Scott Scriven wrote:
> It does look pretty interesting. I don't usually have a numpad,
> but otherwise it looks cool.
>
I also lack a numpad, and I wouldn't want to reach for one anyway. For
the longest time I've had pack-window-* bound to H-M-{ijkl}. Instead of
going with the numpad for this, I went with the block of keys centered
around K (uiojlm,.). For now, I used S-H-M for the modifiers (for me
that's Control-WindowsKey-Alt).
It is unwieldy, but it was only for testing. Since I've been using my
new script, I nearly stopped using the pack-window-* hotkeys.
> As for what to do with the vast space on a large monitor, my own
> solution is somewhat similar. I use hotkeys for features kind of
> like tiling window managers, though the tiling part is optional.
> Basically, I use a lot of move/grow-until-hits-an-edge bindings,
> combined with tabs, to let me build arbitrary non-overlapping
> window layouts with minimal effort. Here's a screenshot:
>
> http://toykeeper.net/tmp/semi-tiled.1200.jpg
I used to do most of my work on a desktop with a pair of 1024x768
panels. At the time, it was a pretty good amount of space. It was
easier to manage windows, because everything but my terminals were full
screen. My preferred font size in my terminals made for a bit of
overlap if I tried to put 4 on a screen, but not so much that it mattered.
Now I'm always on my 1680x1050 15.4 inch laptop. I only see my screens
getting higher resolution and not lower. If I went back to a desktop I
can't even imagine how many pixels worth of real estate I would end up
having in front of me.
I assume since you have no number pad that you're also on a laptop. I'm
going to assume with a 17 inch screen? That should put our DPI pretty
close. If that's all true, I don't think my eyesight is good enough for
your font sizes anymore :).
As long as we're posting screenshots, here's the 3 common ways my
windows tend to fall:
http://patshead.com/sawfish/grid-thing-1.jpg
http://patshead.com/sawfish/grid-thing-2.jpg
http://patshead.com/sawfish/grid-thing-3.jpg
> The hotkeys, if you're curious, are:
I am always curious about how someone else is thinking, it is a good way
to come up with better ideas :). Your demo layout is pretty near what I
would like to get with a very minimum of key presses, but still
maintaining as much control as I want to have.
> I move around a 2-D grid of workspaces, and if I want to send a
> window to another workspace I just stick it, go to the new
> workspace, then unstick it. If I start a new project, I make a
> new workspace for it, and later delete it when I'm done.
I'm set up with old school numbered workspaces. M-number to switch
workspace, H-number to move a window to another workspace. I seem to
always put myself into a position where I need to move a lot of windows
to an empty workspace and I end up doing a bunch of C-#/M-tabbing.
I'd like to have a good way to have named workspaces that can be easily
created and destroyed. It would be nice to have it work with
iswitch-window. It would actually be even nicer to have something more
like emacs ido, I suppose :)
>> I started to try to write the whole thing in lisp, but I
>> haven't the foggiest idea how to properly set up an access any
>> kind of complex data structure.
>
> This has been my biggest obstacle too. If sawfish was written
> in, say, Python, I would have a much easier time making changes
> and extensions. Or even common lisp -- I don't have a lot of
> experience with it yet, but it has a lot bigger community and
> better documentation than rep.
I bet I spent better than 10 times longer reading documentation to fail
to learn the right way to build and access a complex data structure in
lisp than it took me to hobble this contraption together.
Sawfish is easily and by far the most versatile window manager out
there. It is unfortunate that the pool of talent that can work on it is
so small.
>> It also, unfortunately, has completely hard coded window
>> placement/size numbers (for 1680x1050, with a gnome-panel, and
>> assuming the Toyberg theme).
>
> Out of curiousity, why Toyberg? Are you also using tabbed
> windowing? (if not, Elberg may look better)
>
I loaded up your tabbing code a long time ago. I switched the theme up
from green to darkish blue color. I barely ever use the tabbing. When
I tried to use it heavily I recall it having some odd behavior. I just
tried to make it do something weird, and I can't seem to manage to do it
now... I'd very likely start using it a bunch if I had set up proper
key bindings for it.
I just looked at Elberg. Too much gray in the title bar and too many
buttons.
Poking around at the tabs and reading about your window workflow got me
thinking. I'm thinking it might almost be nice to have some sort of
auto-meta-tabs.
One thought I had was actually merging title bars (just like your tabs)
of similarly sized and positioned windows. It would be a kind of way to
always be able to see which windows that are in the back.
The better though, at least for my purposes, would be to auto-tabbify
windows that I push to a particular quadrant/size. Unfortunately, my
insane combination of Perl and Lisp doesn't have enough knowledge to
allow me to make any sort of attempt to play with that idea... yet.
I'd also like my functions to be smart enough to know what quadrants the
other other windows already fall into so they can default to the size I
am most likely to be asking for.
Pat
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