Introduction to E16 (First generation Enlightenment)

[Dan]

What is:

This is essentially the companion and continuation to the original Enlightenment Introduction thread. You will want to read through the first three posts there, then come back here where you left off.


Which is:

Obviously, I'll be working with/on e16 in this one.


How is:

In order to keep things a bit more current, I'll be using F18 (32 bit) and the version of e16 which is available in the fedora repos. If you are following along, you will be going off-site to fetch a few things. Namely, some themes.

Most everything else will be in the repos.


Why is:

If you actually asked this question ... your best answer is located right above this post under the Nav-Bar link marked, "NewPosts." Thanks for clicking in, enjoy, and may peace and happiness find you.



External resources:

http://themes.effx.us/e16
http://sourceforge.net/projects/enli...es/e16-themes/ (I never installed this one. You're on your own here. Maybe you can tell me what is.)


An important caveat!:

On this install, (and most any other install I do of fedora in the future) Gnome is not present (and won't be -- by choice) on this machine, and therefore doesn't interfere with anything. That is not by accident. Gnome's gnasty little genitacles have become very intrusive and tend to penetrate far deeper into any system they infest than I believe they should, nor have a right to. Oddly enough, when I still used, liked and supported Gnome, it didn't seem that bad. But when I tried to kick it to the curb ... yikes! But most addictions are that way. You don't know how bad it's gotten until you try to lose the habit.

So, if you've got Gnome installed, your mileage may vary significantly! Some of this will apply, and some of it won't. Adjust accordingly.


I started with an XFCE/MATE base. That choice will be reflected in much of what follows. I'll leave it to you to adapt things to suit your particular environment.

Also let me say that if e16 has a singular weak spot, it's fonts. They tend to be integrated in and subject to theme choices. I change them by hacking theme files. If you've found a better way, I'm all ears.

That said, let's get started.



(Go to next post)

[Dan]

Natch, the first thing you will have to do is fetch e16. I'll assume you're starting from a working F18 iinstall. It doesn't really matter which desktop environment you start with here, although it will make a difference later on. All we need is an active functional internet connection, a terminal, and we're good to go.

We could get e16 through that self same terminal, but I prefer Yumex for that chore. You'll need it anyway, so we might as well start there.

sudo yum install yumex

Once you've got that going, start yumex with that terminal and use it to fetch e16.

sudo yumex --root

(Or you can use your current GUI if you'd rather.)


In this example, I've already fetched e16. In fact, I'm using it right now. So in your window, those choices will not be green. Just tick check marks into the same boxes on your screen, and then let Yumex do it's magic.

Figure 1: Fetching e16. (Install files indicated in green.)

[Dan]

If everything went well, you've got most of what you are going to need. Now all we need to do is log out of our current GUI/DE/WM and log into our new e16 desktop.

Some words of warning first.

• Your first look at e16 is going to be massively underwhelming. Don't let that discourage you. Think of it as an empty canvas upon which to paint your masterpiece.
• The default tool-tips setting is as annoying as a bored two-year-old child ... only without the cuteness. However, even though the first natural reaction is to immediately try to find a way to kill it, don't. Take the time to mouse over some things, and let the tips come up. Then actually read them. (Yeah. Scary. I know.)
• Don't panic. It looks empty, but everything you need is actually right there in easy reach. Only a mouse click away, as a matter of fact. The world is your oyster, and the whole desktop is your power tool. Left click is apps and functions, right click is maintenance, prefs and actions. Logout is under the right click menu or the left click menu, too -- in case you panic and/or get lost.

So let's do this thing.

Figure 2: Login. Select "E16". (Yeah. I'm re-using old graphics. but at this point, it won't matter.)

[Dan]

OK! After that cute little shutter opening animation finishes, you should see something that looks a lot like this (sans the itty-bitty tool box in upper left corner.)

Figure 3: Default desktop.


Kinda hard to believe that something so good could come out of all that starkness, isn't it? <....> But it will.

First, the landmarks:

• The thing across the very top is a drag bar. Go ahead and left click it and drag it downwards a little. Your next desktop is hiding back there. The arrows on either end of that bar are quick-click buttons to move the current desktop up or down. Rolling your mouse wheel over the open desktop shifts the desktops as well. Easy as you please. Nothing to target, nothing to click.
  
• In the bottom right corner is the icon box. That's where your minimized applications go to cool their heels until you need them again. I believe there is a default animation that flips them in there. Fortunately, you can turn that off! <....>
  
• Coming back around, the two items in the bottom left corner are the desktop pagers. There are actually four workspaces displayed there. Two virtual desktops, of two workspaces. Click on a workspace or desktop to go there. Click on the "handle" on the end to collapse the pager up against the edge of the screen. Click again to re-expand it. You can add as many pagers/virtual desktops as you like or need. Each will have a default two workspaces side-by-each, but you get to decide how many of those you want, too. (A little later we'll see how to do the same collapsing trick on the icon box.)
  
