Re: [dev] [dwm] Optional status bar

From: Anselm R Garbe <garbeam_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 20:01:58 +0100

On 28 January 2012 13:51, Tom Vincent <ml_AT_tlvince.com> wrote:
> It would seem there might be opportunity here to reduce the dwm
> codebase by handing off responsibility of the status bar to something
> else, similar to how xmonad does it. dwm could provide an interface
> that outputs "desktop" and urgency hints rather than implementing the
> status bar itself.

I followed this thought experiment a while back in the earlier dwm
days and came to the conclusion that externalizing the status bar
would indeed make dwm simpler/smaller. However the overall complexity
would add up, first one would need to add a "generic" interface to dwm
to play with status windows nicely, second dwm would need expose the
internal tagging state somehow to such external apps, would need
additional input handling to deal with tag selection etc., then the
status bar app itself would become more complex and there would also
be a script that now glues the whole thing together.

If you think about this in terms of the overall line count, I bet you
will end up with a higher SLOC -- just for little gain.

What I do plan though, is adding a config.h hook to make the bar
window smaller (in terms of width) for a better dzen2 or similar
integration.

Cheers,
Anselm
Received on Wed Feb 08 2012 - 20:01:58 CET