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#1 2005-08-18 16:15:40

bogomipz
Member
From: Oslo, Norway
Registered: 2003-11-23
Posts: 169

Yet another perfect WM thread

I'd just like to throw in that if you're looking for a new window manager, you should really try PekWM. It long ago replaced OpenBox3 as my window manager of choice, and I always end up back with Pek when I try switching to other alternatives (except I'm now stuck with wmaker for a while because of GNUstep).

Just note that the pekwm package in extra doesn't have XFT support. To use it, remove all the options passed to ./configure in the PKGBUILD (the only option that differs from the defaults is --disable-xft!!) and makepkg it.

Just my $0.02


All of your mips are belong to us!!

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#2 2005-08-18 16:28:15

cactus
Taco Eater
From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰
Registered: 2004-05-25
Posts: 4,622
Website

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

omg! pekwm looks awesome! I will have to give it a shot when I reinstall my system...umm..sometime in the next couple of months...I hope...


"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

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#3 2005-08-18 16:31:52

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

pekwm, fluxbox, openbox, blackbox, blah blah blah - I see almost no innovations in these things besides stuff that really shouldn't be in the WM.  Seriously... panels can be seperate apps, root menus too (google grootmenu), what a window manager should do is manage windows.
None of these WMs really do that part differently...

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#4 2005-08-18 17:33:14

bogomipz
Member
From: Oslo, Norway
Registered: 2003-11-23
Posts: 169

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

While I agree that most window managers don't fully take care of managing the user's windows, PekWM is the tool that has worked best for me so far. Neither Ion nor WMI made my day, although I'm sure I'll try them again some time. I *do* like the idea of a WM that leaves no window management tasks left to the user, but none of the projects that attemt to achieve this has worked well for me as of yet.

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.


All of your mips are belong to us!!

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#5 2005-08-18 18:31:09

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

Still waiting for a *box-like WM that lets me dock windows to each other...

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#6 2005-08-18 19:14:41

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

I wasn't trying to say pekwm sucks and wasn't good or anything - i'm just saying that having 30 "window managers" that manage windows the exact same way is a kick in the pants to Mr Ingenuity.

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.

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#7 2005-08-18 19:48:04

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
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Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

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).

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

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#8 2005-08-18 20:06:30

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
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Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

Dusty wrote:

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

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#9 2005-08-18 21:27:08

magnum_opus
Member
Registered: 2005-01-26
Posts: 132

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

Dusty wrote:

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

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#10 2005-08-18 22:05:58

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
Website

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

magnum_opus wrote:

actually e16 does a lot of things

Yeah, its one of the best, and e17 promises to be the best, but... when?  8)

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#11 2005-08-21 02:01:53

ozar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2005-02-18
Posts: 1,686

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

bogomipz wrote:

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.


oz

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#12 2005-08-21 16:23:25

jellywerker
Member
From: Sunny Seattle
Registered: 2005-04-04
Posts: 286

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

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.

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#13 2005-08-22 12:03:11

rasat
Forum Fellow
From: Finland, working in Romania
Registered: 2002-12-27
Posts: 2,293
Website

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

I agree, some planning would be good. I have been thinking about what phrakture said about WMs should do is manage windows. What we usually see/do is changing layout and menu settings, and adding plugins. Managing windows is something different. I think it depends how the window frame is build. I am not sure, most likely this is in the source itself of most WMs. If so, how to make/hack frameless windows which can run user made "window frame" modules/libraries (packages).

For this type of planning, maybe we could use the Arch or Usercb Wiki.


Markku

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#14 2005-08-22 16:48:06

jellywerker
Member
From: Sunny Seattle
Registered: 2005-04-04
Posts: 286

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

agreed

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#15 2005-08-22 16:51:56

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

jellywerker wrote:

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...

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#16 2005-08-23 07:37:11

rasat
Forum Fellow
From: Finland, working in Romania
Registered: 2002-12-27
Posts: 2,293
Website

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

For information, what are the features and modules we consider as "managing windows".

Feature:
- window min. and max.
- sticky

Module:
- pager
- taskbar


Markku

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#17 2005-08-23 15:03:27

phrakture
Arch Overlord
From: behind you
Registered: 2003-10-29
Posts: 7,879
Website

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

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)

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

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#18 2005-08-23 15:50:44

neri
Forum Fellow
From: Victoria, Canada
Registered: 2003-05-04
Posts: 553

Re: Yet another perfect WM thread

phrakture wrote:

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

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