Re: [dwm] dwm and dualhead

On Dec 11, 2008, at 2:32 AM, Kai Großjohann wrote:

> Anselm R Garbe wrote:
>>
>> I tried different multihead approaches in between 4.9 and 5.1 with
>> dwm. I remember the following: [...]
> You haven't mentioned my favorite approach:
> Currently, each tag is visible or hidden. Change this so that a
> tag can be visible on a specific screen.
> Showing a tag on a screen that is already visible on another screen
> hides it from that other screen. Thus, a tag is visible on at most
> one screen.

This relates to the difference between dwm-gtx and "awesome" that I
noted earlier. You're suggesting that each screen view a different
set of tags, while currently dwm uses the same tag for all screens.

> Windows can freely move between screens by just showing its tag on
> another screen.

This might be suitable for a dynamic window manager, but I personally
find that it's too dynamic for my taste, cf. Mate's comment about
windows jumping between screens.

> Matches my mental model of tags: a tag is a collection of windows
> that are semantically related and needed for a task. Sometimes I
> wish to work on a task on one screen, sometimes on the other.
> For example: I have a "development" task and a "information
> reading" task (web browser + mail client). If I am currently
> focusing on development, then it might be useful to browse the web
> or read some mail on the secondary screen. However, when I am
> actively working on email, then I might wish to do that on the
> primary screen.

What if a single task requires two screens? I'm doing some writing
right now, and I use one screen for gvim and the other for xpdf (the
LaTeX output). I have multiple writing tasks to switch between, so
for me, it makes sense to associate both screens with a single tag.

I don't think there will be a consensus over multihead behavior. I
propose that we just agree on a few structs and global variables, and
then just supply our own layouts (as we've already been doing for the
singlehead case). To simplify the code for those not blessed with
multiple monitors, maybe we should assume a single tagset and layout
to be used for both screens?
Received on Thu Dec 11 2008 - 11:14:23 UTC