Re: Window managers

[Paul Warren <pdw ferret lmh ox ac uk>]

On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Michiel Toneman wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Paul Warren wrote:
> 
> pdw> E has some very
> pdw> strong opposition, certainly where I am.  I don't personally know anyone
> pdw> who likes it or finds in a usable wm. Clearly lots of people do, but it
> pdw> indicates that it is very important not to push people into using a single
> pdw> WM.
> pdw> 
> pdw> Any comments?
> 
> I used to feel the same way about E, till I tried it in its latest 
> incarnation as an RPM with Gnome 1.0 (i.e. 0.15.3).

I conceed that the 0.15 releases I have tried are miles ahead of what I
had tried previously.

> When properly set up E can be very "minimalistic". I like that ;-)

Yes.  This appeals to me, but for the wrong reason - it avoids the issue
that all the wm stuff (eg dock, panel, menus) are non-gtk by hiding them.

> Advantages:

>   - best Gnome support (a.o. doesn't capture right mouse button which is 
>                         used by gmc, best desktop icon support)

I posted a patch to wm-dev the other day to do this properly in Window
Maker.  The support is already half there (eg. Shift+Right click works)

> - Cycling through windows is badly implemented (Alt-Tab). 

Yes.  It uses a timer to figure out whether or not to reverse the cycling
direction.  This is tacky, but Raster said he had no immediate plans to
fix it.

> Conclusion:
> 
> I doubt anyone can write a better WM than E from scratch. When configured
> like mine, E is VERY useable. 

I believe you.  But it does take a bit of fiddling to get it there, yes?

> Window Maker is way too messy on the desktop in its current form. Huge 
> icons/docks/wharfs make it a poor match with Gnome. 

This is my problem with it.

If I were writing a GTK based wm, I would do it by stripping down Window
Maker (remove docks, clip & panel) and converting the menus & widgets to
gtk. Still thinking about this one...

yours,

Paul