This is the User FAQ for Enlightenment DR 0.17, commonly referred to as E17. These FAQs are written and maintained by the Get-E.org staff, but also includes fixes and additions from contributors. If you have any comments, suggestions or perhaps notice that one of the FAQs is out of date, please don't hesitate to contact us (in particular, onefang). If we don't know something is broken, it's quite difficult to fix it.

What are the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL)?
What is the current status of E17 development?
Why has E17 taken so long?
Why does nothing in E17 work?
When will E17 be released?
What exactly do you mean by "Enlightenment DR17 will be a desktop shell?"
I found a bug in E17, how can I provide you with some useful information?

    E17 and E16 compatability.

I have E16 installed. Do I need to uninstall it so I can install E17?
Where can I get new themes? How can I create my own?
Will E16's themes work with E17?
Will the epplets in E16 work in E17?

    Transparency
Can I get modules to popup over other windows?
I've heard E17 does real transparency, but I can't seem to set a window to be transparent?
I'm trying to use Eterm, gkrellm, torsmo or another application that uses fake transparency and it isn't working. What's wrong?
How can I get adesklets to work with e17?
Tell me more about this transparency problem.

    Binary files
Why use binary config/background/theme files?
What are all these different binary formats?

    freedesktop.org support
What freedesktop.org specifications are supported?
Desktop entry? Icon Theme? Did .eap files go away?
What about all my custom .eaps? Why can't I use them?
Where do I get freedesktop.org icon themes?
Why are the "Applications" menu and configuration dialog empty or incomplete?
Why are their duplicates in the "Applications" menu and configuration dialog? Why are they not in the correct place? Why are there strange things that are not applications?
Why is the entrance sessions menu empty or incomplete?
Does E17 have systray support ?

    Modules
I just installed a module, how do I get it to work?
Third party modules cause segfaults when enabling and disabling them, or restarting DR17.
I've seen some nice flame and snow effects in various E17 videos/screenshots. I've installed E17 but can't find those things?
How do I enter some text into a note using the notes module or enotes?
I am seeing two copies of some modules since I last updated, how can I fix that?
I've seen this nice video on rasterman.com which has an animated background. Where can I get it?
What happened to the engage module?
I can't compile e_modules.

    Problems
Why do the border icons not match the application?
Why do window remembers and locks not always work?
How do I add an application to the menus, IBar, or get an application to start when I start E17?
Where is the new application that I just created?
I've used E17 for a long time, but after I updated it today some things are behaving oddly. Any ideas?
I am using entrance and I get odd behavior with various applications and enlightenment.
Entrance, the display manager, won't start an enlightenment session.
I am not using the current theme, and some things don't work. (Bug du jour - window border buttons don't work.)
Why are my fonts cut off if I'm using the Clean theme or the Blue Eyed theme?
Can I change the font or size of the font used in menus, modules, and title bars?
All my Gtk applications have huge fonts.

    Misc.
I have heard of this new file manager called EFM. Where is it?
Are there some kind of graphics benchmarks/tests included with E17?
Is there a way to change the theme of a specific EWL application?
How do I get E17 to remember the way I setup the window borders and stuff for particular programs?

What are the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL)?

In Enlightenment DR17's development cycle many new libraries have been created. We collectively call these libraries "The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries" (or EFL) to distinguish them from the window manager itself. Please read the EFL FAQ on http://www.enlightenment.org.

What is the current status of E17 development?

It's current status is that it is a lot better than a lot of open source projects are on their first release.

The central window manager has been rock solid for quite a while. On the other hand, as it is yet to be released software, everything is subject to change without notice.

Why has E17 taken so long?

The current stable release of the window manager is DR16.8.4, which was released to the world on October 16th 2006. A previous stable release was DR16.5, which was released to the world on Oct 27th 2000. At that time work was already well underway toward DR17, Imlib2 1.0 was released on Oct 16th 2000 and EVAS v0.0.1 was released on Oct 24th 2000.

Extensive work has been done creating a set of foundation libraries for the next Enlightenment release for more information see the EFL FAQ.

