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

John Nowak wrote:
> I think the column should just hang out there and I can manually remove
> it if I want if the only alternative is some creepy column history I
> need to manually clear on occasion. At least if it stays there, I know
> exactly there I stand. Predictably and naturalness are critical for any
> wm. Saving an extra second to kill the column seems hardly worth all of
> these additional conceptual complexities, key commands, and memory
> requirements of the user.

Maybe the column width should always be calculated automatically. When a
column gets destroyed (i.e. automatically, when it has no frames
anymore), it's width in percent is distributed among the other columns.
Then, when a new column is created, the new width is extrapolated from
it. Example:

|50|50|

The user resizes the columns:

|60|40|

The user creates a new column; the page is divided by the Golden Ratio
(1 = 0.62 + 0.38), and the two existing columns are placed into the left
area, keeping their old ratio (62 * 0.6 = 37, 62 * 0.4 = 25):

|37|25|38|

When deleting the column, it is divided by the Golden Ratio again and
added back to the two columns:

|37+24|25+14| = |61|39|

After this, we get almost the same we started with.

Of course, this algorithm does not work very well for other ratios, and
for more columns, but it is rather meant as an example, nothing else.
With the right algorithm, we stay totally dynamic, and we get in most of
the cases what we want without resizing.
Received on Fri Mar 03 2006 - 23:45:39 UTC