Episode: 1269
Title: HPR1269: Frank Bell Achieves Enlightenment Adventures with E17 Pt Two
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1269/hpr1269.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 22:43:13

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Hello, this is Frank Bell again, and I'm here with the second part of my two-part series
about using E17, the Enlightenment Desktop version 0.17.
I had hoped to get this done earlier, but things have been kind of jangly around here and
there's anyone who has ever studied the topic can tell you.
The first rule of time management is that the urgent drives out the important.
The first episode has already been published.
I'll include a link to that in my show notes.
If you want to see the detailed show notes with links to various Enlightenment resources
rather than repeating them in the show notes for this episode, I'll simply refer you to
the show notes for the first episode.
The first episode was a general overview of the Enlightenment Desktop.
Here I'm going to get into the nitty gritty of some of the configuration items because
they do function somewhat differently than in the newer desktop environments such as
XFCE, KDE, and Ganom.
I'm going to focus on certain items of regarding appearance and functionality that I'm particularly
interested in.
I'm not going to try to cover every single choice because no one will want to listen and I
wouldn't want to do all that must-talking anyway, even though I do like to talk.
But if you get the hang of how these work, then you will have the hang of how the whole
thing works.
If you recall, Enlightenment has shelves.
What in other desktop environments are called panels.
They are pretty much the same thing.
I'll start with the shelf.
Then I'll move on to various settings that are found in the settings panel dialog itself
and look at mouse, keyboard, navigation, and key bindings, appearance, configuring startup
applications, and the title bar dialog, which you get when you right-click on the title
bar of an application window.
A shelf will typically have a menu item to display the full menu, a workspace page, an
i-bar or icon bar where you can put launcher icons.
With Enlightenment 17, E17 there is a task bar where you can see the icons of open programs
whether they are minimized or whether they are open to the screen.
This is one difference between the previous version of Enlightenment as far as I can tell
that in previous versions, an icon for an open application would only appear in an i-box
if that application were minimized.
In E17, the icon appears whether or not the application is minimized and you click on
that icon in the task bar, Enlightenment will take you to the workspace and to that application.
To configure this shelf, I can point at any item on the shelf and right-click and I will
get a menu for configuring that item, in this case I am pointing at the page and there
will also be a menu for configuring the shelf.
I can point to the i-bar and I right-click on that and I get an item to configure the
launcher for the application I am pointing at or to configure the i-bar itself or to
configure the shelf.
So from any item on the shelf, I can right-click, I get an option to configure the entire
shelf to configure the particular gadget that I am looking at or if it is a particular
icon on the launcher to configure that icon.
I am pointing at the icon for pan and if I select that item on the menu, my items are
the properties or I can remove that icon from the launcher bar or the i-bar.
If I go down to the shelf, I get a choice to configure the contents, the settings, the
orientation, whether it is upper, right-hand of the screen where I like it, vertically
along the left-hand side of the screen, wherever you would like to position it, whether
you want it to auto-hide or not, I customarily do not, to refresh the appearance in case
I have made some changes and they do not seem to be showing or to rename it, about the
only ones I have ever messed with or the orientation and the contents.
So we will talk about contents.
shelf contents, I click on that and I get an item with list available gadgets which include
the battery meter, the clock, the settings, the connection manager which I mentioned in
the previous broadcast, i-bars, i-box and so on, the gadgets that are actually installed
on my shelf have a little green dot to the right of them.
If I want to add a gadget to the shelf, so I want to add the thermometer, I click on
the temperature item to highlight it and click add gadget and then it will appear on the
shelf, then I can position it where I wish and I will talk about that shortly.
There is an advanced button which if I click shows me the loaded gadgets and the available
gadgets, slightly different format but pretty much the same functionality.
That is not always the case when you click the advanced button and I will give a particular
example of that later when I start talking about wallpapers.
If I want to rearrange the gadgets from the default mode, I can right click on whichever
item and in the right click menu that appears, the bottom choice is begin moving gadgets.
If I click that each gadget, not each icon but each gadget such as the page, the i-bar,
the taskbar will be highlighted and I can grab that with the mouse and move it to a different
location.
It is a little touchy sometimes to get them to the right location but once you get them
there, then you would right click again and the bottom option in the first pop-up menu
will be to stop moving gadgets.
If I want to rearrange the launcher icons and that is something I did want to do because
I wanted to put the ones I used most often to the left and the ones I used least often
to the right, I right click on the i-bar, the launcher bar and select contents and a window
opens under the Applications tab is listed every application known to Enlightenment, all
the applications that exist on my computer.
Selecting an application to be in the launcher bar is very similar to selecting a gadget,
you highlight the application you want to appear and then you go down and you click add
and it will be added to the launcher bar or the i-bar.
