[OpenIndiana-discuss] wallpaper and mwm on oi

[Peter Tribble]

On Fri, Jun 28, 2024 at 7:51 PM Matthew Yapit via openindiana-discuss <
openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org> wrote:

> Hello,
> I'm using oi SunOS iron 5.11 illumos-cd9ea253fe i86pc i386 i86pc.
> I've recently built mwm from lesstif-0.95.2 sources. I added a startup
> file motif.desktop to /usr/share/xsessions.  I'd like to have a
> wallpaper.  I found I can do this from .profile with
>
> display -window root -backdrop
> /export/home/matt/Documents/Pictures/wallpaper/motif.png &
>

That's the correct command (or, at least, a correct command). The tricky
bit is to
get it to run in the right place.


> The problem is, it is a bit clunky.  The image shows up briefly whenever
> I login to MATE and other window managers.
>

Yes, it will draw the desktop background, but MATE and other newish window
managers then put a real window in front of it to draw their wallpaper on.


> I'm aware of ~/Mwm ~/.mwmrc and ~/.Xdefaults.  So far it has been futile
> to edit these files in reguards to starting a wallpaper in mwm at login.
>
> Does anyone know how to start a wallpaper from imagemagick or xsetroot
> in mwm at startup via some script or dot file?
>

The way I would do this is to create a wrapper. Rather than call mwm
directly
from the motif.desktop file, create a /usr/bin/mwm-session file (as a shell
script), and
Exec that from the desktop file. It might look like

#!/bin/sh
if [ -f ${HOME}/.mwmstartup ]; then
  . ${HOME}/.mwmstartup
fi
exec mwm

Then you, or any user, can create a $HOME/.mwmstartup file that contains
any customization commands you wish. Or pre-launch your favourite
applications.

(Historically, we would have done essentially the same thing in our
~/.xinitrc
files. This was well before things like sessions and desktop files had even
been thought of, so you have to replicate some of the functionality.)

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/