Infinite Window Space(!WM)

ScriptDevil · 2007-09-27 01:36:03

I remember that long back, dusty and the rest were planning on an Arch WM

Well.. Seems dead now.. Anyway.. lets pump new life back into it

The basic features i wanna put in are

1) infinite or pseudo infinite Window Space
2) 4 arrow keys that appear on a keystroke to help us navigate through infinity like google maps
3) a tile button(windows can get lost in infinity,right??) like in MacOSX (This too is on a keystroke like the navigation arrows)
4) Written in pure C and Xlib so that we avoid unnecessary deps
5) A search option to move to the place where a particular window is present ( An idea kinda modified from Wmii tags )
6) NO toolbars.
7) a menu may be considered

Do you have any other suggestions?

I request people who know Xlib to come forward and tell me about the viability of this.
I do not know much about Xlib, but i am googling at a mad pace for guides..

-ScriptDevil

iphitus · 2007-09-27 02:06:19

ScriptDevil wrote:

I remember that long back, dusty and the rest were planning on an Arch WM
Well.. Seems dead now.. Anyway.. lets pump new life back into it
The basic features i wanna put in are
1) infinite or pseudo infinite Window Space
2) 4 arrow keys that appear on a keystroke to help us navigate through infinity like google maps

PekWM does this. While it's not quite infinite space... which isn't really possible, it can be very very large. Look up viewports.

3) a tile button(windows can get lost in infinity,right??) like in MacOSX (This too is on a keystroke like the navigation arrows)

Doesn't need to be put in the window manager. There's external implementations, (see kompose) -- but... it's kde dependent. A nice simple one would be good.

4) Written in pure C and Xlib so that we avoid unnecessary deps

If you want any theming, you'll want something to deal with images. If you want to make configuration easy, an existing parser. And AA fonts, freetype2.

5) A search option to move to the place where a particular window is present ( An idea kinda modified from Wmii tags )

Again... could be done with a third party application. Might even be possible with a shell script...

Do you have any other suggestions?

0) A developer. So far these projects end up dying because it's all talk and no code. I'd hack on it, but I don't know enough xlib to work on it from scratch.

James

Last edited by iphitus (2007-09-27 02:07:06)

Dusty · 2007-09-27 02:33:45

Crap, I forgot all about those ideas, but as soon as I saw your topic I thought what, again?

James is right on the one hand though, PekWM is a great window manager that does almost everything you want... you might want to play with its source code instead of starting from scratch. XLIB isn't that hard,

You can also increase the Viewport to "infinite" ok, "very large" in xorg.conf without your window manager knowing anything. I tried it once. And I hated it. That's when I started to think infinite desktops weren't as cool as I thought.

I also once implemented an infinite "desktop" (with icons and stuff, but no windows, it was just an undergrad project for an HCI course) in 3D. It sufficed to convince me that it was a bad idea. :-)

If you are interested in doing a window manager, my last hopes were that someone would create one similar to Litestep for Windows. Phrakture was interested in this for a while but it also went by the wayside. I think if you search this forum for "Litestep" you'll find all my views on it.

Good luck with your project, I don't have time to help out, but I'll definitely watch it with interest.

Dusty

pauldonnelly · 2007-09-29 02:53:39

I too have come to the conclusion that big smoothly scrolling desktops aren't really worth it. I used to use VTWM and FVWM in that config, and while it was nice, it had no huge advantages over multiple desktops, and I've ended up back with Ratpoison by now. Nothing in particular is wrong with big desktops, but when you've got a practically infinite amount of space you start to realize that it's just like switching to specific windows from a list. One place becomes the same as any other, so why not make them all be the same place?

You could play with it in FVWM, which should be flexible enough to mock up your ideas. It will let you have a virtual desktop many real screens in size and scroll around it in steps as small as you please. I used to use alt+scroll (both left/right and up/down) to get around and had program lists to jump to a specific window.

iphitus · 2007-09-29 11:11:18

I'd be happy to work on a wm project along the lines of pekwm+tiling. Or dwm+_improved_ float support+xft+tabs...

James

rson451 · 2007-09-29 13:03:25

iphitus wrote:

dwm+_improved_ float support+xft+tabs...

that would be absolutely AMAZING. unfortunately i know nothing about xlib nor anything else that would help with this but i certainly would test it out if it ever got that far.

Sigi · 2007-09-29 16:46:20

iphitus wrote:

I'd be happy to work on a wm project along the lines of pekwm+tiling. Or dwm+_improved_ float support+xft+tabs...
James

dwm+xft would be nice, but I already like dwm a lot as it is now. Why would you need tabs with it? And what could be improved in regard of float support? (I don't use it that much, but it works for me as long as some apps are defined as floating in config.h ...)

Cheers Sigi

rson451 · 2007-09-29 20:49:36

Sigi wrote:

Why would you need tabs with it? And what could be improved in regard of float support?

the only think id like with floats are for it to remember the size/position of the float if you toggle to tile then back to float (just upgraded dwm so it may do this now im not sure) also for floats to be able to be behind tiled windows until switching to them via alt j/k

Sigi · 2007-09-29 20:52:59

rson451 wrote:

Sigi wrote:
Why would you need tabs with it? And what could be improved in regard of float support?
the only think id like with floats are for it to remember the size/position of the float if you toggle to tile then back to float (just upgraded dwm so it may do this now im not sure) also for floats to be able to be behind tiled windows until switching to them via alt j/k

Agreed. Or something like hiding all floating windows with alt-tab would also be nice.

skymt · 2007-09-29 21:24:29

rson451 wrote:

the only think id like with floats are for it to remember the size/position of the float if you toggle to tile then back to float (just upgraded dwm so it may do this now im not sure) also for floats to be able to be behind tiled windows until switching to them via alt j/k

There's a patch that fulfills your first request, though it has yet to be updated for the latest version.

