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

On Fri, 5 May 2006 09:13:29 +0200
"Anselm R. Garbe" <garbeam_AT_wmii.de> 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. 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.

It's not just a matter of thinking, it has to do a lot with screen real-estate. I got a resolution of 1024x768 on my notebook, and that's just way too small for more than two columns, or for displaying more than two frames in one column at the same time; thus, you're pretty much fixed on one working style, meaning one column for one or two frames and one column for the rest, or something similar.
Someone proposed using a max-layouted column for the »big« column, and drop horizontal swapping, but with more than two clients, it gets very, very awkward to sweep through all frames in the maxed column, especially if you even don't know if you opened that file already. (I generally don't use max mode at all, as with few clients, I don't gain much screen real-estate in comparison to stacked [and see what clients are in that column], and for many clients, it's just not usable).

I suppose that with the introduction of the new concepts of wmii-4, one could drop horizontal swapping easily, for example with the generalised »default«-mode (where I can keep open two frames at the same time not depending on the amount of frames in a column) or that exclusive flag.

Greetings,
Denis