Re: [gtk-list] Re: GTK window manager...

[Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds kjahds com>]

On 2 May 1999 tibbs@hpc.uh.edu wrote:

> If someone seriously wants to use Gtk for the window decorations, come to
> fvwm-workers (@fvwm.org) and ask about it.  There have been rumblings in
> the past about making decorations implementable via external modules; it
> may not be all that hard do do.

For what it is worth, I'd very much like to see a window manager that can
use a UI kit (Gtk makes a good test case, but I'd like it to be fairly
generic) for all graphical operations and is amenable to control by an
outside agency (let us say Perl, or one of the other interpreters that has
a Gtk binding). That should let us significantly reduce the cost of
writing and modifying a window manager, and thereby increase the
likelyhood of good ones being written. (Not dismissing FVWM, of course. I
use it myself.) If there are some things that Gtk (or some over toolkit) 
cannot do natively (like draw a rubber-band resize rectangle, or somesuch) 
then the window manager should export the facilities to make that
possible. 

Ideally, "FVWM'95" should just be a module (whether compiled in,
dynamically loaded, or loaded from Perl) that "MetaFVWM" can use as a
graphics interface. (And I suppose Enlightenment should just be another
module, then.)

IMHO, I think it's time for window managers to stop worrying about
displaying graphics and launching programs in ever more clever manners,
and start concentrating on managing windows. That would also mean FVWM
could actually get _simpler_ in future, something I think the maintainers
might appreciate. :-)

-- 
Kenneth Albanowski (kjahds@kjahds.com, CIS: 70705,126)