[wmii] wmii-4 is dead?

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Hello,

- From what I've learned from regulars in IRC, wmii-4 development has
     lost steam. Some say this was bound to happen because garbeam left
     wmii-4 to pursue dwm. That's fine if you like dwm, but those of us
     still dependent on wmii-3.1 are presently screwed because there
     isn't a stable wmii-4 release yet.

In case wmii-4 is indeed dead, here is how I would salvage it:

1. discard the editable tag-bars stuff

2. discard the "keep stacking mode for this column but show more
   than 1 client" stuff

3. add use of client ID numbers in the 9p file system, to avoid race
   conditions (as previously discussed in the list)

4. restore swapping, because we cannot use wmii-2 style tiling
   layout without it... heck! even dwm uses tiling layout ;-)

5. add ability to create empty views

Some reasoning for the above points:

1. They seem like a replacement for a perfectly good, existing tool:
   wmiimenu

2. I feel like this creates even more work for the user. For example,
   in a column with the "stacking mode with >1 client open" mode,
   users have to click or keyboard to the clients they want to open and
   close and keep doing this mini-management all the time. :-(

  My screen is small, so even if I had this ability to open > 1
     clients in a stacked column, the remaining un-opened clients in that
     colums still consume space on the screen. Instead of this feature, I
     would rather see a solution to a more common problem that I have:

  I often encounter the situation where I want to temporarily take a
    bunch of clients from the current view into a new temporary view.
    Once I'm done with whatever I was doing, I need to go back to how
    things were before.

  Obviously the latter is already possible through tagging, however
            the former could use some work. Imagine, how would you quickly
            "select" a bunch of clients in the current view for temporary
            tagging?

  I would (1) enable the "I want to move some clients to a temporary
    view" action, (2) click on the clients I want or navigate around
    with keyboard and press a shortcut which "selects" the current
    client, (3) enable the "I'm finished moving the clients to temporary
    vew" action, and instantly I'm taken to the temporary view. Sounds
    like this can actually be script-able.

5. Yes, yes, I can hear you all saying "that's what the client rules
   in wmiirc are for!". But think about it, has there _never_ been a
   situation when you just wanted to make an empty view and then
   populate it with clients?

   This behavior prevents cluttering the existing view when you want
   to start new clients. I know this isn't the philosophically correct
   way to do things, but it feels so _natural_ and practical.

Sorry for the length of this mail, and as always, thanks for your
      attention.
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Received on Wed Aug 30 2006 - 20:39:03 UTC