• You can move any of these elements any where your heart desires. Except the drag bar on the top -- that can only move to any given edge. Want 'em on the left, they can live on the left. Want 'em on the right, top, bottom or in the middle? Ayup. That, too. Just press the [ALT] key, and click and drag them wherever you want them to live. You can even delete them if you wish.
  
• The whole thing is your own personal playground.

[Dan]

Now that we've got a canvas, we need some tools. Enter ... The Mouse.

Mouse clicks give you ... (anywhere on the open desktop.)

Figure 4: Left click menus. (User Menus)


Figure 5: Middle click menus. (Enlightenment and User menus)


Figure 6: Right click menus (Setting menus)





Letting the mouse stand quiet for a few seconds gives you the tool-tips. (There's some really good stuff there. Take a minute and have a read through it.)

Figure 7: Tool-tips.



How to quit.

Easy. Left click the desktop, and select, "Log out." Right click the desktop, and select, "Log Out." Middle click the desktop, and select, "Log out." You're getting the picture here, right?

Figure 8: Log out.




Setting preferences:

Do a right click on the desktop, and select "Settings". You'll end up with this: This is the bridge, CIC, Flight Ops and Engineering all rolled into one. If you want to change it, tweak it, twitch it, or kill it, this is the place to give those commands.

Figure 9: Settings.



Pagers, frames, icon boxes and System trays:

Just for the giggles of it, right click the "drag bar" on either one of the pagers, or the icon box. A caveat here, though. READ THE SELECTIONS before randomly clicking something. Some of it will make immediate sense. Some won't. Use the right click desktop menu to create a new icon box, and a system tray, and play with one. A right click in the middle of one of these things will bring up a context menu of more things you can do to/with it. Or, as always, let the mouse dwell there a while and the tool-tips will explain some stuff for you.

Figure 10: Create new icon box and system tray.


You'll figure out the basics soon enough.


"Oh, No! Something has gone wrong!"

Under the right click menu or the left click menu, or the middle click menu <....> e16 is capable of a hot restart by selecting (oddly enough) the "restart" menu item. Then just relax for a bit while e16 dumps the mess, re-arranges itself, and starts back up again. If you plan to go get coffee while it works, you should have just about enough time to get your backside lifted from the chair seat before it's ready to go again.

That should about cover the Mouse Work. On to the next post.

[Dan]

Now that we've got the basics, let's play a little. Under the right click menu, explore a few of the included themes with the theme changer there. The one in the "control Panel" is different, and does different things.

I'll wait while you look around.


...


Yeah, they're maybe not so much to look at, but remember that's just a starting point. Here's where we use that external link I mentioned above.


Go here: http://themes.effx.us/e16 And have a look through the selection there. Download any that you like, and unzip them into:

/home/(your-home-directory)/.e16/themes

figure 11: Where to shove stuff.



Note I've already changed the theme .. and the font sizes. <....>


Now that you've got some more stuff to play with ... have a look around again with that right click menu item.


(Next up ... Fonts)

[Dan]

Fonts:

If you can figure out an easier way to change the fonts ... like I said above, I'm all ears.

I ended up pulling a Rube Goldburg. I crow-bar edited the .e16/themes/(your chosen theme)/fonts.theme.cfg file.

#include <definitions>
__E_CFG_VERSION 1

/* Maintained at themes.effx.us
   $Id: fonts.theme.cfg 47 2009-04-13 18:57:37Z don $ */

__FONTS __BGN
  font-border "georgiaz/14"
  font-coords "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-*-*"
  font-dialog "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-*-*"
  font-dialog-hilite "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-*-*"
  font-epplet "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-80-*-*-*-*-*-*"
  font-epplet-large "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-75-75-*-*-*-*"
  font-epplet-medium "-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-100-75-75-*-*-*-*"
  font-epplet-small "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-80-*-*-*-*-*-*"
  font-focus "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-*-*"
  font-init "-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-*-*"
/*  font-menu "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-*-*" */
  font-menu "georgia/12*"
  font-tooltip "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-*-100-*-*-p-*-*-*"
__END

Then I copied the font files I wanted into the directory indicated. In this case, however, the slash indicates point size, not a subdirectory.

/home/dan/.e16/themes/23ozGlass/ttfonts/

It was fast and dirty ... but it worked. If you can find a better way, please post it. I'm sure I have just overlooked something somewhere.


Fetching, poking and selecting backgrounds:

Backgrounds are initially selected from the provided directory. In my case, it's

/home/dan/.e16/backgrounds/

Just poke a copy of what you want to use into there, then activate the background tool in the Settings menu. (Remember we fetch that with the right click menu.)

Figure 12: Control Panel -- Backgrounds tool.




Once you've got it open, spend a little time playing with the background tool. It's quite the capable little device.

Figure 13: Background Tool.



You should be all set for backgrounds, fonts, themes, icon boxes, system trays etc.





Now to customize the User Application List.

[Dan]

No GUI tools to do this. We'll be editing a file by hand. But before you get too disgusted, remember there's a reason this WM works like greased owl snot even on low end hardware. No bloat!


