Re: Tabs bug: inactive tabs being overlapped

[Daniel M German <dmg uvic ca>]

 Fernando  twisted the bytes to say:


 Fernando> I've kept thinking about it and.. I think that what would
 Fernando> really be an overload for sawfish and a confusing thing for
 Fernando> most of the users would be to have a lot of commands of the
 Fernando> kind of "cycle group" "cycle class" "cycle window" "cycle
 Fernando> tab" "cycle viewport" "cycle workspace"...

 Fernando> I think there are already a lot of ways for sorting.. it
 Fernando> can get very confusing, most people hardly know how to use
 Fernando> groups and now they will have yet another concept to
 Fernando> difference from it... and what's worse, a very similar
 Fernando> concept (tabs are just like sticked groups).

I recently started hacking iswitch. For those who don't use it, it is
an add-on to switch windows. It shows a list of all windows and lets
you scroll through it and use regular expressions to move in it. The
windows are listed according to the stacking-order.

I have extended it a bit. The command first lists all windows. But if
you press Ctrl-W then it lists only windows in the current
workspace. If you press Ctrl-C is shows only windows in the class of
the window at the top of the list. I have also extended it to show the
workspace (when you have lots of windows, any piece of info helps.

I find it easier to use than using cycle. But it is not perfect. I'd
like it to display the window's icon, but it is not trivial (the way
it is implemented).  When you have too many windows it a very busy
list, where it is difficult to pick up what matters, but regular
expressions help a lot, though!

As I mentioned in a previous message I have also implemented a
cycle-in-class (similar to OS X). I used them too.

But I think that in general, the most effective and general way to
switch  is by providing a list. 

Lately I was looking at the cycling functions trying to see how
difficult it would be to display icons instead of strings. It looks
like it is not trivial. It would be great if we can hack a function to
display a mix text and icons (a list) that we can then call. It would
be really, really, great.

I also forgot, another problem with icycle is that the mouse is
disabled. You can only use the keyboard when cycling).

--dmg

 Fernando> Tabbing is just an switchable option, and anyway we have already quite some
 Fernando> ways to allow the Gimp+Tabs approach. If a new whole command infrastructure was
 Fernando> to be created for that I think it would be better to add class-specific
 Fernando> commands instead of duplicating an already existent infrastructure.

 Fernando> All the windows of Gimp are in the "Gimp" class, so adding a "raise all class
 Fernando> members when raise window" option or "minimize all class members" command would
 Fernando> also work. For Gimp and for all the applications with multiple windows. There's
 Fernando> already a "cycle class" command, why not extend that to other things as well?.
 Fernando> Anyway.. if that's still not a good solution,  viewports or workspaces (with
 Fernando> matching windows) could be used already anyway.

 Fernando> Moreover, if we were to make tabbed groups a separate thing we well may want
 Fernando> also to make the same thing for every other property of groups (maybe you want
 Fernando> a group of windows to minimize as a group, but only want a subset of them to
 Fernando> raise together). I think it would be messy to duplicate group code for each
 Fernando> property. If this was to be made it would better be in other way (maybe allow a
 Fernando> window to be in more than 1 group at the same time).

-- 
--
Daniel M. German                  
http://turingmachine.org/
http://silvernegative.com/
dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca
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