Re: [wmii] summary of some #wmii talk on 2006-03-02

On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 09:48:14AM +0100, Christian Simonutti wrote:
> Well, I was a littlebit loose in my response - hope I can clarify that.
>
> Empty columns always pop up in discussions. I always thought they are
> against wmii's dynamic behaviour. Not the user should layout clients,
> that's the job of the wm - as state on wmii.de:
>
> "Dynamic window management states that it is the window manager's job to
> manage windows - and not the user's job to have to set up some
> specialized layout that will only work for one specific work scenario.
> This has been the larswm motto for a long time. In contrast to static
> window management, the user rarely has to think about how to organize
> windows, no matter what they are doing or how many applications they are
> using at the same time. The window manager adapts to the current
> environment and helps the user manage and mold it to their needs, rather
> than forcing it to use a preset, fixed layout and trying to shoehorn all
> windows and applications into it."

If you can create/destroy columns on the fly and the window
manager helps you to manage the windows, it is still dynamic
from this POV. The WM arranges the columns and the clients
within the columns dynamically. Ie if in stacking mode, you
select the next and it pops up maximized and all others still
fit with their titlebar/tagbar in the column, That is dynamic
arrangement. Same if you send a client among pages or columns.
In contrast to that, in Ion or wmi-10 you had to manually
arrange your clients, the WM only assisted in splitting tasks,
but did not arranged the layout on the fly. It is also a
question of scaling. Columns scale with arbitrary clients pretty
well (ok, not to any number but fairly to numbers a user usually
uses). The Ion/wmi-10 approach scales much less, and the
navigation and interaction tasks are much more clunky, because
you always have to think in which direction to split/join a
frame, etc.

Regards,

-- 
 Anselm R. Garbe  ><><  www.ebrag.de  ><><  GPG key: 0D73F361