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The Mailbag!

Contents:

Write the Linux Gazette at gazette@ssc.com. Send technical questions to the Answer Gang at linux-questions-only@ssc.com.

Help Wanted -- Article Ideas

These questions have been selected among the hundreds the Gazette recieves each month. Article submissions on these topics will be eagerly accepted at gazette@ssc.com, and posted in the next issue.

Answers to these questions should be sent directly to the e-mail address of the inquirer with or without a copy to gazette@ssc.com. Answers that are copied to LG will be printed in the next issue -- in the Tips column if simple, the Answer Gang if more complex and detailed.

Before asking a question, please check the Linux Gazette FAQ to see if it has been answered there. The AnswerGuy "past answers index" may also be helpful (if a bit dusty).

Followup on Window managers

Thu, 7 Sep 2000 08:56:30 -0600 (MDT)
From: Gordon Haverland (ghaverla@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca)

Hi!

Nice article on window managers, although it would have been nice to see a few more tried out. :-)

There are many people out there who have their favorite

window manager out there, and won't try others. Sort of like the which editor is better (vi versus emacs) battle. But what might actually be interesting, is for the X% (90+ ?) of us who don't have any strong feelings about window managers (or editors for that matter), is if some kind of "popularity contest" could be run. We login, and instead of calling twm, fvwm, ... in some RC file, we made a call to wm, which picked one of the N window managers on our system at random. When we went to logout, or to force a change of window manager; we were asked our feelings on how the session went, and then this report (along with a list of what window managers are on our system) went someplace for compilation. Maybe even a list of what programs were launched during the session (and from the command line or via the window manager/icon/however you want to describe it). People who are interested in wm could get feedback from the guinea pigs (so to speak) as to how useful their wm was. I'm sure some interesting statistics might show up. It might turn out that ZWM was most liked by left-handed Carpathians who do GIS work.

Sorry, I don't want to write any code to do this. I've got enough things to do.

Gord

Well, there is always Debian's statistics package so you can let them know what you liked - perhaps someone will do something similar for X. -- Heather

question on xdm documentation

Wed, 20 Sep 2000 16:35:26 -0400
From: Doug James <dcjames@home.com>

Is there a place on the internet where I can pick up some documentation on the latest version of xdm (The on released with XFree86 4.0.1)? There's some stuff in the Xresources and config files that just isn't mentioned in the man page.

I've looked everywhere I can think of, hit every search engine I know of, and even gotten flamed as a lamer on linux IRC channels trying to find this information.

Your help would really be appreciated.

Doug

And speaking of X... Readers! This is your chance to Make Linux A Little More Fun -- namely, to adopt a man page today, starting with most of the XFree86 Project... or, some articles on XFree86 4.0 would be cheerfully accepted here, too. -- Heather

General Mail

Thank you, [X in "Toaster" Mode]

Tue, 5 Sep 2000 14:59:09 +0100
From: "Padraig Tobin" <Padraig_Tobin@eur.3com.com>

Saying 'thank you' seems passe these days but I feel I have to do it anyway..

I'd been trying to do this for about a week until I eventually found [at a gazette mirror] ../issue52/tag/14.html

Thanks, Much obliged, Padraig

NT GINA for 95/98

Wed, 20 Sep 2000 13:00:34 -0600
From: Anonymous

FYI, re your 'and NSGINA ' article, there is a 95/98/NT/2000 GINA solution now provided by Digital Privacy, Inc.

Cheers,

This note was made anonymous by request. It isn't strictly about Linux, but, we mentioned the GINA so... you can read more:
http://www.digital-privacy.com

Gazette Matters

Tue, 05 Sep 2000 10:55:40 +0200
From: Henk Langeveld <Henk.Langeveld@holland.sun.com>
Subject: gazette navigation

I've been browsing the gazette several times, but I find the navigation buttons rather awkward. The small size of the [Next] and [Previous] icons makes it difficult to get a quick impression of an issue. I think the last time I checked the Gazette before today was at least 6 months back.

Please consider making these two buttons at least as large as the 'FAQ' icon, and you may have at least one more regular reader.