To manipulate the order, you click the order tab and it lists them, the ones that are
already configured for the i-bar, you highlight the one you want to move and you would
click up or down or you could even click remove and position it where you want it in the
sequence.
The ones at the top are to the left and my horizontal i-bar, the ones at the bottom are
to the right and once you selected that you click apply, once you click apply, the close
button will grey out and no longer be accessible or you could click OK which would apply it
and close the window and most of the other items on the shelf can be configured in a similar
way.
You right click the menu, you pick the shelf or the name of the gadget and do your configuration.
One item that does happen, I did this with the clock when it was there on the shelf, it
was really too small to read.
One of the menu items on the right click is move to and I can move it to back to the
shelf or to the desktop depending on where I wanted it.
I choose to move it to the desktop then select the setting to resize it and make it large
enough to see and then I set the sticky state so it would always appear at the same place
and would appear on all four of my configured desktops and I will talk about setting the
sticky and remembering the position later.
It's something I think a lot of people will find useful.
So that's configuring the shelf from the shelf the other way to configure something is
to go to the settings panel.
To do that, let's click to bring up the menu and then I go to the item towards the bottom
that says settings.
That item gives me a choice for the settings panel and also gives me choices for the most
popular settings area at least as the Enlightenment maintainer see a gadgets, module, shelves,
the theme and the wallpaper and at the bottom there is a choice for all which list all
the choices in the settings panel grouped under their headings so that I can go directly
to a particular one.
So if I want to configure my favorites menu I can go to settings, all apps and select
my favorites right there.
I can click on the settings panel which will open to the first item in the list which
is look and under there there's wallpaper application theme, overall theme, colors and
so on and so forth and I can click on the next item or I can cursor on the arrow key
in the window display and go to apps, screen, windows, menus and other selections.
So let's take a look at how one of these works.
I'll go to look and theme because I like my I can't the I like to play with themes.
If I click on theme a window opens up giving me a list of my installed themes.
I can point to system theme which is the default choice or if I have a theme stored in
my home directory I can point to personal.
If I have downloaded a theme and want to install it there's an import button and the top
right which I can then import that theme into my choices.
The highlighted theme is displayed in a many picture of what it will look like so I can
compare the various ones that are installed and I can go to the advanced button and that
gives me some choices for configuring various items within a theme.
I have not done much with this basically because I like my wallpaper.
If I get my wallpaper displaying the way I want it I don't worry too much about the
color of the window borders and things like that it's just something I used a tinker
with that stuff back in the windows 3.1 days and it no longer fascinates me quite so much.
One caution about themes and this was in the first episode of this.
If you go to download a theme make sure it is compatible with E17 according to the
Enlightenment website the theme engine has changed between the E16 series and the E17 series
and certain themes may not work properly in E17.
I actually had that happen to me on one of my computers I'm logging into the command
line because I'm using Slackware and I had to reboot and find that theme and remove
it in the configuration and that before I started up the X server again and you started
using the graphical interface.
I'm going to talk a bit about wallpapers if I go to wallpaper I get a dialogue with
shows the selected wallpaper and if it's particularly if I have different wallpapers
on different desktops it shows me which wallpaper is on my current desktop it also shows
me to the left a list of wallpapers that I have used on that desktop if I want to add
a new one I can either look at the system wallpapers if I have a bunch installed or I can
go to click the personal radio button and then just to the right of that there's a dialogue
that says picture I can click that and navigate to a directory and select a wallpaper from
there I store mine and wallpapers so I'll navigate quickly to my wallpapers folder and
pick a nice picture price canyon and I'm going to select use and it gives me a dialogue
for the settings whether it should be fill center or what have you I usually select fill
I can use the original file or it will actually import it into enlightenment I usually leave
that set the default which is to import I click OK now here's where you can set
your wallpaper for just this workspace or all workspaces once you select OK and your selected
wallpapers appearing in the big dialogue picture click advanced and you'll have a choice for all
desktops are this desktop one thing I have noticed is from time to time you might come in here
and you want to set the wallpaper for this desktop and you don't have an apply button you have
to tickle it so I have no apply button here just to close this desktop is selected if I were doing
this for the first time and enlightenment had the same wallpaper on all four desktops I might have
to change the setting and change it back to make it come alive so I had no apply button
when I first went in here then I clicked the radio the radio button for all desktops
and the apply button came alive I'm going back to this desktop because that's what I want to have
but the reason I mentioned that if you come into this and you don't see an apply button
that you can click change the setting and then change it to what you want it will wake up your
dialogue and I could apply and my wallpaper changes to price canyon one other choice that
exists here is to click to use the theme wallpaper it exists above the dialogue button for selecting a
picture I like my own wallpaper and frankly I'm not real big on the science fictiony fantasy
