[wmii] wmii-3 release announcement

Hi there,

I'm glad to announce the wmii-3 release aka 'Zur Steglitzer Bratpfanne' [1].
Compared with earlier versions, wmii-3 is a quite different window manager.
Many design decisions have been revised and simplified.

You can download the release from:

   http://wmii.net/download/wmii-3.tar.gz
   (SHA1: http://wmii.net/download/wmii-3.tar.gz.sha1sum)

The most important changes and new features include:

 * The new window management consists of a column-layout. It splits the
   screen into horizontal columns, which arrange clients vertically in either
   maximized, default, or stacked modes. The maximized mode maximizes all
   clients to the column size, this makes only one client visible at a time.
   The default mode arranges all clients with arbitrary heights and makes all
   of them visible at a time. The stacked mode displays a title-bar for each
   unfocused client, and provides the rest of the available vertical space to
   the focused client. The new column-layout replaces the layout approach of
   wmii-2.x, which provided different layouts for specific tasks. Thus, it is
   intended to generalize all previously existing layouts into one concept.

 * The classic workspace (page) paradigm of previous versions or other window
   managers is replaced with a new tagging approach. Each client is tagged with
   arbitrary alphanumeric tags. A view is the set of visible clients which are
   tagged with a specific tag. Hence, a view can be compared with classic
   workspaces, except that the tagging approach enables a more powerful
   relation between clients and views. If a client is tagged more than one
   tag, it is visible in all views representing these tags. This allows
   fine-grain sticky-flag capabilities for clients. Besides this, the new
   tagging approach replaces the attach/detach concept found in earlier
   versions. Instead of detaching a client from current view, it is tagged
   differently. Same appears to attaching.

 * The new virtual file-system can be accessed using a 9P-compliant client.
   This enables accessing wmii-3 with existing 9P clients, like the 9p2000.ko
   kernel module of Linux 2.6.14+, or the included 9P command line client wmiir
   (wmii remote). The new file-system has no coupling with the internal data
   structures and performs much better, in contrast to previous versions.

 * The dependency to Plan 9 (9base) tools has been dropped.
   wmii-3 uses a sh-based configuration sub-system again, which is similiar to
   that one found in wmii-2.5.x.

 * The separation of wmiibar, wmiikeys, and the wmiifs file-service multiplexer
   into separate processes in earlier versions has been removed, which
   increased the overall performance drastically and reduced a lot of code
   overhead.

If you're a novice and never used wmii before just read the README file shipped
in the release tarball and follow the instructions to install and start wmii.

If you're an upgrader from wmii-2.5.x, please note the following:

 - wmii-3 is quite a different window manager compared to wmii-2, thus don't
   expect much similarities, except very basic ones.
 - You can purge the 9base installation now. You don't need the Plan 9 stuff
   for the configuration sub-system anymore.
 - The column layout behaves quite different to tiled or grid layout, you'll
   need some time to get used to the new layout. Please don't use swapping,
   because this is planned to be a temporary feature, which might make it
   simplier for you to get the track between wmii-2 and wmii-3. Don't expect
   swapping in the upcoming wmii-4 release.
 - There are no pages anymore, use the powerful tagging approach instead.
 - There is no tabbing, use stacking ($MODKEY-s) instead.
 - There is no way to hide the title-bars anymore.
 - There is no way to enable/disable increment handling, that is done
   internally for you.

If you're an upgrader from wmii-2, please note the following as well:

 - The configuration has changed totally, you cannot re-use your configuration
   without relearning things. However the configuration is much easier now due
   the fact of an everything-in-one-file concept.

To get used to wmii-3, my advice is to read the README, the very-short
welcome message at startup, the beginner's guide [2] by Steffen Liebergeld,
and finally the manual pages wmii(1), wmiiwm(1), wmiir(1), and optionally
wmiimenu(1).

This release won't have been possible, if there weren't so many people
helping the project in various ways. I want to say thank you all for any help!

I thank especially following people, which have been involved heavily in wmii-3
development:

 * Sander van Dijk
 * Georg Neis
 * Uriel
 * Denis Grelich
 * Icarus Sparry
 * Salvador Peiro
 * Steffen Liebergeld
 * Anthony Martin
 * Stefan Tibus
 * Neptun

I also thank the following donators:

 * Heiko Schlichting
 * Al Wong (aka alvin)
 * Alexis Hildebrandt
 * Alexandre Dulaunoy

I will spend the money into the awaited multihead-setup and into several boxes
of beer and barbequeue, if the developers and contributors will manage to meet
each other in Berlin at 23C3 congress, to discuss about future projects (like
sami, termi, taggi, ii, etc.).

[1] The release name 'Zur Steglitzer Bratpfanne' has been choosen because of
    the following story. Back in April 'garbeam' received a postal package from
    Tobias 'aka tube' Walkowiak. This package contained a secret treasure - a
    double-sized Curry Wurst from Western Berlins 'Steglitzer Bratpfanne'
    restaurant. 'tube' sent this package with express service and the Curry
    Wurst was still quite enjoyable after warming it up in 'garbeam's oven.
    'garbeam' was pretty hungry, and eat those Curry Wurst completely. The
    further development of wmii was rescued by the 'Steglitzer Bratpfanne'.
    There'll be some photos about this story at the wmii.net site soon.

[2] http://wmii.net/contrib/guide/wmii-3/guide-en/guide_en/guide_en.html

Regards,

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