Re: [wmii] suggestions for the sanitizing of swapping

On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 01:10:36PM +0200, Stefan Tibus wrote:
> On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 12:55:02PM +0200, Anselm R. Garbe wrote:
> > My intention for removing swapping is not the LOC which can be
> > safed (that is really a marginal aspect). It is the simplicity
> > of the overall column concept and the usage patterns which are
> > involved with it. Having a basic and simple move-only based
> > concept means, that people use it the same way, which is
> > important for future development, documentation, tutorials, etc.
> What's the problem with describing swapping in the docs?

The problem is, that one has to describe totally different usage
patterns which might mislead users in the intended usage
patterns.

> > Also, if one compares the move-only and swapping usage patterns
> > to dynamic window management, it seems to me that sticking to a
> > static number of columns and using swapping most of the time is
> > less efficient than using as many columns as necessary for a
> > task and using the clients in the specific position as they
> > are (or move them if one needs them in a different place).
> That's a question of window sizes and involved redrawings. Even
> on a large screen (so it's not screen-size dependent) I'd like
> to have my main editing window to be the largest and others
> I just have open to look something up smaller. When I change
> working file I want to have that one largest. And to have it
> so, swapping is much easier and faster than some other way to
> move the client around or change its size... I rarely split
> up my screen into many equal-sized windows. Or, to tell it in
> another way: The larswm way very well fits my own way, but
> larswm is too fixed on that. And stacking and moving is not
> a good replacement. That's why I like wmii but with swapping.
> And I just can't see why this great feature should be bad
> style.

The problem is not 'swapping', the problem is that users use
swapping for a usage pattern similiar to LarsWM. Even if larsWM
was designed after some ideas introduced by acme or Oberon, it
is totally different to acme. Once you get used to the acme-way
of working, you simply notice that swapping is unnecessary,
because you use maximized windows in a column instead, and you
switch between the column modes on the fly - the same applies
very well to wmii. In acme you only move windows between
columns, if you need them side by side and often you maximize
several columns to provide those clients the maximum space
possible. Doing a swap in such a scenario wouldn't solve the
idea behind several columns. The horizontal swap in wmii is only
useful if you think in categories like 'master' and 'slave'
columns, like columns as container of not-used clients for the
moment. But for such cases we got views. If you dont need a
bunch of clients, you can attach/detach them more easily through
tagging. I made existing views addressable several weeks ago,
that you can do:

echo -n detach|wmiir write /view/sel/sel/tags (detach)
wmiir read /view/name|wmiir write /detach/sel/sel/tags (attach)

Well, if you want to monitor things this won't work, but even
for monitoring unused clients in a separate colum, does not
really justify swapping, because if you need a monitored client
at hand, select it, and maximize it within the column it is.
Sometimes there is really need to move a client to different
column, if you need two clients side by side. But all these
design patterns don't really justify a swap...

Regards,

-- 
 Anselm R. Garbe  ><><  www.ebrag.de  ><><  GPG key: 0D73F361