type of stuff that some people seem to like when they designed wallpapers and I don't like to have
logos in the middle of my wallpaper so I always never use a theme wallpaper so let me close I
go to apps I want to talk a bit about favorite apps in particular favorite applications can be
there are no favorite applications when you first install e17 but if you have a certain short list
of applications that you use frequently you can call them favorites and then with the default key
if you right click your menu of favorite applications will appear to the desktop there's a helicopter
going by I live in an area which is very heavily navy and every from time to time a navy helicopter
will fly over and fortunately so far none of them had fallen on top of me if I left click to bring
up the default menu the favorite applications once you have favorites configured will be the top
choice and it presents the same list as right clicking and bring up favorites to add something to
favorites you click on favorites and it works just like some of the shelf dialogues there's a list
of applications you select the one that you want to add to your favorite and click on add and it
will be added to the list of favorites if you want to change the order in which they appear in the
list you click the order tab and they are listed top to bottom I usually list mine at an alphabetical
order now I have noticed that when I add a new favorite I may have to restart enlightenment for
it to appear in the list which I can do without closing any windows or applications simply by going
to the main menu then to the enlightenment item and clicking restart and that will restart the
window manager while leaving your applications running and untouched it just restarts it in the
background now another thing and there are a number of categories there's look after screen windows
menus I have a file much useful under there language advanced input I want to talk about
input because this is where you set up your key bindings and your mouse bindings I left the
mouse bindings pretty much as they are but if I were to want to change them say if I wanted to have
the right click bring up the menu rather than left click I click on mouse bindings I scroll down
until I find the one I wanted say left button and highlight it it jumps right to menu and under
the menu category show main menu is highlighted and I can delete that binding I can modify it
there's a delete all to delete all mouse bindings which I suspect would be a really really
bad idea and so on I highlight the mouse action on the left the action on the right and then the
add delete modifying what have you you're also some settings for the action context and I tell the
truth I have not messed with this it does say zone will wait for this phone call to go to the
voicemail okay and as usual no one left a message it's some corporation with a war dollar trying
to sell me something I don't need for a price I don't want to pay I have it done anything with
the action context dialogue the default is zone and I suspect most people won't be too much
interest in it so I'm not going to do any exploring I want to mention key bindings for a bit I do
use a lot of key bindings I don't like having desktop icons I stopped using desktop icons way
early in my windows XP days because I got tired of the clutter so I went to menus and I heavily
customized my menus and I'm very spoiled with the key bindings that I have in flux box so now
that I've been using enlightenment a lot I want to keep the convenience of key bindings most of
the key bindings I use are to open applications I don't use them to go from one desktop to the other
and things like that so suppose I want to and I use generally the super key which enlightenment
actually refers to is the when key so if I want to add a key binding I click add and enlightenment
tells me please press the key sequence or escape to a board so I press the keys that I want to
bind I'll pick one I'm not using and then it appears in the dialogue on the left when plus Q
if I want to make that a command I scroll through the list and there's a whole bunch of
pre-configured actions such as the show everything launcher show the windows plug in
show or hide gadgets delayed action and so on and I can get down to and you can select any one of those
I get down to launch and I use there's a choice per command and a choice per application I usually
use command and it works just fine and I click on command and in the bottom there's a dialogue
box that says action parameters syntax command name example slash usr slash bin slash xmms
and I type in the command opera pan clause mail whatever it may be then trying to set up I have
found if the application is in my path it's not necessary to type in the full path to the application
just typing in opera Libra Office K edit whatever it is seems to work just fine and once
I've got that typed in there I click apply as I recall I usually have to restart enlightenment
as I described before in order for the binding to work I gather that the configure those configuration
files are read at enlightenment startup someone asked me recently just as a footnote
because I use debian I use met regularly and but predominantly slackware how do I keep them straight
and the way I keep them straight is this I don't do superl or windows key t for thunderbird I do
windows key m for mail so whatever operating system I'm using windows key m will open my mail
windows key e will open whatever editor I'm using whether it's g-edit or k-edit
on meant with matae I think it I think it's pluma so my key bindings are more towards the function
than the application although I do use o for opera and f for Firefox but then they're cross
platform so it's always the same w for my office suite and it seems to work out I don't have to
memorize a separate set of key bindings for each machine the same set of key bindings works on
all the machines still in the settings panel I want to talk a bit about startup applications
because that's something that tripped me up if you install enlightenment onto a machine where you
have another desktop environment such as matae gnom kde xfce and you look in your menu under
applications settings or on my mint machine is applications settings preferences and appearance
just as in the matae menu and find something for startup applications that is not going to be the
startup applications item for enlightenment that's the startup application item from the previously
