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

On 5/5/06, Stefan Tibus <sjti_AT_gmx.net> wrote:
> > 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.
> That may well be true. But I don't believe people should adapt
> to machines/software too much, but the other way round.

That's the kind of thinking that leads to emacs/vim :-)

> > 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.
> But in the useful case, where you want your main working window
> (which is the one you concentrate on) occupy the main part of
> your screen (fullscreen as long as I don't have to keep track
> of other things), swapping comes in very handy.

You could also put your 'main' column in max mode, moving clients in
and out of them as you see fit, instead of 'reserving' a column for
one client only.

> It saves you
> a second keyboard action and it avoids lots of resizings and
> redrawings. The latter is very very important on older and thus
> slower machines. (BTW besides them being WIMPy I don't like
> KDE,GNOME,... and all those others because they eat-up too much
> CPU-time for useless things - I'd rather use Motif if there
> weren't larswm and wmii. Unnecessary resizings and redrawings
> are just as much CPU waste.)

Agreed, but I work on a P2 (400 mHz), I never use horizontal swapping,
and I can't see I've ever been slowed down by any redrawing (I do not
know of course what you mean exactly by 'older machines', but I guess
mine would be among them :-).

> > This would simplify the overall concept drastically and contain
> > a more production-ready mouse-based move. We would get rid of 5
> > [...]
> > beside a bunch of code.
> Not an argument, if it makes it slower. If somebody uses move only
> then he's not forced to use them...

I believe it doesn't make it slower, it makes things simpler instead.
wmii != larswm, and hence I think it is time people stop comparing
wmii to larswm all the time. Wmii has introduced some new concepts
that are far more powerful than what larswm does, and trying to
larswm-ize them doesn't do them right. As Anselm already pointed out:
"But I noticed that one can change the mind and adapt to the move-only
based approach fairly easily". I believe that this is correct, and it
is much simpler than the swapping approach. In fact, I think that
swapping in larswm is more the result of lacking flexibility than
anything else...

Greetings, Sander.
Received on Fri May 05 2006 - 10:37:46 UTC