Re: viewport definition glitch

[Jeremy Hankins <nowan nowan org>]

Teika Kazura <teika lavabit com> writes:
> Hi. Let me report another viewport definition glitch.
>
> It's the dimension. We had had only one, "the dimension". Now we also
> have "minimum" to support dynamic viewport. But what we really need is
> one, "the initial dimension". And current VP size should be a plain
> global variable, not a customizable one.  (It might be better not to
> change the defcustom name for users.)  Thus, the # of options is one,
> regardless the dynamic VP is used or not.

Yes, this is a problem I did not know what to do with when I wrote the
dynamic viewports patch.

Currently if you set viewport-dimensions to less than
viewport-minimum-dimensions it decreases v-m-d, and if you set v-m-d to
more than v-d it increases v-d.  All this is whether you are using
dynamic viewports or not.

I thought about naming it viewport-default-dimensions, but chose
viewport-minimum-dimensions because v-d can be more than, but never less
than, v-m-d.

> What makes the thing difficult is the sawfish-config (former
> sawfish-ui). Currently it only supports defcustoms, and they are
> saved. But it must be able to change the current VP size with
> sawfish-config, if the user doesn't use dynamic viewport.

I don't know that this is a problem.  The custom interface can call a
function (and in this case it does) when the variable is set, so the
variable could be a minimum if dynamic viewports is used, and a set
value otherwise.  That wouldn't be a big change from current behavior; a
fairly minor change to the code and removing viewport-dimensions from
the config interface would do it.  But my worry is what will happen to
the ~/.sawfish/custom files that specify viewport-dimensions.  What will
happen when those custom files specify changes to viewport-dimensions,
but that's no longer the way things are done?

> Well, it'll be easy if we simply drop the current VP size switch
> from sawfish-config, and make user use dynamic VP to enlarge one.
> (Shrink is not supported then.)

Under dynamic viewports shrinking is supported -- as soon as a row or
column is no longer in use it is removed, down to
viewport-minimum-dimensions.

> One problem is that what should be the size at restart. I think the VP
> should be big enough to cover all windows.

Yes, this is something that shouldn't be hard to fix, I just haven't yet
tracked down how to do it.  The viewport-dynamic-resize function does
exactly that: resize the virtual workspace (i.e., viewport-dimensions,
viewport-[xy]-offset, etc.) to include all windows as well as the
current viewport.  It just needs to be run immediately on restart, and I
haven't yet figured out what hook, or where to make changes, to have
that happen.

> It is bad to delete once accepted defcustom. Please be cautious.

Yes!  ;)

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan nowan org>