Since that time the EFL has grown into a mature suite of libraries which are now capable of supporting the applications and window manager for Enlightenments DR17 release. In the interim we saw a lot of people and code come and go. GEVAS was a created to use EVAS with GTK, Eprog simplified EVAS, Ebits became the theming and interface library for E applications, Etcher and Ebony were created as tools for creating Ebit themes and backgrounds, EFSD was written to support the file management for E which grew out of a prototype (EFM) that worked with DR16, not to mention an advanced prototype of the window manager itself! But as the code matured and we moved closer to what we wanted DR17 to become it became clear that many of the components had already been pushed beyond their initial design and it was clear that they would need to be replaced. The debates raged on whether to release what was there or start rewriting in order to get things done right the first time.

As it should be, Raster decided he would not release code that would just need to be immediately replaced and that we'd need to get it right. And so EVAS 0.6.0 gave way to a rewrite known for a short time as EVAS2, later renamed back to EVAS 1.0. Ebits gave way to it's rewrite renamed to Edje, which meant that applications using Ebits were no longer needed (Etcher and Ebony). EET was developed to more efficiently handle many of the tasks Edb was being used for, namely packing theme data and images. And other libraries such as EWL and Etox went along for the ride evolving with EVAS. Ecore was built to tie everything together and thus displaced Eprog. And now that the back end is now roughly where it should be work on the replacement for the window manager can occur.

We know it has been a long frustrating wait for users and we appreciate everyones patience. Enlightenment has a long proud history of producing the best ahead-of-it's-time eye-candy on the planet that is emulated for years to come, and we have no desire to release a half arsed product just to make people happy for 2 or 3 days until they start complaining. The results will be well worth the wait. And if you're a developer there are plenty of toys for you to play with now. If you aren't a developer you'll find no better or more inviting place to start learning than with the EFL. The work being done to make the next generation of the Enlightenment Window Manager will bring a lot more than just some pretty borders around your Eterm, it will drive the development of graphical applications industry wide for several years to come.

Why does nothing in E17 work?

E17 has not yet been released, and is not considered to be in a finished state. This means that although large parts of E17 are working, and currently stable, there is more work to be done. The development process used for E17, and most other open source projects that have yet to be released, means that there is no point in time where a stable, fully working, version can be delivered. You would have got your E17 in one of two ways - direct from CVS, or someone else got it direct from CVS and created some sort of package for you. At the time that your copy of E17 was downloaded direct from CVS, it is entirely likely that there where half fixed bugs, and partly implemented features. On a semi regular basis, once a week when he has the time, raster will create a CVS snapshot at a point when he feels things are more stable and upload the snapshot to http://enlightenment.freedesktop.org/

When will E17 be released?

The release date for Enlightenment DR17 is sometime in the distant future; a date unknown yet even to the developers themselves. The release day in fact will probably be something that just happens one day and not something in anyway planned. No time estimates are given because the code is developed in spare time only. Without a schedule of regular working hours, development time is impossible to estimate.

However, the developers are hard at work getting E17 to a point where it can be released. To quote The Rasterman -

"what i want to do right now is this:

1. get e17 done, finish its TODO list, clean up loose ends and any apparent holes in its feature set and get it out the door. 2. then go into stabilization mode for a few weeks before a release where we do an official alpha release then a beta then as many release candidates as needed to get it pretty much right." - enlightenment-devel mailing list, 23 Sep 2005.

So the release is now just that little bit closer. On the other hand, never ever ask a developer when E17 will be released, as it is a long standing tradition to add a week when asked.

What exactly do you mean by "Enlightenment DR17 will be a desktop shell?"

It means that DR17 will combine features of a window manager and a file manager. It will provide nicely integrated GUI elements for managing your desktop elements, both files and windows. It does *not* mean that DR17 will be another application framework like Gnome and KDE.

I found a bug in E17, how can I provide you with some useful information?

When you report a problem with E17, the developers will sometimes ask for a backtrace, or bt. Here is a useful guide on how to go about that.

<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;E17 and E16 compatability.<BR>

I have E16 installed. Do I need to uninstall it so I can install E17?

No you don't. They can co-exist. They don't conflict as long as you have one installed in /usr/local and the other in /usr. You'll just have the specify the full path to the binary (for example in .xinitrc if you use one) if they use the same name. The config files use different directories. E16.8 can co-exist with E17 even if installed in the same path. If your using the CVS version of E16, it should also have a different binary name than E17. All this may depend on your distribution though, Gentoo's E17 binary is called enlightenment-0.17 for example.

Where can I get new themes? How can I create my own?

