well, in my opinion, the pager and taskbar have nothing to do with it, as you can still have managed windows without them and they are easilly replacable (fbpanel, pypanel, perlpanel, et al)
Well, the nice things about modulesis , as long as the use the same
toolkit they use less memory. I manged (easily) to have fbpanel
using as much res mem as openbox. This way a "lightwight"
environment turns into a memory whore.
-neri
]]>I would say the following "features" count:
window decorations
resize events (minimize, maximize, hide, shade)
move events (move up, move down, change workspace)
decoration toggle (if possible)
"sticky window"
layer changes
etc
Feature:
- window min. and max.
- sticky
Module:
- pager
- taskbar
hmm, why don't we make another perfect wm thread? and perhaps this time do some coding? try to make it extensible in a few of the simpler languages, pipe menu support, mouse free support, etc... would be cool to get something planned.
if you want something "extensible" (I hate that buzzword) you shouldn't define features off the bat like that - i.e. pipe menus, mouse free support
you should focus on the "extensible" design without any features like this in mind, then build on top of that once a working mechanism is there...
]]>For this type of planning, maybe we could use the Arch or Usercb Wiki.
]]>pekwm is very similar to the *boxes, especially openbox, but somehow it just gets more features right.
Thanks for suggesting it, bogomipz... I'm usually using fluxbox or xfce4 but I've been playing around with pekwm and it is indeed a nice little window manager. I'm also spending quite a bit of time with wmii-2, so I don't know which one I'll be sticking with just yet. I do still like fluxbox, though, so it may again become my default window manager once the experimenting/testing is done.
]]>actually e16 does a lot of things
Yeah, its one of the best, and e17 promises to be the best, but... when? 8)
]]>Oooh, Window manager discussion again!! :-D
I've been thinking lately about grouping. wmi-8 had it, but it was removed in wmi-9. Basically, it allowed you to have different groups of windows you could alt-tab between, but only on the floating layer. I'm pretty sure flux also has such grouping, though I remember it being a rather difficult dnd operation to get windows to group (bearing in mind I haven't used flux for two or three years).
e16, (enlightenment in the repos) lets you do window grouping, you right click a title bar click make new group then ctrl+drag other windows to that group to add them in.
actually e16 does a lot of things
]]>But I'm thinking more of a combination tile/float management system where if I drag a window, it automatically snaps to fill a open space on the desktop.
OK, I'll bite. This would be very useful, but the problem with it is that, if we have a tiling WM, the "tiled" portion is going to be full screened. When I drag a floating window, how will the WM know if it should remain floating or "snap in" to the tiling at that position?
Hmmmm, I guess it could be done in the same way as plan9 mouse chords... while left-dragging, right click will toggle the "float" attribute of the client.... so I left click and hold... move the window where I want, right click, and release to snap it in.... sounds kinda cool
]]>I've been thinking lately about grouping. wmi-8 had it, but it was removed in wmi-9. Basically, it allowed you to have different groups of windows you could alt-tab between, but only on the floating layer. I'm pretty sure flux also has such grouping, though I remember it being a rather difficult dnd operation to get windows to group (bearing in mind I haven't used flux for two or three years).
I also thought about a sort of special auto snap-to feature. We already have snap-to in moving windows in most window managers, and I think I recall snap-to in resizing in a few of the better ones. But I'm thinking more of a combination tile/float management system where if I drag a window, it automatically snaps to fill a open space on the desktop.
Dusty
]]>I'm not saying all the features aren't different... but most of those features need not be included into the WM proper, as they could easilly be external apps, so I ignore that stuff, for comparisson purposes.
What I'm comparing is meerly window management. I mean we have move with the mouse, resize with the mouse, maximize, keyboard horizontal maximize, etc - all these little "actions" which are pretty much seen across the board (for the record, fluxbox can do keyboard handling pretty well too).
I see nothing revolutionary.... nothing "outside the box" - for instance, in a thread a while ago Dusty brought up an idea where unused apps are slid off the screen slightly, to allow for almost full screen, almost side by side apps.... it was like this:
A and B are windows, both the size of B. A is mostly off screen now. Focus is on B
+------------------------------------+
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| A | B |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+------------------------------------+
Now focus switches to window A. B is moved mostly off screen.
+------------------------------------+
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| A | B |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+------------------------------------+
There's alot of other ideas like this... for instance mouse chords (part of plan9)... for instance, in a terminal, you can highlight a file while holding the left mouse button, right click, then release the left button and it opens (plumbs) the file. Without the right click, it just copies text.
Another good one *was* the wmii layout schemes... right now it's been removed because it was overly complicated, and static layouts have been added... basically a layout defines how a group of windows looks and what happens when another window is added to the screen.
]]>pekwm is very similar to the *boxes, especially openbox, but somehow it just gets more features right. You can do most anything from the keyboard (as any wm should let you do) like maximizing horizontally or vertically, growing till you hit other windows, move windows between workspaces and so on. The powerful autoproperties concept lets you set up a certain app or window to be placed at a certain workspace or tabbed together with certain other windows, or be started maximized, minimized or without window decorations, etc, etc. You need to try it out and configure it to your taste to see if it blows all similar WMs out of the water for you, like it did for me.
]]>