Re: [dwm] Purpose of Monocle Layout

Matthias-Christian Ott <ott_AT_enolink.de> wrote:

> "Anselm R Garbe" <garbeam_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 2008/8/2 Ian Daniher <it.daniher_AT_gmail.com>:
> > > BTW, a friend and I came up with the idea, that it would be useful to
> > > have some visual hint of how many windows you are actually viewing in
> > > monocle. Say, there are five windows with currently viewed tag and
> > > you're viewing the third window in the stack; then there could be an
> > > indicator like: [3/5] or [..*..]. What do you guys think about that?
> >
> > This idea is rather old and it was implemented once in some official
> > version of dwm. However, because it is only interesting for 1
> > particular layout, namely monocle, it has been removed again. AFAIR
> > the solution to the problem was a change to the Layout struct, instead
> > of defining a simple symbol string for the layout, I used some
> > function pointer which returned the layout symbol string.
> >
> > When using this indicator for some time, I concluded that it wasn't
> > obvious enough to be useful, especially because the information "nth
> > client of X clients" doesn't give you much -- you rarely remember the
> > client order anyways.
> >
> > Because of the fact that dwm is a dynamic window manager, my
> > recommended solution is to switch to some appropriate layout before
> > you focus the particular client you are looking for, and then
> > switching to monocle again.
> >
> > So, the way I use monocle is usually only on a client basis or on very
> > few clients -- there is the powerful tagging concept for grouping the
> > clients you work on.
> >
> > With this in mind, this idea won't go mainstream again ;)
> >
> > > Also, implementing the alt-tab to switch between the windows on that tab
> > > would seem to make sense.
> >
> > The philosophy behind dwm and all other less suckish projects I'm
> > involved in follows the idea that there should be only 1 distinct
> > operation to perform a certain function. If any feature of some
> > software can only and always be performed in using 1 distinct
> > operation (which never changes), then it is easier to remember and to
> > use. Hence one indicator of bad software design is if there are plenty
> > ways performing the same operation (e.g. having an icon to click on, a
> > shortcut, a menu entry, a context menu entry, another shortcut, etc).
> > This indication applies to vim unfortunately -- there is :wq and ZZ
> > and what not for instance -- it basically performs the same
> > operations, polluting your command space unnecessarily and making you
> > think a lot which is the fastest way to perform a certain operation in
> > a certain situation, that sucks).
> >
> > The only exception regarding the 1 distinct operation paradigm is to
> > allow only 1 distinct different way in performing it, if there is a
> > different input device, like the mouse.
> >
> > Having two key bindings for the same thing also makes the usage less
> > consistent, because Mod1-Tab (in default setup) has a totally
> > different meaning. So IMHO Mod1-j/Mod1-k are the navigation shortcuts
> > in all layouts (at least in default setup).
> >
> > And if you are unhappy with this, feel free to change it in config.h.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > --Anselm
> :q!

Sorry just thought that I was in vi ;). Just wanted to add that I didn't
know about Mod1-j and Mod1-k in monocle. Thanks for the explaination -
now it makes sense to me.

Regards
Matthias-Christian
Regards
Matthias-Christian
Received on Sun Aug 03 2008 - 13:35:36 UTC