So, you can either surf in with a file browser and open an editor over the file in situ, or just pop open a terminal and do a fast:

sudo yum install geany

(If needed.)

and

geany /home/(your home folder)/.e16/menus/user_apps.menu

You'll end up with something like this:

Contents to add to user_apps.menu:

"User Application List"
"Thunar" NULL exec "thunar"
"Files" NULL exec "caja --no-desktop"
"PCmanFM" NULL exec "pcmanfm"
"e-term" NULL exec "Eterm"
"Mate Terminal" NULL exec "mate-terminal"
"Terminal" NULL exec "Terminal"
"XTerm" NULL exec "xterm"
"Geany" NULL exec "geany"
"Firefox" NULL exec "firefox"
"Midori" NULL exec "midori"
"Freecell" NULL exec "sol --freecell"
"Audacity" NULL exec "audacity"
"Totem" NULL exec "totem"
"Rhythmbox" NULL exec "rhythmbox"
"Sound preferences" NULL exec "mate-volume-control"
"Screenshot" NULL exec "mate-screenshot --interactive"
"The GIMP" NULL exec "gimp"
"Writer" NULL exec "libreoffice -writer"
"Gkrell" NULL exec "gkrellm"
"System Monitor" NULL exec "mate-system-monitor"
"Authorization" NULL exec "/home/(your-home-directory)/e16-auth-run"
"Yumex" NULL exec "yumex"

Any additional desired user menu entries can be added here. Simply follow the format of the preceding entries. If you got it right, and the app is installed, it will show up in the menu. If you didn't get it right, or it isn't installed (where the system can find it) it just won't show up in the menu.


Note the next-to-last entry in that menu file. <....> It's there due to the over Gnome-ification of yumex and several other applications in order to appease/assuage the pointy-headed uber-uppity yard-art bunch. In short, you'll have to run an authentication agent separately once per session to get Yumex to pop an authorization dialogue. It won't run without it. Your other choice is to run yumex via terminal with sudo or su. In both cases it will barf out an error message and fail if you don't run it with the "--root" switch. If you go that route, your terminal entry will need to look like:

sudo yumex --root

or,

su -c "yumex --root"

I just do the authentication thing, and go all GUI on it.

Also note that I'm using the Mate Authenticator. If you don't have Mate, but do have Gnome, just change the word "mate" to "Gnome" in those commands, and you're good to go.



BTW -- Contents of e16-auth-run file: (Remember to make it executable.)

#!/bin/bash
/usr/libexec/polkit-mate-authentication-agent-1 &

[Dan]

The bottom line is, without all the clutter, mutter, flutter and sputter -- in e16 and E17, the enlightenment family of desktops has already uniquely and effectively achieved that long-sought nirvana among the fans of Gnome. The DE/WM is both subjectively functional, configurable, light on resources, and to a startling degree, out of the way of the user. <....> It does take a little getting used to, though. Especially all that freedom to tweak and stuff. I mean ... what's up with that! <....>


Figure 14: Overview 1.


Figure 15: Overview 2.




And in closing, I just have to wonder ... how well would something like this adapt to a smartphone/tablet interface?

Rather well, I suspect. It certainly doesn't hammer the hardware or sacrifice customization or usability to get the job done, either.


A serious round of applause is due the guys who created both e16 and E17/Enlightenment. They certainly know their stuff!

<....>

[Dan]

Upon reading this, I noticed I'd missed a few things. (Ya, think?! <....> ) There are a few things to watch out for. One of them is Nautilus! <....> Like a nasty drug interaction, some things are best not taken together. Nautilus (and Caja) can be a right proper pain in the pockets. The best thing you can do to keep these playground bullies from trying to take over the place is to edit every menu instance you can find, (Files) and append the " --no-desktop " switch to the launch command. Otherwise they try to drag vestigal crud from Gnome (or Mate) into your nice clean and tight e16 environment. Not good. <....>

Given the choice, I much prefer Thunar or PCmanFM in e16 anyway.

If you have been using Network Manager, and it automatically connects, you're good to go. If not, I just use the terminal and "ifup" the dang thing. Probably not the best way to do that, but I'm sure someone will come along and tell me a better way.

[Dan]

As it turns out, it's a good thing I saved a space down here.

Just found this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/enli.../e16menuedit2/

That helps the menu editing thing, anyway. Now to find a better way to handle fonts ...


EDIT: This seems a concise resource. http://themes.effx.us/book/export/html/6

[Dan]

Breeeep, breeeep, breeeep ...

<....> Nuthin' but crickets, eh?

I know it's not the "latest 'n greatest" and maybe a bit long in the tooth ... but it also "Just Works".






Ah, well. I have clearly over-estimated both the demand and the outcome of the Owl Exam. Kinda wish I'd figured that out before I wasted the better part of a whole Saturday afternoon on it, though. <....>

C'est la vie!

[bob]

(kinda like my 'keeping warm' manuscript, huh? )

[Dan]

A lot like that. Except you got several posts appended to yours. I'm sooo insanely jealous! <....>

[BBQdave]

A lot like that. Except you got several posts appended to yours.

I'm following along Dan... it just that I've been drinking the Gnome 3 Kool-Aid, and Enlightenment seems challenging to me