installed desktop environment which is enlightenment has picked up and added to the menu if you want
to set up your startup applications your applications to begin upon login to enlightenment such as
xscreensaver in my case I usually have gcrem I know it's all but it works it doesn't need to be made
and you're it worked just fine the way it is and others of that nature you need to go to the
enlightenment settings panel to the apps category and select startup applications there that is the
enlightenment startup application settings when that opens up it's got three tabs system applications
order system includes things such as the screen saver the blue man output the hb system tray for my
hp lip and so on I have two items selected screen saver and the wicked network manager tray
then applications and this works like the other applications related things I've mentioned
you scroll down the list until you find the application that you want in to startup automatically
such as gcrem you highlight it and click add to add it to the startup list or remove to remove it
from the startup list click the order tab and select the order in which you want them to start up
the caution here is make sure you're using enlightenment startup settings not another startup
applications applet that might have been lying around on your computer and made it into the main
menu okay we're nearly there I'm gonna flip over to the other workspace and make sure yes we
are still recording I find it distracting to try to work through this stuff and look at our
destiny at the same time I want to talk about the title bar dialogue when I right click or
left click on the icon and the upper left hand corner of an application window I get the
title bar dialogue if I right click over the title bar itself I get that same dialogue that
dialogue is a sub menu that includes the choices window which has its own sub menu take shot take
a screenshot of the selected application move to and you can select from your configured desktops
always on top sticky shade and close so I can shade by selecting shade from the menu I can also
shade by double clicking on the title bar under the window choices I can maximize it to full screen
I can maximize and that maximizes it to exclude the area occupied by the panel I can
un-maximize that actually is a choice on the menu and here interestingly I can maximize
vertically which keeps the same same horizontal dimensions but takes the window up to the full
height of the screen excluding the shelf I can maximize horizontally which takes the window
the full width of the screen but keeps the existing height of the window I can maximize left
which will occupy the left half of the screen or maximize right which will occupy the right half
of the screen and I know when I first got into this that was one of the questions that 51-50
was interested in enlightenment was half maximizing to one side or the other of the screen and I
didn't discover how to do that until a couple of months after his question on Linux questions got
me interested in enlightenment you can I also on the window menu you can iconify and I you know
that doesn't seem to do much that I can tell I'm sure it does something I accept my stacking always
on top always below and so on as I am for a skip so if I put skip and select say the
pager then the icon will not appear in my pager if I select skip the window list and then do
alt tab to bring up the window list that particular window where I've selected the skip will not
appear in the alt tab window list I can select my border style I to use the default or use the
icon provided with the application so on I don't mess with that but I do want to talk about remember
if I click remember I get a little dialog box to remember nothing size and position
looks and so on if I click advanced and I have done this with certain application there are
identifiers I have to select and identify for the window for the remembering to work in this case
I'm doing this testing with the setups dialog and the window name is already selected Z the class
is selected is configure and the settings window type that's what it's going to remember by if
I click properties I can select it to remember position size border style and so on I had done
this I I did actually do this with gcrelem now gcrelem does not have a title bar so how I did it
with gcrelem was I pointed at the gcrelem icon in the taskbar right click and I got that same title
bar menu I went into window remember for identifier I selected gcrelem and for properties to remember I
select position size locks and stickiness and position gcrelem where I wanted it and then when I
shut down and restarted gcrelem comes back to that same location on the screen automatically I
also for gcrelem set the stacking for it to be below everything else as opposed to normal also in
the title bar dialog there may from time to time appear a kill item when that appears it means
basically to kill the application much as much as the kill command would do from the command line
any data would be lost and there's a choices for iccm netwm settings now I look that up and that
stands for inter client communication conventions manual slash extended window managers hints and
there are various windows behavior choices that have to do with compliance with desktop standards
that I have a play with and I doubt most users would really be interested in so that's a brief
review of settings in the enlightenment desktop the dialog boxes I found particularly interesting
and the ones I've had to use to get the system to do what I wanted it to do there are many many
configuration choices individual dialogues within enlightenment far more I think than most people
will ever wish to explore but all of them work in one way or the other similar to the ones that I've
described if you're interested in using enlightenment I hope you find this enlightening I have
gotten quite attached to it it's almost we meet me away from fluxbox which has been my go-to
window manager for quite some time now four or five years or more as far as I'm concerned enlightenment
does live up to its billing for a visual appeal if you want to email me you can email me at frank
at pineviewfarm.net pineviewfarm is all one word no spaces no punctuation
and my website is www.pineviewfarm.net thank you very much
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