Re: [dev] [dwm] drop the bars (was: systray in upstream dwm?)

From: Anselm R Garbe <garbeam_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:49:13 +0200

On 6 April 2012 07:41, Jan Christoph Ebersbach <jceb_AT_e-jc.de> wrote:
> Thank you Anselm for explaining the issue. From my point of view there
> is no other way of implementing a proper systray for dwm as long as it
> contains the bars and has no interface.
>
> Why don't we drop the bars and keybindings and let separate programs
> handle it. There are also other patches like Xft that show that there is
> a need for choice and extension. Building everything into dwm is not a
> good idea, agreed. So let's create a proper interface for dwm that other
> programs can use.

The main issue with those interfacing approaches is, that it creates
more overall complexity unfortunately. It might lead to a nice (but
rarely usable) dwm core, but half of it would just implement one side
of the interface, the other side would be implemented by a bunch of
different programs.

I've been there a couple of years ago with wmii, and the answer to
this disaster was dwm.

The status text area was a simple compromise after all, not the most
elegant one, but one that seemed fairly simple for that matter and
didn't require an interface.

A while back I planned to separate the drawing code from the core, to
make it easier to use Xft or pango or whatever, but this would also
lead to some kind of interface that doesn't quite fit all the
different technologies.
The real fix for the unicode issues has to be done in Xlib itself imo.

Cheers,
Anselm
Received on Sun Apr 15 2012 - 11:49:13 CEST