Re: [wmii] Automatic destruction of views

On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 03:03:42PM +0200, Sander van Dijk wrote:
> On 4/21/06, Chris Foster <foster_AT_physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
> > The fact that I have to remember to add new clients before
> > removing the old ones seems very clunky to me
>
> That is not the way it is: the whole point of dynamic window
> management is that 'stuff' exists when you need it, and doesn't exist
> when you don't need it. If you close all the clients in a view, you
> apparently don't need the view at that moment (there's nothing in it
> that you could possibly need, since it's empty). If at some point you
> need that view again (which is when there's a client with that tag),
> the view is automatically recreated.

Yes, I agree this is more dynamic, but as I believe people have pointed
out before, dynamic is not an end in itself, rather we are trying to
make the window manager as usable as possible. Predictability is a very
important part of such usability, and putting the user on a random tag
is not predictable.

> The problem is, I think, that you are trying to use views as
> conventional pages, which they aren't.

Fair enough, I am very probably guilty of this. In fact I will admit
that I've only just started tagging clients with meaningful tags rather
than the old very workspace-like numbers.

> The other approach would be to allow empty stuff (like frames,
> columns, and views) to stay around, which is called static
> windowmanagement. Ion does this, and it's clunky.

I completely agree that allowing empty frames & columns would be very
clunky. The problem is that views occupy a rather different part of my
workflow. A view for me usually represents a particular task and
getting spat back to a random view often leaves me wondering what I was
doing.

> If you find having to type in the tag again when the view isn't around
> cumbersome, add a shortcut to something like
> echo -n -e "my\nlist\nof\frequenly\nused\ntags" | wmiimenu
> to prevent having to type them in all the time.

Thanks, I'll consider it. There's lots of ideas like this which I
should be trying out ;)

In any case, from reading the long list of mails, I see you guys have
considered the problem while I've been asleep. So, I'll stop
complaining now, and let you get on with polising wmii-3. Keep up the
great work!
~Chris.
Received on Sat Apr 22 2006 - 01:10:27 UTC