Freshmeat has a DR16 themes section. You can find information about creating DR16 themes at the etherdox project page. For information about creating themes for DR17, look to Edje.

Will E16's themes work with E17?

No - the theme formats are completely different. You can find some working E17 themes on this site. Also note that the theme format in E17 is not final and thus constantly evolves. This means that unmaintained themes will not work after a certain period if they aren't updated correctly.

Will the epplets in E16 work in E17?

No - the system for that is also completely different. You'll need to use E17 modules instead.

<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Transparency

Can I get modules to popup over other windows?

For now, for all practical purposes, the answer is no. In time X will allow us to have the transparency we want and modules without a major design change. This is a limitation of X - we give up one thing to get another. See below for more technical details.

One thing that may help is the "SMART" maximize policy. When a module is on the edge of the screen then windows wont be maximized over that module if "SMART" policy is used. You can turn this on with -

enlightenment_remote -maximize-policy-set SMART

I've heard E17 does real transparency, but I can't seem to set a window to be transparent?

E17 does real transparency without any special X.org extensions like composite, but only within the same canvas. It does not do transparency between multiple windows. In other words, modules that render to the background layer can have real transparency, but only transparency that features something else on the same layer. It's impossible to have a module (the IBar or Engage for example) be "above" a window, and show the contents of the window via transparency. It is possible to have an EFL application that does real transparency within its window - for example if you drag an icon, the icon may be transparent to the other content inside the same window. It is on the other hand impossible to have a window that is completely transparent to everything else on the desktop.

In order to for example have a transparent window that shows the background layer behind it, you would need to use the X.org composite extension, which is not supported by E17 at this point. It may perhaps be supported in the future though.

Fake transparency (for example a terminal that shows the root background image) is not supported, and won't be supported in E17. Fake transparency support can be forced though, but it is not recommended or supported - see the user guide for details.

I'm trying to use Eterm, gkrellm, torsmo or another application that uses fake transparency and it isn't working. What's wrong?

E17 doesn't support fake transparency. Real transparency is used by E17 modules instead. It is possible to force fake transparency usage by setting a root window background with Esetroot (included with Eterm) or e17setroot (included with e_utils, needs Esetroot to be able to force fake transparency). Note that the background you set with Esetroot will not show up in E17, only the applications that use fake transparency will see it. Note that this is a pretty ugly workaround - some apps may not work correctly even if you force fake transparency with Esetroot/e17setroot. Also note that this is such an ugly hack that raster may remove the ability to do so sometime in the future.

How can I get adesklets to work with e17?

You can force fake transparency support and hope it works somewhat, but it will never work the way things are supposed to work under E17, since it doesn't render on the E17 background layer. It will never work correctly because of the transparency thing. It renders on the root window, which means it will be displayed as a window above everything else and by default that window will be black. This is because E17 uses a virtual root window.

Because E17 does not send the background info, it cannot display a fake background color there either, but you can force that with -

Esetroot -s /path/to/bg

But that will just display a fake transparency box with the adesklets stuff. Ie, no dropshadows will ever be displayed over it and so on. It won't be part of the background like it should. It's as if it's a weak reflection of its original being, if you run it in E17.

Tell me more about this transparency problem.

There is support for proper, real transparency between window layers. However, E17 is pushing the boundaries of the possible once more, and in this case the current limitations of X make it unusable for now. In order for X to catch up, it needs xrender acceleration across the board and non-continental-drift speed software fallbacks when it can't be done. There is also some need for xcomposite, xrender, and xdamage stability.

If you really want to try it, use the xrender engine. Don't be surprised if there are problems, and your computer suddenly starts acting in slow motion. Figuring out how to use the xrender engine is left as an exercise for the reader.

<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Binary files

Why use binary config/background/theme files?

Binary files have very little read/write overhead, so there is no no CPU wastage on parsing etc. For more information check:

http://enlightenment.sourceforge.net/Enlightenment/DR17/index.html
http://enlightenment.sourceforge.net/Libraries/Eet/index.html

What are all these different binary formats?

