Re: [dwm] status

On 7/11/07, Anselm R. Garbe <arg_AT_suckless.org> wrote:
> Well, development work will go on during the next days. Actually
> I plan to release dwm-4.3 (containing certain bugfixes) until
> Saturday and some initial win32 code about d4w (dwm for windows)
> later on (which is planned as explorer.exe replacement).
>
> dmenu will also be reimplemented as dm4w counterpart.
>
> Because I recently get more in touch with the win32 platform
> (due to job reasons) I also plan to design st in a more portable
> way (which means using a tty-abstraction layer which will work
> on both, UNIX and windows -> putty sucks ;))
>
> So if there are people being interested in native(!) (- note no
> Cygwin/X crap) win32 versions, please let me know...

although I only use Windows for some document formats and stuff
like proprietary project management or bug tracking tools without
usable web interfaces I've been a long time Litestep user on Windows.

if you plan on building an explorer.exe replacement you have to
implement more than window management:
1) systray code
2) some COM stuff to make few/some apps work

those are the biggest windows shell challenges as far as I can remember.
the first one takes a lot of work getting right for all apps which want
to use the systray for icons/whatever.
the second is only bad because implementing that support increases the
memory requirements of your shell by some amount as you have to
initialize some stuff which is build with COM and is needed for the shell
to properly support running some types of applications.

Anselm, if you need more info, you could take a look at resources like
the GPL licensed Litestep code or bb4win or Geoshell. Litestep has
the best systray support I know which is even better than
explorer.exe's own implementation (NT 5.1 that is). OK, it may be that some
mysterious ill-behaving app does only work the explorer.exe systray but
my current Litestep configuration is much more stable and forgiving when
it comes to systray support.

I think that's enough Windows-knowledge outing for a day, I guess :)
Received on Wed Jul 11 2007 - 22:18:57 UTC