Re: [wmii] Swapping (was: Re: mouse and tagging)

On 5/5/06, Anselm R. Garbe <garbeam_AT_wmii.de> wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 05:11:51PM +0200, Stefan Tibus wrote:
> > client in the not selected column is. Actually there is information
> > involved which is stored within wmii, but not represented
> > graphically: the selected client in a not-selected column! Sometimes
> > I'd like to know which one it is...(just an idea for wmii-4)
>
> I see your concerns. The graphical representation is a todo for
> wmii-4 already (we thought about generalizing the max mode label
> to provide more info in all cases).
>
> > Also, I don't think you can judge actual usage of a feature by
> > following discussions. I still like the larswm way a lot, but I'm
> > not going to tell this over and over again. And there may be a lot
> > of people not participating in the observed discussions...
>
> My main concern with swapping is, that I never used it regularly.
>
> Last year, when I implemented the prototype of column layout I
> put swapping to it, because I still was pretty much used to the
> wmii-2.x and wmii-2.5.x way of layouts (especially tiled
> layout). By that time I used swapping much more frequently than
> today.
>
> However, in the meanwhile I re-implemented the column layout
> nearly from scratch, and originally this re-implementation
> didn't contained swapping. It was based on move only for quite a
> long time (I think between January and early April). Because I'm
> always using hg tip, I wasn't able to use swapping during this
> period of time and discovered totally different usage patterns
> of columns, primary I run 2-3 columns with stacking mode and
> move a client into a new column temporarily if I need a bunch of
> clients side by side. Since the day I added swapping, I used it
> regularly for restacking columns in a vertical manner, but the
> Control-based shortcut annoyed me all along the way, it seems to
> be counter-intuitive to 'move' clients vertically with a
> different modifier than doing it horizontally... Maybe I swapped
> clients horizontally a few times as well, but I cannot consider
> this as regular interaction anymore, which has been the case for
> wmii-2.X.
>
> I think people who use swapping frequently are still pretty much
> used to the LarsWM- or tiled-layout way of thinking. But I
> noticed that one can change the mind and adapt to the move-only
> based approach fairly easily. I also noticed that there are
> reasons why acme does not contain swapping. Once you are used to
> the move-only approach you don't feel the need to swap clients
> horizontally anymore (within columns you use and need it in acme
> anyways), but not among columns. Hence in acme one won't say
> that you swap clients vertically, because you can explicitely
> move clients at a specific position and that is currently
> missing in wmii with moving within a column.
>
> I totally agree that mouse-based moving and keyboard-based
> horizontal swapping are pretty unpredictable atm, and this
> should be fixed till wmii-3. Currently my favorized way looks as
> follows:
>
> - remove swapping, merge keyboard-based vertical swapping into
> move
> - improve mouse-based moving as follows: always attach the
> client which is moved within or to a different column before
> the client the pointer points to (and not at the end as it is
> done in keyboard-driven mode)
>
> This would simplify the overall concept drastically and contain
> a more production-ready mouse-based move. We would get rid of 5
> Shortcuts, namely:
>
> $MODKEY-Control-{h,j,k,l} and $MODKEY-Button2
>
> beside a bunch of code.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Anselm R. Garbe ><>< www.ebrag.de ><>< GPG key: 0D73F361
>
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I completely agree.

Gr. Sander.
Received on Fri May 05 2006 - 10:07:57 UTC