They are binary mini-libraries. Deep down all of these files are EET archives - each just containing specialized data for different purposes. These files have different filename extensions, depending on what they're used for. The most common extension is .edj. EDJ files are used for icons, backgrounds and themes. For more precise information please read:

http://enlightenment.sourceforge.net/Enlightenment/DR17/index.html
http://enlightenment.sourceforge.net/Libraries/Eet/index.html
http://enlightenment.sourceforge.net/Libraries/Overview/index.html

<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;freedesktop.org support

What freedesktop.org specifications are supported?

Since E17 is not released yet, and there has been a recent flurry of activity to add more, this list is by no means complete. For the same reasons, the specifications may not be completely supported yet.

Base Directory
Desktop Entry
Icon Theme
Menu
Window Manager

Other specifications may be supported by EFL and other EFL applications.

Desktop entry? Icon Theme? Did .eap files go away?

Raster has decided that .eap files should be replaced by .desktop files. .eap files are essentially .desktop files converted to EET with the icon image encoded as an edje part. E17 treats .eaps as if they where .desktops, so we might as well use .desktop files directly. Putting it another way, .eap files and their caches are just a complex cache for the information that is in .desktop and related files. All that is really going on is that the caching mechanism is getting replaced, and made more transparent to the user. E17 will be able to use freedesktop.org menus and icon themes just like other window managers, but we will use them faster. It will still be possible to use animated .edj icons for applications. So we use .desktop files prettier as well.

.eap icon sets have proven difficult in the past to create. We removed them from get-e.org pending a recreation of them, but that has taken months with no result in sight. Using freedesktop.org icon sets with .desktop files means that we can make use of all that fine icon set work being done for other window managers.

Freedesktop.org specifies the use of icon themes. This means that you can have multiple icon theme sets installed, and you can choose which one to use for the application icons.

What about all my custom .eaps? Why can't I use them?

You can still use them. .eaps are just .edj files with some extra information in them. This extra information is included in .desktop files and the EFL .desktop support includes support for .edj icons. So all you need to do to keep using your custom .eaps is rename them to .edj, move that .edj to ~/.e/e/icons and place a .desktop file that uses that .edj as an icon where the original .eap was (probably in ~/.e/e/applications/all). All the standard modules had their module.eap files converted in this way, so you can use them as examples.

Where do I get freedesktop.org icon themes?

KDE and GNOME, if installed on your system, will have installed their own sets of icon themes. Other window managers may also have their own sets of icon themes installed. If you have none, then you will need at least the default hicolor icon theme, as it is also the "root" theme. Freedesktop.org icon themes can inherit icons from other themes, and the default hicolor icon theme is used for any icon that is not found.

Why are the "Applications" menu and configuration dialog empty or incomplete?

The freedesktop.org (FDO) menu specification are sometimes rather loosely followed by distributions. The menu specification is very complex, making it harder to implement it the same way as anybody else does. The E17 developers are in the process of testing and tweaking the EFL FDO support on as many different distros as they can to help with these issues.

This is a big, complex task. There are no quick fixes and no quick answers. Have patience. If you really want to know why it doesn't work for your distro, carefully study the FDO specs, carefully study the E code, carefully study your distros code. Once you have done your home work, send a patch that fixes things for your distro, but that doesn't break things for other distros. Time taken by the developers explaining complex specifications is less time they have to actually make it work well.

Some people that use Enlightenment don't bother installing GNOME or KDE. Some distros assume, or even prefer one of those two, and often
only install the FDO files as part of GNOME or KDE. Sometimes you can track down just the FDO packages and install them. Look for GNOME or
KDE packages with xdg, fdo, data, icon theme, or menu in their names.

Debian based systems have their own menu system that they use to generate FDO menus, which we then use to generate E17 menus. It's all kinda clunky. You need to have the menu-xdg package installed, and maybe the xdg-utils package as well. Then the next time you install a package that adds something to the menus, you will need to regenerate the E17 menus, and all should be fine.

Why are their duplicates in the "Applications" menu and configuration dialog? Why are they not in the correct place? Why are there strange things that are not applications?

See Why are the "Applications" menu and configuration dialog empty or incomplete?

The developers have decided to err on the side of caution, showing too many or duplicate applications instead of not enough. There is lots of fine tuning to be done. The parts of the freedesktop.org menu spec that deal with shuffling things around are not implemented yet. Better to get them all in correctly first before we move them around.

Why is the entrance sessions menu empty or incomplete?

See Why are the "Applications" menu and configuration dialog empty or incomplete?

Does E17 have systray support ?

