My KDE configuration at home sometimes cause my screen and keyboard to
hang, while the computer is still active. I don't know why, but I'd like
to make sure it's KDE's fault. So I switched to a default almost raw-X
environment: vanilla IceWM.

Problem is: I need a filemanager to drag files from my extremely large
collection of mp3s to Xmms. So I hunted Freshmeat looking for good
filemanagers that did not invoke half of KDE or GNOME with them and that
had good support for Xdnd, which is the Drag&Drop protocol used by Xmms
(and every other Gtk+-based application).

Freshmeat has quite a few Filemanagers in its records, but I encountered
two that caught my eye, in the first results in my search set:

Endeavour2 -
http://wolfpack.twu.net/Endeavour2/

FM -
http://www.theleaf.be/projects/fm/

Both of which are Gtk+-based and lightweight. However, in Endeavour2,
there was drag and drop, but one which Xmms refused to accept. I contacted
their support person, a certain Taura Milana about it. She
said Endeavour 2 supported Xdnd, but it is possible that it was not what Xmms
expected. She also told me how exactly I can grep the Xmms source for
clues about what should appear there.

I told her that GMC, Konqueror and Nautilus (as well as the FM
filemanager) could all drag files to Xmms very well, but I said that I
will look at it and try to help her. I had some time on my hands, so I
grepped through the Xmms source code and found the relevant code. I also
explored FM's source, and found the code that needed to be implemented by
the drag target. I sent both code extracts to Ms. Milana.

She quickly reproduced a patched Alpha version of Endeavour 2, which I
downloaded and found to drag and drop extra-fine into Xmms.

I believe the moral of this story is something along the lines of ESR's
the Cathedral and the Bazaar or Muli's "what Linux is to me" Haifux'
lecture. By working in an Open-Source system the openness of the source
benefits both users and developers. Ms. Milana and I were able to add a
new feature (that was obviously critical for some users such as me), just
by Using the Source<tm>. Can you do it in MS-Windows with the same technical
and legal ease? I highly doubt it.

Regards,

        Shlomi Fish

There is no IGLU Cabal! Its members worked in a heavily properietary and
secret environment, thus causing them to spend too much time trying to
solve minute problems in their software, and as a result they neglected
the Cabalist needs of IGLU.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [EMAIL PROTECTED]

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"


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