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

On Mar 3, 2006, at 10:38 PM, Doug Bell wrote:

> You're complaining about a single keystroke (<1 second) to clear the
> history when desired. And you probably wouldn't do it all that often,
> anyway, since keeping the history just means you go back to an
> arrangement you had before as you add clients.

Does it also tell you what the column layout was? Personally, I'd
prefer a way to "save" layouts and recall them using the 1 through 0
keys. It is very unlikely that I'd have more than a handful of common
layouts, so I think this is a nice and deliberate way of working. I'm
not arguing against having to spend <1 second. I'm arguing that I
shouldn't have to care about things like clearing column history.

>> 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.
>
> Instead, you're arguing for an empty column. Don't forget that
> killing
> an extra column means it has to have focus. So, either the column
> keeps
> focus after the last client is deleted or it loses it. The first case
> means thinking about and switching focus to a real client before
> resuming work (assuming you want to keep the column). The second case
> requires you to switch focus before being able to kill the empty
> column that is taking up valuable space.

How about a "clear all empty columns/frames" key command? If you
explicitly create something, you should explicitly remove it. Your
idea that you can have a notification that there is a stored state
still implies that I must remember what that sorted state is and if I
want to recall it or not. Saved layouts are okay as you're explicitly
saving them and calling them up often, making memory easy. However,
returning to something you had previously makes a lot of assumptions
about what you want to be doing, which I do not necessarily like.
Just my opinion of course.

- John