No, there will be no tray icon support in E17 until the systray icon standard is changed.
Carsten 'Rasterman' Haitzler wrote:

"The Systray specification that somehow users seem to ask for and applications seem to use that is specified here primarily, is not as nice as you may think. It is in fact rather ugly and limited. It leads to awful interfaces and inconsistent behavior and display."

For the full text of this article, along with a screenshot, please see Rasterman.com.

Most people end up using trayer.

<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Modules

I just installed a module, how do I get it to work?

Only some of the modules that are installed as part of E17 are loaded automatically, the rest, and any extra modules you install, need to be loaded manually. Choose Configuration->Configuration Panel from the main menu, then click on "Modules". It lists all curently installed modules, letting you enable, and disable them. You can also configure the modules and view their About dialogs.

Most of the modules are now gadcon, or shelf modules, and they wont appear until you put them into a shelf. Choose Configuration->Configuration Panel from the main menu, then click on "Shelves". Select the shelf you want to put modules on then click on "Configure" and then "Configure Contents" on the Shelf Configuration dialog. You can put modules on more than one shelf.

Third party modules cause segfaults when enabling and disabling them, or restarting DR17.

Since modules are loaded as part of the enlightenment DR17 process, if they crash, they bring down enlightenment too. Nothing you can do but ask the author of the module to update their module.

I've seen some nice flame and snow effects in various E17 videos/screenshots. I've installed E17 but can't find those things?

You'll need to load the snow and the flame module. They aren't loaded by default and nor are they included with E17. You'll have to install them from the e_modules directory in CVS. Please read the "modules" section in the user guide for details.

How do I enter some text into a note using the notes module or enotes?

The notes module and enotes are currently not working and unmaintained. It is not possible to enter text. You may want to try estickies.

I am seeing two copies of some modules since I last updated, how can I fix that?

You need to remove your configuration files. Exit E17, login using a text console or using some window manager other than E17, and delete these two directories in your home directory -

.e
.ecore

E17 should not be running when you delete these directories. Now you can starup E17 again. You will need to reconfigure everything again. Take this opportunity to familiarize yourself with the new configuration panel and it's various configuration dialogs. There are new dialogs being added all the time.

I've seen this nice video on rasterman.com which has an animated background. Where can I get it?

It's in our backgrounds section ("Layered sky"), under themes on the main site menu. You can load it with a normal enlightenment_remote -bg-set /path/to/background.edj, or with any of the background setting tools from the e_utils package. It's very CPU hungry though, it's probably not something you want to use all the time. The default background is part of the default theme file /usr/share/enlightenment/data/themes/default.edj (assuming you installed E17 to /usr) in case you want to switch back to the default background.

What happened to the engage module?

Engage is in a temporary transition state at the moment, we apologise for the inconvenience.

Engage comes in two flavours - standalone and E17 module. The standalone version of engage is deprecated, and might go away one day. E17 was changing over from the old gadman style modules to the new, simpler to write gadcon style modules. Most modules had been converted, but some didn't make sense to convert, like engage. raster finally removed the gadman code, so a few modules stopped working, including engage. HandyAndE has been busy with non E related stuff, and has not had the time to update engage. Finally a decision was made, HandyAndE handed the engage module version over to the e_modules maintainers. At this point in time, the e_module maintainers are also very busy, so we have to wait for the engage module to get fixed, but with more people now responsible for it, it should get fixed sooner. So the module version is now in e_modules/engage, and the standalone version is still in misc/engage.

In the mean time, HandyAndE and onefang had a few minutes free to bring the standalone version into line with recent E17 changes so that there is at least one version that currently works. This is just a temporary fix, fixing the module version will be a harder job.

I can't compile e_modules.

Don't compile e_modules all at once, compile them one at a time. Read the e_modules README file for more information. Complain to your package maintainer if they package e_modules as a single unit.

<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Problems

Why do the border icons not match the application?

Due the way that X and window manager specifications are designed, it is not an exact science matching windows to the application that created them. Some amount of co operation is required from the application, and not all applications co operate very well. Sometimes all that E17 can do is make it's best guess. The freedesktop.org (FDO) .desktop and icon specifications don't include enough information to help with the matching process, so we needed to extend them.

When you run multiple console based programs in terminals it can be even harder figuring out which is the icon that matches the application, since the application controlling the window is the same terminal program for all of them.

