From the Desktop: E Stands for EPIwm and Epidemic
Out of Order

Brian Proffitt
Tuesday, November 28, 2000 08:22:42 AM
I knew it.
I knew this would happen. It's like a natural law:
try to do a comprehensive review of the X window managers and you end up missing
one along the way.
For someone with a scientific background, I have
a very unscientific method of finding window managers to write about: I look
at Matt Chapman's excellent Window Managers for X site
and select window managers from there in an alphabetical fashion. I was up to
the I's with IceWM last week, but a few things happened this month that are
causing me to back up and cover some missed ground.
First, a young French student contacted me over the
holiday and asked me if I'd heard of his project EPIwm and would I want to take
a look at it? Mind you, my first instinct was to ask him to change the name
of the interface to something that begins with the letter J, but I decided to
forget that idea. Up until now, Franco-Proffitt relations have been rather strained,
ever since a minor brouhaha with French customs officials in 1987. I didn't
want to push my luck. I did take a look at EPIwm, and I'll tell you about it
in a moment.
Another reason I'm backing up is because earlier
this month, I was sick. You may not have noticed it, since I tend to write even
better when I'm not entirely lucid, but I had a nasty bout with the flu nonetheless.
Writing in this state is not too hard--I just have to double-check and make sure
I have not written anything really silly. So if I missed something, like mixing
up the name of my favorite comic book with the name of a popular desktop environment,
please forgive me.
Though I managed to limp to the computer and hack
out some nonsensical prose (as opposed to today, when I walked hale and hearty
to the computer to type out some nonsensical prose), I was remiss in getting
out my interview questions to the creator of FVWM95, Hector
Peraza. It turned out that he was sick that week too, so he could not send me
a reply until this past week.
And you thought the life of a Web reporter was all
glamour and fame.
So, in honor of these events, and the re- re- re-counting
going on in the fine state of Florida, I hereby proclaim a do-over, a Mulligan, with no
Supreme Court ruling necessary.
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