NsCDE Versions Save

After some 11 months, Not so Common Desktop Environment (NsCDE) 2.3 is finally released. In this release, there are as usual many fixes and improvements, as well as some new features. Below is the list of most important works done for this new release.

• Font and Color Style Manager: reload new themes without FVWM restart
• Qt6 integration support
• Optional Picom X Compositor internal support
• Thunderbird 102+ CSS theme integration support
• Firefox up to 113+ CSS theme integration support
• Font and Color Style Manager reshape, add integrations as separate dialog
• (De)Iconify X11 freeze glitch fvwm workaround
• Front Panel initial placement fix instead of workaround
• Fix GWM FvwmScript segfault on exit
• More missing icons in XDG icon theme
• Handle gsettings org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme
• Xscreensaver 6.X support
• Add detailed X resources for xcalc and some old Athena based apps
• Tuning X resources for more old apps
• Font and Color Style Manager: remember widget integration options
• GTK3 theme fixes: treat nasty header bar as toolbar
• Initial setup: add detailed integration questions, Qt6 support
• Front Panel clock: triangle hour and minute hands to match original
• GWMPager as popup on workspace change in no-page mode
• Fixed some easy-to-make keyboard shortcuts accidental calls
• Firefox and Thunderbird user.js additions for nice initial look & feel
• Thunderbird HTML compose window toolbar fix
• Docs update, many portability fixes, misc fixes, some typo fixes
• Portability and test phase fixes

This release adds some features, 3rd party integrations, fixes bugs etc. Highlights are:

• Add kcalc colors tom match dtcalc (colormgr.local)
• Fix rofi and dunst themes to work with new versions of programs
• NsCDE .desktop files renamed to conform to standards
• Front Panel on top of the screen possibility implemented. This can be achieved with "InfoStoreAdd frontpanel.on.top 1" in ~/.NsCDE/NsCDE.conf.
• Icon theme updates
• CSS: support firefox 100+
• Consolidate GTK2 and GTK3 engine css files, add some fixes and match colors more correctly
• Added Common User Access (CUA) key bindings. This is now default key binding set in NsCDE. Old key bindings scheme now called "nscde1x" can be used in ~/.NsCDE/NsCDE.conf with the "InfoStoreAdd kbd_bind_set nscde1x" - this can also be configured now with Keyboard Style Manager
• Keyboard Style Manager addons, Mouse Style Manager fixes
• Building: add --with-python-shebang="STRING" in configure to allow user to override strange alternatives managers on some systems
• Reorganize f_PolkitAgent to be more portable and stable
• Kvantum: Reshape in more Motif style Qt5 Combo Box
• More Firefox CSS updates
• Documentation updates for all of the above

This release fixes some glitches and bugs accumulated during the transition from 1.X to 2.0, but it has also some new features:

• Qt5 widgets now have dinamically generated Kvantum engine which can be choosen in Color Style Manager as alternative to the gtk2 connector oriented engine. This works well, but glitches may still be expected even after tests with many Qt5 and modern KDE applications. It will improve during the time. It is perfectly usable.

• Key bindings set mechanism introduced. For now, there is only one set defined: default (nscde). This enabled NsCDE in future versions to implement standard key binding sets as IBM CUA standard or some other custom set.

• Color templates for Konsole and Qterminal - Qt5 based terminals

• New colormgr.local is simplified and can call functions from the /share/NsCDE/config_templates/colormgr.addons.

• FVWM3: EwmhBaseStruts now follows Front Panel if it is moved across monitors.

• FVWM3: default root setter fvwm-root can be replaced by specifying InfoStore variable rootsetcmd in user's ~/.NsCDE/NsCDE.conf

• Sysinfo dialog now correctly displays NsCDE version after update and dynamic restart of FVWM.

• Initial bootstrap wizard backs up user's GUI widget configurations such as gtkrc and qt5ct.conf if they exist before changing them.

• Fix some polkit agents start/restart

• Updated documentation

This release is a turning point. All code and data is reorganized to conform to the FHS standard. NsCDE now uses standard autoconf and automake. Installation is universal weather started under FVWM 2 or FVWM 3.

