Wmii

linuxlefty · 2007-10-25 03:57:51

I've started using WMII ( http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii ). I really like it a lot and have been having a blast playing around with it .

The only thing that is bugging me is the lack of drag-and-drop support. I didn't think this would be a problem, but trying to manage my bookmarks in Firefox or my mail in claws-mail is really frustrating and cumbersome. How would you suggest fixing this?

I was thinking of running a real light desktop environment like xfce and then trying to run wmii as the window manager. However, I'm not sure how to do that, or if that would be the best way to go about this. It seems kind of silly to run a desktop environment just for drag-and-drop support.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

~Peter

jbromley · 2007-10-25 04:20:30

Generally, WMII and its kind (Ion3, dwm, ratpoison, xmonad, etc.) are geared to keyboard usage and avoiding the mouse. This means that drag and drop is usually not important. To be honest, I've been using Ion and its kin for at least five or six years, I've tried just about every tiling window manager, and I don't think I've ever heard of anyone asking for drag and drop in any of these window managers.

On another note, I'm a bit confused. You mentioned that managing bookmarks in Firefox is cumbersome. Could you be more explicit about what you want? I used drag and drop in the Firefox "organize bookmarks" window without any problems. I could even drag and drop bookmarks to other applications that handle drag and drop. Perhaps if you describe what you want to do some tiled window manager user can make a suggestion.

Regards.

linuxlefty · 2007-10-25 04:34:37

Thanks for your input

In Firefox when I open up the bookmark organizer and drag a bookmark, the cursor turns into a + icon. However, when I drop the bookmark on a folder, it has no effect. It does a little animation as if I dropped the bookmark in an invalid spot.

So, to move a bookmark, I have to click on the "move" button and then select a folder from the popup menu.

managing bookmarks this way isn't too bad. However, it is hard when I have to bring up a move dialog for every email when moving emails from my main inbox to sub-folders in claws-mail.

~Peter

jbromley · 2007-10-25 06:19:39

Tiling window managers are a different paradigm, which means adjusting how you do certain things, but I believe in the long run they allow you to be more efficient.

As for your Firefox problems, I tested it with wmii-3.5.1-3 and you're right, it doesn't work. It appears to me that this is a wmii bug. Probably it is not passing the drag over and drop events down to the application so Firefox can handle them. Thus, wmii is given the chance to handle these events, which it doesn't and so you don't get drag and drop. When I tested Firefox earlier I was using Ion3 and it worked correctly there. Right now I'm testing it with ratpoison and it also works fine.

If this is really an issue you might try a different window manager. Ion3 is nice and more flexible than wmii, though the key bindings and configuration are bit odd. Ratpoison is good too, though not having any indication of stacked windows takes a little getting used to.

Regards.

N30N · 2007-10-25 11:00:03

linuxlefty wrote:

The only thing that is bugging me is the lack of drag-and-drop support.

The version of wmii in the repository is version pretty old and out of date (drag and drop was added quite some time ago). You can get a up to date PKGBUILD here (see my comment).

codemac · 2007-10-25 13:58:26

I would update wmii more if they actually had stable-ish snapshot releases.

Unfortunately they do not. They break all backwards compatibility all the time. I'm not going to update a package and break everyone's wm. You shouldn't be that scared of pacman -Syu. And there really isn't a good way of me knowing which snapshots are stable without using it for a week and testing it out, which is clearly not a good option.

The WMII developers need to just label what they consider stable as a release instead of a snapshot. If they don't, then clearly they don't want it distributed in the traditional format.

linuxlefty · 2007-10-25 19:28:05

Thanks everyone for your input. I'm running http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?d … =1&ID=2364 and everything works great now

I did have to change my wmiirc file to fit the new format, but it was fairly straight forward.

shining · 2007-11-16 22:17:01

codemac wrote:

I would update wmii more if they actually had stable-ish snapshot releases.
Unfortunately they do not. They break all backwards compatibility all the time. I'm not going to update a package and break everyone's wm. You shouldn't be that scared of pacman -Syu. And there really isn't a good way of me knowing which snapshots are stable without using it for a week and testing it out, which is clearly not a good option.
The WMII developers need to just label what they consider stable as a release instead of a snapshot. If they don't, then clearly they don't want it distributed in the traditional format.

There is a stable tarball release now : 3.6 (and libixp 0,4) :
http://www.suckless.org/pipermail/wmii/ … 03884.html

mienensuchkind · 2007-11-29 12:44:56

@Kyuss: Thank you, the PKGBUILDs work nice! Well, i actually dont like the rounded corners, but thats another story...

Btw: is there any way to resize windows using the keyboard? or to assign a certain width (e.g. 70%) to a column?

I think i read somewhere in the wmii mailing list that its not possible... I would like to have s.th. like this as well!

Arch Linux

#1 2007-10-25 03:57:51

Wmii

#2 2007-10-25 04:20:30

Re: Wmii

#3 2007-10-25 04:34:37

Re: Wmii

#4 2007-10-25 06:19:39

Re: Wmii

#5 2007-10-25 11:00:03

Re: Wmii

#6 2007-10-25 13:58:26

Re: Wmii

#7 2007-10-25 19:28:05

Re: Wmii

#8 2007-11-16 22:17:01

Re: Wmii

#9 2007-11-29 12:44:56

Re: Wmii

Board footer