Note: I'm reading this on a 20" screen - the buttons are about 5x10 mm for me, while the netscape buttons at the top of this window are approx 1/2 inch on each side, that's about a 3 times larger area.

Tue, 5 Sep 2000 12:23:41 -0400
From: Linux Gazette <gazette@ssc.com>
Subject: Monthly FAQ roundup

Here are the answers to this month's FAQ questions sent to LG:

Please see the Linux Gazette FAQ for answers to these and other questions. The FAQ describes the different ways you can obtain the Gazette.

Wed, 13 Sep 2000 18:31:34 -0500
From: eL JoRgItO <jorge@hal9000.eui.upm.es>
Subject: Escogiendo un Administrador de Ventanas

hola, una critica, :(
constructiva espero ;)

Es sobre el articulo "Escogiendo un Administrador de Ventanas...", no conozco muy bien vuestra publicacion y tal, pero me parece un poco flojo, el autor solo conoce generalidades de cada gestor de ventanas y enumera algunos reconociendo que ni siquiera los ha probado... Me parece muy mal, pues creo que lo minimo antes de escribir sobre algo es probar todo lo que por lo menos conozcas y nunca hablar de oidas. Yo sin ser nadie del otro mundo he probado esos gestores y ochocientos mil mas y solo por curiosidad, sin el proposito de escribir un articulo sobre ello.

na mas, el resto de articulos que he visto tenian mejor pinta, y por eso os comento este. gracias.

saludos de un cachupin desde la peninsula :)

Felipe Barousse translates:

Hello, here is a criticism, :( a constructive one, I hope ,)

It is related to the article "Choosing your Window Manager...." I don't really know very well your magazine but, the author of this article seems a bit lousy to me. He only knows generalities of each window manager and names a few and even acknowledges that he hasn't tried them...

It looks so bad to me since I believe that the least thing someone has to do before writing about something is try out everything that you know and avoid talking by what you listened around.

Me, being nobody special have tried those window managers and hundred other ones just out of curiosity and without the specific purpose of writing an article about it.

That's it. The rest of the articles I have seen look much better and that's why I comment on this specific one.

Greetings from a "cachupin" from the peninsula :)

[Translator's note: cachupin: refers to the people native of Spain. Peninsula refers to the Iberic peninsula; that is, Spain]

Your Editor responds:

The article may be weak on details, but it does contain some information some readers might need. We have all levels of readers, from newbies to experienced sysadmins/programmers, so we try to provide a wide variety of articles.

If you have anything you wish to write for Linux Gazette in English, , send it to gazette@ssc.com if it's article length, or linux-questions-only@ssc.com as a 2-Cent Tip if it's shorter. If you prefer to write it in Spanish, send it to fbarousse@piensa.com and Felipe will translate it.

-Mike

Or, in Spanish:

Aunque ese artículo sea quizás un poco débil de detalles, contiene algo de información de interés a unos usuarios. Hay cada nivel de lectores, tanto usuarios nuevos como administratores de sistemas y programadores experimentados. Pues, tratamos de publicar artículos a cada nivel.

Si Vd quiere escribir algo por Linux Gazette en inglés, envíelo a gazette@ssc.com si es largo de artículo, o a linux-questions-only@ssc.com como Consejo de 2 Centavos si es más corto. Si Vd prefiere escribirlo en español, envíelo a fbarousse@piensa.com y Felipe lo tracucirá.

Readers, is there anyone else willing to translate articles from other languages?

Mon, 18 Sep 2000 10:54:29 -0400
From: Aurelio Martinez Dalis <aureliomd@cantv.net>
Subject: Information required

My name is Aurelio Martinez. I am a linux begineer and I do not have internet access (WWW). Is it possible to receive Linux Gazette by e-mail in text file format?. Thanks.

[Not currently. The files would be too big (2-4 MB, and many mail systems reject mail over 1 MB). In the future we may be able to offer this, especially since it's such a highly-requested feature. -Mike

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Published in issue 58 of Linux Gazette October 2000
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