Re: gnome-terminal idea

[Tim Moore <tmoore tembel org>]

On Wed, 23 Sep 1998, George wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 23, 1998 at 05:18:14PM -0400, Tim Moore wrote:
> > twm has features? :-)
> 
> actually a lot of fetures .. that's why it's quite a lot bigger then say
> fvwm

Hmmm. Looking at the manpage I can see you're right. I was misled by it's
simple appearance. Guess that'll teach me.

> > > notebook based MDI takes basically isn't really bloat so why eliminate
> > > it ....
> > 
> > Because the whole MDI paradigm has some other problems outlined earlier.
> > (e.g., memory space, application-oriented rather than task oriented
> > grouping, etc.)
> 
> you can put this into a WM and use it from that ... I will continue using
> my present windowmanager and use the tabbed MDI ... you will switch to
> using top window based MDI ...
> 
> I can't see how removing tab mdi from the MDI helps you any ... or how leaving
> it in makes it impossible to do what you want to ...

Well it still has the address-space difficulty, which can't be fixed at
all if any apps use MDI, regardless of how it presents the interface.

I think we can agree that MDI is an inferior solution to a generalized
tabbing mechanism. So the question is how to implement a generalized
tabbing mechanism. My initial reaction is that this sort of thing would
fit most cleanly into a window manager. You raise the (valid) point that
people won't want to change window managers for this, especially since the
current incarnation of this idea doesn't require that. So now the question
is, is there a way to make a program which can act as a tab manager and
work transparently through Xlib. My answer is, I think so, but I don't
really know much about it yet. Ideas like GTerm and GNOMEBook are good,
but require big changes to an app. I want something that apps don't have
to be aware of, just as they don't have to be aware of window managers.

> > Well I was basing the number 10 on what you said about 10 rxvts.
> 
> I don't necessairly have to have them in one windnow

OK. I was missing the part about being able to split into multiple
windows.

> > If you could have multiple windows in an app, and each window has tabs,
> > that's better, but I would prefer that the notebooks be totally
> > application-independent. If all you use is terminals than you *could* put
> > all of the related stuff in one window, I suppose, but what about
> > graphical apps?
> 
> again, that is not what I said ... I WANT to have more winndows, hoever 
> some terminals I want to have all in one window ... again thinnk of running
> screen

Yeah, but what if I want GIMP and gEdit in one window? What if I want
WordPerfect in there? It would be nice to make this seamless.

> 
> > > however if you've ever used screen you'll know how much that kind of 
> > > "mdi" style is supperior in terms of "speed" of use to overlaping xterms
> > 
> > If I've ever used screen? Is screen a program?
> 
> yup[ ... makes something like virtual connsoles in any terminal window,
> it's most likely installed on your puter .... type screen .. then to
> create a new window type ^Ac ... to switch between them use ^An

OK. I don't have it installed but I assume that this is something that
operates on a level above the shell and below the terminal program, right?
That is, neither your terminal program or your apps need to support it
explicitly, it works in a layer between those, right?

So that's what I'm thinking now. The graphical analogue of the terminal
program is the window manager, and the graphical analogoue of the screen
program is the tab manager. It runs as a program which is handled by the
window manager, then handles the applications itself. If this is possible,
it may satisfy everyone.

> > If you do have that option, then that's an improvement. gterm is a
> > terminal which uses gnome-mdi.
> 
> I didn't know of gterm before 

But it has its limitations. Namely, it can't handle arbitrary windows, you
have to write a plugin. Now having some sort of communications between the
tab manager and programs that are written with it in mind would be a good
thing, but neither end should assume the other. Just like window manager
hints. Neither the WM nor the client should assume that hints are
supported by the app to work, but it serves as a little icing on the cake
if it does work.

> > > so keep them in separate windows ... hoever I bet your program has more
> > > sources ... say 20 files .... wouldn't it be nicer had they been cleanly
> > > in one window rather then polluting your task bar for switching between
> > > thewindow with your web page files and teh window with your c sources
> > 
> > And it would be even nicer if I could put the terminal, the debugger and
> > the text editor into a single window (and assuming that the debugger and
> > text editor are graphical programs).
> 
> then if you want to do such things ... make a WM extention and use that ..
> I don't really need to, but I'd still like to use somethinng like tabbed MDI

Well what do you think about the idea of a tab manger, both in terms of
feasability and desierability?

> > So is this window management or something GNOME should be handling?
> 
> depending how you do it .... with corba we can just have GTerm open documents
> (c source code) and run term in itself and iot would work I guess ... it
> wouldn't be like a window manager however
> 
> it could also be done by just havinng gterm "swallow" my vi session ...
> in that case it would be WM independent

Right, but it can't do that right now with arbitrary X windows, AFAIK. But
perhaps it would be a good starting point for the tab manager.

Tim