From Sy

Sy wrote this. Please be aware of the personal nature of this article and its opinions. See Sy's writing for more, or see the (in)complete list. See Sy's reviews for more reviews or the list.

[edit] 0.70.1

configuring it, I get:

checking for libiconv_open in -liconv... no
configure: error: Blackbox requires iconv(3) support.

I installed libiconv from source.

But it doesn't work. I don't want to troubleshoot.

0.7.0 is doing the same thing. Sigh. I guess I have to wait for distribution support to include this package.

I got desperate, so I grabbed a binary release from Slackware. [1]

./blackbox: error while loading shared libraries: libexpat.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
apt-get install libexpat0
cd /usr/lib
ln -s libexpat.so.0 libexpat.so.1
./blackbox: error while loading shared libraries: libxcb-xlib.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I don't know how to solve that one. I can't find any references to this library in my package manager and I don't want to fiddle around any more than I already have.

...

later attempts work fine. Yay!

• I can't resize and have it snap to the edges.
• I still find it annoying that I can't 'minimize' an application.. I have to iconify it. This is NOT the functionality I want. I want to get it the hwll out of the way, but keep it on this desktop and accessible to my list of applications (alt-tab)

Things which piss me off to no end

• windows are not focused properly all the time. This REALLY bugs the hwll out of me.
• Sometimes when closing a window, there is no focused window
  • Sometimes when playing a movie and exiting it, it won't return control back to the former window
  • and I cannot alt-1 etc to change desktops.

[edit] 0.70.0

• session.windowSnapThreshold doesn't do anything.
• Cannot alt-rightclick and drag to snap
• cannot snap the bottom border of a window to the bottom of the window
• Maximizing seems to leave a space at the bottom where the bar might be - except that I don't have it running.

May be a bbkeys issue.

Sometimes when an app closes and there is only one app remaining, focus will not be given to that remaining app and alt-tab will not call up the app switcher to switch to it. Calling the task switcher should switch focus to a remaining app.

Actually, calling the switcher should probably paint the dialogue, but without any entries in it, in cases where there are no windows.

Apr '05+

0.7.0 (01 Mar '05)

Tested a while back under Linux (Slackware 7.0, 8.0, 8.1, some 9). Originally required a lot of tampering and learning to get going, but worked very well! Used it again under PCLinuxOS in mid-2005. I included it into a scaffolding on psylos.

Light WM, requires third-party software for some functionality.

[edit] 0.65.0

Frustrated at not being able to build 0.70.1, I tried 0.65.0 again.

checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C++ compiler (gcc  ) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C++ compiler cannot create executables.

So I do this:

apt-get install gcc

And it has no effect. Lame.

[edit] old notes

See also Blackbox and KDE

• sometimes has multiple instances of alt-tab entries
• sometimes cannot use hotkeys, I have to de-iconify bbkeys and select it to regain the function
• x? - sometimes cannot properly type, have to switch to xterm or dick around in menus etc.
• mid-click on the desktop, there are sometimes current tasks with huge titles that screw up my ability to scroll down the mid-click menu.
• be able to associate one window with another, so that if one is raised so is the other. This handy when using an app which outputs to a separate xterm window.
• Also, have this feature bind all these apps together when someone alt-tabs around.

• restarting blackbox (via the right-click menu) has the alt-tab list duplicate entrys
• problems with consistantly using the keyboard macros - problems with some apps not consistantly showing up in alt-tab
• required features: be able to get rid of that menubar. Hiding it using it's settings DOESN'T hide it be able to pull up the "desktop" menu anywhere.. it's annoying to have to swap to another desktop to use that menu be able to pull up the desktop menu with keyboard shortcuts