Re: [dev] [surf] xprop (was: few bugs)

On Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:04:57 +0100
Tadeusz Sośnierz <tadzikes_AT_gmail.com> wrote:

> On 29-10-2009 19:59:17, markus schnalke wrote:
> > The quoted mail makes me share my thoughts on surf's xprop
> > interface:
> >
> >
> > At first, it seems pretty nice how surf communicates with the
> > outside. But on closer looks, I dislike the xprop stuff more and
> > more.
> >
> > What is shown above does surely not look nice; it's pretty obscure
> > when you compare it to most of the suckless software we know.
> >
> > You may say that this does not matter much, as you only once need to
> > find out how it has to be done.
> >
> >
> > But -- and this my main point -- the xprop interface is a break on
> > unleashing the leverage of surf!
> >
> > Uzbl may not be as small as surf, it's ``command language'' on the
> > interface may be a bit too big, but it does one thing right where
> > surf fails: It *encourages* to combine it with other programs!
> >
> >
> > Surf is able to interface all kinds of programs through xprop, but
> > not in an easy/flexible enough way. The large number of user
> > scripts that extend uzbl is not the result of the larger community,
> > but the result of the interface that makes you want to write
> > ``handler'' scripts.
> >
> > Instead of staying hooked to xprop, surf should create a fifo for
> > input and write stuff to stdout in order to make it easier/more
> > flexible to combine it with helper scripts. This would improve surf
> > much.
> >
> > Here (possibly) more code leads to less complexity combined with
> > more flexibility.
> >
> >
> > It's not enough to just offer possibilities; important is to
> > encourage to use them ... by design. In this point surf fails,
> > whereas uzbl does it right.
> >
> >
> > meillo
>
> Agreed. As now the looks like the only place in which surf uses xprop
> is actually this uri and find handling. It's not really useful for
> setting the address remotely, as we have better or worse patches for
> bookmarks, we can open new surf instances in tabbed, etc.
> Regards,
> Ted
>

i always think of 'uzbl & surf' as 'wmii and dwm'.

basically they both encourage you to write things to interact/integrate
with, but wmii and uzbl recommend doing it with separate programs by
providing interfaces such as fifo/socket/virtual filesystem etc.

whereas dwm and surf recommend you to change the source code to provide
the behaviour you want.

both are fine approach, both have pros and cons and both appeal to
different people.
but IMHO they both provide a means to change the behavior of the program
as a whole

(note i haven't actually looked at surf's source code yet, but i
suspect that's how it works)

Dieter
Received on Thu Oct 29 2009 - 19:39:51 UTC