the user to switch the WM. While in the WM, the user could select:
Main --> Window Manager --> Fluxbox
When the user selects this, we write a specific file containing"fluxbox" and logout. When control returns to the DM, it looks for that file. If it is fresh then we start X again but this time with the Fluxbox WM. To save RAM we could exec X. When we logout of X then we could exec the DM again. Alternative, we could just exit X and allow the DM to respawn via the inittab. This starts to get tricky because I want to detect when we are run from inittab and when we have exited from X.
I've also wanted to create a cli menu system similar to the WM menu systems. There should also be a cli control centre. Perhaps this would fill the need you are trying to fill with forking the DM.
It would be especially cool if you could link smxi /sgfxi/inxi/cli-installer/etc scripts to run with a limited amount input needed. For example, just choose"Update Graphics" and away it goes.
This is a great idea! Maybe it would fit better in the cli menus/control-centre. Maybe not. BTW: I also want to add a"pastebin" command that will send files or text to pastebin.com. IMO there should be both a cli and a gui version. There should be an option to post some standard diagnostics.
There is also CDM, it is all bash based. It is nice because it cleanly works.
Here is the source for CDM
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"https://github.com/ghost1227/cdm"
linktext was:"https://github.com/ghost1227/cdm"
====================================
Thanks. I didn't know about this. I will look into it.
However IMO there are too many keys, I would say to make it similar to slim with the press F1 to toggle WM.
Arrgh!
__{{emoticon}}__ I thought you would be so pleased with my grid! IMO F1 in SLiM is a big pain because you don't see all the WMs available and if you go past the one you want you need to keep pressing F1 to cycle around. You and I have discussed at length the limitations of SLiM's WM selector. The grid can easily show you 20 or more WMs all at once. I also thought you would be pleased to see the icon-manager as a separate choice from the WM. I tried to address the problems you and I had discussed of giving users ready access to a large number of WMs.
For example:
to change the user just keep pressing"U" to toggle through the list
to change the Icons just keep pressing"I"
to change the WM just keep pressing"W"
For help Press"H"
to Configure the Display Manager press"C"
The"Hot-keys" line in the screen shot was meant to express an idea like this but, for example, once you pressed"U", a list of users would show up and you would use <Up-Arrow> and <Down-Arrow> to navigate the list. This is how Grub (with gfxboot) works. I think it is very intuitive.
And to launch press"Enter"
Yes. I'm having trouble capture <Enter> ATM but I'm working on it.
The other way I would go is to make it similar to grub, with the main list being all the desktop sessions
The names of the WMs are usually short. You can fit more in a grid than in a list. With a list, some of the WMs would be scrolled off-screen, etc. With a small number of WMs there is not much difference between a list and a grid. With a larger number, the grid is much better.
ISTM the only extra keys I've added are <Left-Arrow> and <Right-Arrow> (since Grub uses <Up-Arrow> and <Down-Arrow> to navigate through the main menu) and the <Tab> key to cycle through the active areas as an alternative to using the hot-keys. IMO the <Tab> key will be useful for newbies to quickly exploration of what is available while the hot-keys are a slightly faster way to get where you want once you are familiar with what everything does.
Thanks again Dave! I really appreciate all of your input.