Re: [dwm] [dvtm-patch] Status bar optional

From: Ritesh Kumar <ritesh_AT_cs.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:11:21 -0500

On Feb 19, 2008 12:57 PM, Marc Andre Tanner <mat_AT_brain-dump.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 01:50:40PM +0100, Claudio M. Alessi wrote:
> > Hi,
> > i'm continuing to study the dvtm code in order to be able to make
> some
> > "real" improvement. I'm a (not so) beginner C programmer so all my
> > experiments and your points of view about are useful to improve myself
> (not
> > only dvtm). It's free software, after all.
> >
> > As for the mouse support, i don't use the status bar at all (at least
> not
> > in box other than my laptop) so there is no reason to build such
> feature.
> > Even i think that such "modularization" help to make the code cleaner (
> e.g.
> > i had to move the terminal size variables from the updatebaros()
> function
> > to the resize_screen() one, which seems to be a better place for them).
> >
> > This will give a bit of work to Leonardo Taccari which is working on the
> > pkgsrc dvtm packages; a new option is needed, i guess.
> >
> > Hope this helps but, if not, feel free to insult me ;-)
>
> I don't want to clutter the code with all the #ifdefs plus some day we
> might introduce tags/workspaces and then a statusbar will become more
> important.
>

I can support not using #ifdefs unless absolutely necessary. I have large
chunks of my own code (thankfully not for long term use) where I used a lot
of #ifdefs... so I know the hard way :(. I guess the argument is that code
should be modular for programmer's ease (may be secondarily for conserving
memory or hard-drive space). I think it will be a welcome effort if somebody
can separate the mouse handling and status bar routines cleanly from dvtm
code and allow simple config.h lines to enable/disable them.

The other thing is that compilers are *supposed* to "dead code eliminate"
anything inside normal conditional statements if they know for sure... which
makes a case for using const variables and normal if statements for doing
#ifdef like stuff. Using const also helps with type checking and better
error messages. Bad news is the *supposed* in the first statement ;).

For workspaces, here's a crazy idea... why not just use dvtm inside screen
(may be that's still not good enough for tags :/ )? If bloat is a factor, I
have always been curious: besides terminal emulation, regions and fullscreen
windows... what more is there in screen?

_r
Received on Tue Feb 19 2008 - 19:11:23 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Sun Jul 13 2008 - 15:20:45 UTC