The basic gist of it is that a scoring system is used, the FDO .desktop file that gets the highest score wins and is declared the matching application for that window. The information used for this scoring is in the E17 .desktop extensions, and can be changed using the Advanced version of the Application/Icon editing dialog. Further details are beyond the scope of this FAQ, but detailed documentation will hopefully be written soon, and a link included here.

Why do window remembers and locks not always work?

This is the same problem as described in Why do the border icons not match the application? Due to even more technical limitations that are out of our hands, the matching system used is slightly different. The scoring information is not stored in FDO .desktop files, and is edited directly through the Window Remember and Window Locks dialogs. The principles are the same though. Refer to the above mentioned FAQ for more details.

How do I add an application to the menus, IBar, or get an application to start when I start E17?

There are many ways, but the basic way is to Drag'n'Drop with the Applications configuration dialog.

Menus

You can start the Application configuration dialog directly from the E17 configuration menu. Drag'n'Drop applications from the left hand side to the right hand side.

IBar

You can Drag'n'Drop from just about anywhere an application icon exists directly to the IBar. This includes from places like a window border icon, any open E17 file manager, the application menus, and other IBars. You can also start the Applications configuration dialog from the IBar right click menu "Add Application".

Startup

In the Startup configuration dialog available from the Configuration Panel, you can click on the "Add startup Application" button. Once again, this brings up the Applications configuration dialog, where you can drag applications from the left side to the right side.

Where is the new application that I just created?

In the Applications configuration dialog, which can be started from a variety of places, turn on "All Applications" to see all the applications. Newly created applications are not put into a menu to start with, and the default view on the left hand side is to show the Applications menu.

I've used E17 for a long time, but after I updated it today some things are behaving oddly. Any ideas?

If your E17 CVS version was downloaded before 2005-05-08, it's a good idea to delete ~/.e/e/config/* to make sure everything uses current config files - you might have an old one which doesn't have some things the new E17 requires. Just remember that you will of course have to reconfigure some things as the config files have been reverted to the new defaults! If your E17 CVS version is newer than the mentioned date, it should let you know when your config files are outdated and then, if needed, automatically overwrite old config files in ~/.e/e/config.

I am using entrance and I get odd behavior with various applications and enlightenment.

Entrance is the E17 display manager, it controls logging into an X session and starting window managers, like E17. There can be bizarre problems with anything started from an entrance started session in certain distros. The first thing you should try is to update entrance to the latest version. If that does not solve your problems, then there are two ways you can proceed, the automated way or the manual way. They both do the same thing, so try the automated way first.

The automated way.

Run this script after entrance has been installed, it will be in the entrance source directory -

sh e17/apps/entrance/data/config/autodetect.sh

The manual way.

You may need to change /etc/pam.d/entrance. How you change it depends on your distro. If you have pam_console.so installed as a pam module, then add this to the end of /etc/pam.d/entrance -

session required pam_console.so

If you don't have pam_console.so installed, your best option is to copy the setup from another display manager, like /etc/pam.d/xdm, /etc/pam.d/gdm, /etc/pam.d/kdm, or /etc/pam.d/wdm. It is likely that they are all identical on your system, but you may not have all of them.

Entranced also has a tendency to freeze the keyboard once in a blue moon with certain hardware when started automatically from boot scripts, but working fine when started manually. Starting entranced as the last thing you do in the boot sequence can help here. Try to make it start after hal or nologin. The details of how to do this are specific to your distro. If you get this problem, the keyboard is not actually frozen, it is just being redirected to virtual terminal 2 (VT2). On most Linux systems, this will be a text login prompt. If this is so, and you know the command to restart or stop entrance as well as the root password, then you can fix this.

First step, hit the backspace key a few times, it is likely that you found out the keyboard was redirected be hitting a few keys, since these will have been entered into the VT2 login prompt, and you are now typing blind, you need to clear them out. Then type -

root

Followed by whatever your root password is, and hit Enter. Type the command that restarts or kills entrance, here is a selection of things that may work -

killall -TERM entranced
/etc/init.d/entrance restart
rcxdm restart

It's best to experiment with these before hand to find out what works.

