ICEPREF 1.1 FAQ

	Maintained by David Mortensen

1.	Why, when IcePref is run with a version of IceWM earlier than
	0.9.34, do all of my desktops disappear?

	Versions of IceWM prior to 0.9.34 used a different scheme for
	designating desktop names.  Each desktop added required an
	additional line in the preferences file.  After version
	0.9.34, IceWM switched to a better scheme where all desktops
	are added via a single option.  This is the system which
	IcePref has used from a very early version.  I advise you not
	to use IcePref with earlier versions of Ice.  Since the
	development versions of IceWM are very stable and have many
	additional features, I advice all users of IcePref to use a
	recent version of this our favorite window manager.

2.	Why do I get a message like:
	
	Traceback (innermost last):
  	File "/usr/bin/icepref", line 14, in ?
    		from gtk import *
	ImportError: No module named gtk

	when I try to run IcePref?

	Either PyGTK is not installed or it is not installed
	properly.  This is one of the few common problems with IcePref 
	that is actually not my fault.  You can tell, by the way,
	whether you have properly installed PyGTK by running the
	example programs included with the PyGTK docs.  If these do
	not run, do not expect IcePref to run either.

3.	Why did you write IcePref with PyGTK instead of good old
	tkinter.

	I despise Tk with all of my heart.  It is ugly.  I don't like
	using it, even through Python.  Of course, it would have been
	better for many users if IcePref were written with what has
	become the standard GUI library for Python---included in
	nearly all Python installations.  However, I do not feel that
	the demand for such changes is large enough to justify a port
	to that unholy abomination.

4.	When will a menu editor be added?

	When either you write it (preferred answer) or when I get
	around to it [groan].  I have worked on doing this and have
	run into too many problems.  Yes, it can be done.  Yes, I
	could do it.  However, one of you could probably do a better
	job of it.

	By the way, there is a menu editor for IceWM called KIceMenu.
	It is in the very early stages of development, and is
	available at http://members.xoom.com/SaintChoj/kicemenu.html.

5.	What!  IcePref lists a bunch of themes that IceWM won't read or use!

	This is due to the fact that you have icewm themes installed
	in more than one location.  Due to the kludgy nature of
	IcePref's mechanism for locating themes, it finds this very
	confusing.

6.	I get a message like

	Traceback (innermost last):
	   File "./icepref", line 2026, in ?
	      app = Application(sys.argv)
	   File "./icepref", line 1590, in __init__
	      self.get_current_settings()
	   File "./icepref", line 1775, in get_current_settings
	      current = self.analyze( contents )
	   File "./icepref", line 1744, in analyze
              whole_options = re.findall('[\w]*="[^#]*"|[\w]*=[0-9]+', string)
	AttributeError: findall

	when I run icepref.  Why?

	After the first 1.0Beta, IcePref requires Python 1.5.2.  Many
	linux distributions (at least, until recently) included
	1.5.1.  If you try to run IcePref 1.0 with python, you will
	get this message.

7.	Why is my restart button grayed out?

	IcePref may make the restart button inactive if
	   1. You are using something other than Linux.
	   2. You are running icepref as root.
	There are good reasons that this is so (most importantly, the
	fact that I am not a very good programmer and have done a poor
	job of writing the restart function).  The current restart
	routine will not work with BSD style killall and is bad to run
	as root (since it will restart all icewm processes on the
	system).  I am trying to work around this problem.  If you are
	an expert on BSD, please let me know how I might implement
	this. If you are a shell expert, please give me suggestions as
	well.

Direct your IcePref related questions to Dave Mortensen at
<saintchoj@myrealbox.com>.