Re: [wmii] Re: layout per tag.

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:49:17 +0200 Denis Grelich <denis_AT_grelich.de> wrote:
> One huge problem of fixed layouts is when something unforeseen happens.
> Like, I want to to copy&paste some stuff from another window into my
> MUA, and thus put the window into my mail view. Then, the fixed layout
> is rendered completely useless until I re-order it by hand, which is
> highly annoying. That's not something that should happen.
I don't want them to be completely static. As I said in another post,
the wm would need some hint, what to do with new clients, where to
add them. Like: in a new column, in the selected column, in column B...

> Anyway, while you are working with dynamic layouts, they're fixed too.
> When you start the application, you, or the automatic, arrange the
> windows in some way and you keep it that way throughout the day, until
> a new window comes up or you close something. But I have to admit that
> the automatism must always create the same result for a given
> situation, and should act absolutely predictable in new situation. Or
> else the application gets in control of you.
>
> Now weigh the time you have to spend doing repetitive tasks on both
> approaches. With dynamic layouts, if you're not happy with the layout
> you get after starting your MUA (or any other multi-window application,
> see http://www.%fcberl33t.net/tmp/sylpheed_multiple_windows.png), you
> re-arrange it once, and it is, hopefully ;), not tampered with too much
> by the mechanisms of dynamic window management. When a window opens in a
> fixed layout, you have to re-arrange all the windows quite often
> until you can work with them. I prefer the former.
I tend to not keep apps open, if I don't use them for some time,
because that is eating up too many resources. And it currently is very
annoying, that a column get's destroyed, when I close the last client,
but when I open a new one, I have to move it manually to get that
column back and then resize it. Being able to define column modes and
creation preferences per view is something that would already help me
a lot, my views are not all the same, so they shouldn't be treated the
same. (Having some class:instance-dependent preferences as well could
be a further step.)
And btw. that swapping feature was great for keeping a layout stable,
but it's gone in 4 so I stick to 3.1.

> But someone might still do those changes to popular OSS applications.
> If you do not want to do this, okay, then you have to wait until
> someone else does it. Like with every feature.
Yes. But I think some user-defined rules could help here. And it's
more probably to get the wm support user-defined placement rules,
than some apps support hints for don't-know-how-many wms. wmii
should still be able to handle more or less "broken" or retarded
apps in a usable way. (I still don't like the floating support that
much, but that's another story.) And as I said before, no terminal
will ever now by itself, whether it's used for browsing, mail, editing,
or whatever, but I may provide them with different class names or
titles as hints to the wm, so why not use this information?

> Smart means to guess what a user wants. That's never what wmii tried to
> do, because it is futile, in principle. Wmii is made to automate things,
> but always in predictable ways that users can adapt to. The
> results /sometimes/ look similar, but they're not the same things.
Hm. I don't have to resize my apps all the time, but I still have
to shuffle them around a lot. The larswm scheme of window placement
certainly is more restricted, but easier to handle and adapt to than
wmii-3.

Regards,
Stefan

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