• Renamed most of the python and shell tools and helpers the are now located in libexec/NsCDE or lib/NsCDE depending on the system defaults
• Renamed FVWM configurations, stripped from unnecessary NsCDE- prefix new system of extensions indicated kind of file (see docs)
• Data, configs and commands completely reorganized to conform to FHS standard and be more suitable for packaging and system integration
• Made FVWM major version runtime detectable, there is no more separate installation parameters
• Added Front Panel Icon Manager application
• Added Front Panel context menu option to move launchers left or right
• Added Rename option to subpanels items context menu
• Introduced autoconf and automake for build and install process, no more Installer.ksh monster.
• Made RPM, Debian and Arch example packaging instructions and files
• Never ending CSS fixes for Firefox and Thunderbird as damaging of their look continues by the Mozilla
• 1.x to 2.x migration procedure introduced at 1st login to the NsCDE 2.0 all data in ~/.NsCDE is renamed and key things renamed to work again old ~/.NsCDE is saved as tarball in user's home
• Context menus Help on Front Panel and Subpanels are now mostly content aware: they will display proper NsCDE documentation for NsCDE items and will try to find man pages for the rest applications, display them as HTML in browser, or directly if appropriate help reader is installed
• Uniformly rework and harden .desktop files in share/applications
• Smarter detection of XDG data and config paths during autoconf configure
• Huge documentation update, added more instructions, whole chapters, figures and illustrations with descriptions and examples
• bootstrap: add example Xset.conf and .xscreensaver if they are missing
• Fine tuned fontsets for larger resolutions
• Added more key bindings in FvwmScript applications
• Added more icons to icon theme to fix the missing gaps
• Front Panel button 8 now displays application manager instead of editor if compatible file manager capable of doing it is found
• Front Panel position can be now configured in ~/.NsCDE.conf
• Update locale
• Added more 3rd party integrations in config_templates/colormgr.local
• Enhance confit_templates/fontmgr.local with new examples, install it during bootstrap procedure
• Really fix and test font sync to qt5ct.conf
• Correct screen calculation for GWM under FVWM3 in multi monitor mode
• Correct screen calculation for GWMPager under FVWM3 in multi monitor mode
• Fixed internal non-fatal syntax errors in WSM
• Minor typo and bug fixes which were found during the process of FHS-ing

See ChangeLog or "git log" for a complete list of changes.

This release contains minor and cosmetic fixes. It is the last of the 1.x series. New one will be 2.0.

• Firefox and Thunderbird CSS fixes and updates
• Fixed some hardcoded paths
• FpLite to AppFinder for more autodetection hits
• Typos in some backdrops XPM fixed
• OSD colors for some volume managers in GTK theme fixed
• Minor syntax error bug in WSM fixed
• CheckMailApplet consolidated functionality
• Added some icons and icon symlinks in icon theme
• Some X resources fixes in Color Style Manager templates
• NProcmgr popup refresh fix
• Fix IconSize calculations of WindowMgr
• Fix missing comma in NsCDE-Style.conf near IconFill
• Fix docs for exec/rofi keybinding
• Fix StyleMgr Help Menu distance on some systems

See git changelog for full changes.

This release contains improvements, bugfixes and new features. New additions are:

• Graphical Workspace Manager (GWM) as on Solaris CDE (call it with Meta+Alt+Home)
• GWM and GlobalPager configuration is now autogenerated and controled from WSM.conf. GlobalPager is now GWMPager
• CSS templates for NsCDE/CDE integration of the Firefox 7x, 8x and 9x
• CSS templates for NsCDE/CDE integration of the Thunderbird
• Remember reboot/shutdown/suspend/logout actions
• FVWM per-monitor and share multi monitor mode different backdrops on different monitors support
• Occupy Workspace and Page has now 3rd mode of operation: Monitor
• Configurable LocalPager and GlobalPager dissapear timeout in NscDE.conf
• Style Manager now includes icon for Workspaces and Pages Style Manager
• Added optonal screenshot of screen or screen area if xclip is installed
• Cleaned Front Panel Subpanels
• More default app and MIME support added

Apart from new features and additions, there are some first setup, Workspace Manager hardenings, which enabled proper initial locale setting of workspace names, and does not depend on existance of WSP entries in WSM.conf.

See ChangeLog or "git log" for a complete list of changes.

Release 1.2 of NsCDE brings lot of bug fixes and small improvements accumulated over 4-5 months.

First real release of NsCDE after exactly 2 years of develpment.

UNIX variants of color 8 for Front Panel and Icons, new Occupy dialog, functional and ergonomic keybindings, many bug fixes. Preparation for 1.1 which should happen on the end of the year - 2 years after initial development started. NsCDE-1.0rc28.tar.gz

Fix nasty stopper in Installer.ksh which misconfigures NSCDE_ROOT in interactive setup. People were affected by this in the last 3-4 days. This is the urgent release.