Last edited by skymt (2007-09-29 21:24:52)

iphitus · 2007-09-29 22:08:59

Sigi wrote:

iphitus wrote:
I'd be happy to work on a wm project along the lines of pekwm+tiling. Or dwm+_improved_ float support+xft+tabs...
James
dwm+xft would be nice, but I already like dwm a lot as it is now. Why would you need tabs with it? And what could be improved in regard of float support? (I don't use it that much, but it works for me as long as some apps are defined as floating in config.h ...)
Cheers Sigi

Small Screens. dwm absolutely blows on < 1280x1024. Being able to have two windows within the one space, ala ion/wmii would make life easier rather than forcing everything on screen. Even being able to minimise a window to just it's title would be great.

Float support, I mean the floating layout. Some basic snapping, maximisation functions, smarter alt-tab, smarter placement. Stuff that won't ever be merged to dwm.

It'd probably make more sense to add tiling to pekwm.. you'd get a similar thing as adding all those to dwm.

James

Sigi · 2007-09-29 23:08:25

iphitus wrote:

Small Screens. dwm absolutely blows on < 1280x1024. Being able to have two windows within the one space, ala ion/wmii would make life easier rather than forcing everything on screen. Even being able to minimise a window to just it's title would be great.

The monocle patch could be of interest for you.

rson451 · 2007-09-30 03:20:26

skymt wrote:

There's a patch that fulfills your first request, though it has yet to be updated for the latest version.

thanks, ive seen that patch but i knew it wasnt up to date. i really wish i could decode .patches a bit better in my head so i could patch the newer versions but oh well ill just wait

F · 2007-09-30 04:27:41

maximum limit of number of lines of code: 10,000 lines.

as a menu i think it should be optional, with the option being dzen.

Last edited by F (2007-09-30 04:30:54)

abhidg · 2007-09-30 04:46:08

what about xmonad? it has good float support, and i saw that there's also a plugin for tabbed windows (http://xmonad.org/contrib.html)

harlekin · 2007-09-30 07:48:22

Patching dwm with xft support is fairly easy. I've done it when I used dwm but discontinued it after having switched to xmonad.

Sorry for hijacking. \-:

iphitus · 2007-09-30 12:39:52

Sigi wrote:

iphitus wrote:
Small Screens. dwm absolutely blows on < 1280x1024. Being able to have two windows within the one space, ala ion/wmii would make life easier rather than forcing everything on screen. Even being able to minimise a window to just it's title would be great.
The monocle patch could be of interest for you.

Does it show what other windows are open, or just the current one? I ran a full screen layout for a while, it was stupidly unintuitive. I'd have to blindly tab-tab-tab to find the right window if I didn't have a key bound for that app.

abhidg: I'll take another look at xmonad, seems like it's developing very rapidly.

James

Sigi · 2007-10-02 10:48:01

iphitus wrote:

Does it show what other windows are open, or just the current one? I ran a full screen layout for a while, it was stupidly unintuitive. I'd have to blindly tab-tab-tab to find the right window if I didn't have a key bound for that app.

No, you can use it to make one of tiled windows fullscreen and back to tile. But I use it rarely... There might really be better ways to achieve this.

iphitus · 2007-10-02 13:18:09

Sigi wrote:

iphitus wrote:
Does it show what other windows are open, or just the current one? I ran a full screen layout for a while, it was stupidly unintuitive. I'd have to blindly tab-tab-tab to find the right window if I didn't have a key bound for that app.
No, you can use it to make one of tiled windows fullscreen and back to tile. But I use it rarely... There might really be better ways to achieve this.

Hence, tabs. I like how ion/wmii/pekwm have it. I can see what I have open, but without having the window displayed. I can click to go between them, or use logical keyboard shortcuts. Saves the screen space, and is also intuitive.

James

ScriptDevil · 2007-10-03 00:42:08

Ok... i am gonna try writing one...
Yeah... it may not be infinite.. it will be pseudo infinite...
I have assumed that warping will be possible.. maybe yes.. maybe no.. ok.. it is gonna take a long time... but when it is done... (if i ever manage to get a working code), i will put it up for all those who are interested

Ash

Arch Linux

#1 2007-09-27 01:36:03

Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#2 2007-09-27 02:06:19

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#3 2007-09-27 02:33:45

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#4 2007-09-29 02:53:39

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#5 2007-09-29 11:11:18

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#6 2007-09-29 13:03:25

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#7 2007-09-29 16:46:20

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#8 2007-09-29 20:49:36

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#9 2007-09-29 20:52:59

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#10 2007-09-29 21:24:29

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#11 2007-09-29 22:08:59

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#12 2007-09-29 23:08:25

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#13 2007-09-30 03:20:26

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#14 2007-09-30 04:27:41

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#15 2007-09-30 04:46:08

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#16 2007-09-30 07:48:22

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#17 2007-09-30 12:39:52

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#18 2007-10-02 10:48:01

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#19 2007-10-02 13:18:09

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

#20 2007-10-03 00:42:08

Re: Infinite Window Space(!WM)

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