A more permanent fix is to tell entrance which VT to start X on explicitly. Find out what VT X usually runs on and (assuming that is VT7) type (as root) -

ecore_config -c $DB -k /entranced/xserver -s "/usr/X11R6/bin/X -quiet -nolisten tcp vt7"

Entrance, the display manager, won't start an enlightenment session.

By default, entrance will just pass a string to the X session manager, and hope that X can find a matching session. Entrance can also call a program directly if you supply it with a full path. The following command will configure entrance to use a wrapper script to start E17 -

ecore_config /etc/entrance_config.cfg set /entrance/session/1/session str /usr/local/bin/E17_wrapper_script

Entrance has recently had it's default behaviour changed, it now starts enlightenment with the same prefix used to install entrance. If both entrance and enlightenment are installed to the same place then entrance will call it directly by default.

I am not using the current theme, and some things don't work. (Bug du jour - window border buttons don't work.)

E17 has not been released yet, which means that the way in which it works internally is subject to change without any notice given. This tends to affect third party themes. When the theme interface changes, the developers will change the default theme to match, but they are not responsible for themes written by other people. The authors of the other themes will be informed of the changes, but it is up to them to update their theme accordingly. Get-e.org staff will try to keep on top of this when it occurs by classifying the themes into "working with current cvs E17" and "not working with current cvs E17" categories.

If you have problems, try the default theme first.

Why are my fonts cut off if I'm using the Clean theme or the Blue Eyed theme?

You are running a too old version of freetype, E17 requires 2.1.8 and above, older versions have that bug. Only the themes that have a small top frame or title are affected. It currently only affects the Clean and Blue Eyed themes, but it may affect others in the future.

The problem is, E17 will compile (and with the default theme) and work just fine with older freetype versions. So it's still possible to install e17 on a distro that has a too old version, but it doesn't matter that much, luckily.

On the other hand, raster says that themes should not be built that way.

Can I change the font or size of the font used in menus, modules, and title bars?

Yes and no. Support for font changing is coming, but at the moment E17 is in a state of flux with its text and font handling. A major change to the way text is handled is happening right now, so we cannot offer any help until things settle down.

All my Gtk applications have huge fonts.

You don't need to have gnome installed to configure your font sizes for gtk applications, you configure the fonts in your default gtkrc file with a line like -

gtk-font-name = "Bitstream Vera Sans 10"

before the line that includes your theme.

<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Misc.

I have heard of this new file manager called EFM. Where is it?

EFM is not a full blown file manager, it is not intended to be. Instead, it is intended to be E17s file browser component. It has a few more features than your usual file browser component, but this is E17, everything is feature full. As a component of E17, it is built into E17, and does not need to be seperately downloaded, compiled, or installed.

EFM is currently undergoing heavy development, so it can be unstable.

Don't use it for now.

No, we really mean it, don't use EFM.

Trust us, EFM may or may not be so unstable that it might crash, delete your files, annoy your cat, kill your dog, give your significant other a lot of STDs, or burn your house down.

We warned you, if you still insist on using it, and it breaks your hard drive, you get to keep the magic rust. "Test Filemanager" from the Configuration menu, avoid it like the plague. It's only in the menu for testing purposes, don't use it.

The E developers had to remove the "Test Filemanager" because no one listened to our warnings. Lots of broken hard drives, deleted files, annoyed cats, dead dogs, divorces, and people living on the streets. Next time you will heed our warnings.

Seriously, EFM is now being used for its intended purpose, selecting files. Anywhere in E where you are selecting files you are using EFM. It is much more stable now, and no longer needs a "Test Filemanager" button.

Your cat is now less annoyed, but your dog is still dead. The E developers can't perform miracles.

Are there some kind of graphics benchmarks/tests included with E17?

Yes, here are some binary names you might find interesting:

evas_software_x11_test
evas_gl_x11_test
ecore_evas_test

All tests have now been moved to the CVS tests directory. These are unlikely to be included in any packages.

Is there a way to change the theme of a specific EWL application?

Most EWL apps accept the "--ewl-theme" switch. For example if you want to start e_utils_eapp_edit with the default E17 theme -

e_util_eapp_edit --ewl-theme e17 /path/to/file.eap

How do I get E17 to remember the way I setup the window borders and stuff for particular programs?

Use the "Remember" dialog from the window menu. A left click on the window border icon will give you the window menu, select "Remember". If your window borders are not visible, an ALT-right click anywhere on the window will bring up the window menu.