More info about moving on:
I have succesfully replaced ctwm on my home machine with a combination of
OpenBox and BBPager
(at work I still use ctwm but I think that's about to change, too many bugs,
it's getting annoying).
OpenBox is simpler, but has all the features I had been using in Ctwm, even the
ones I hacked in (i.e. SaveWorkspaceFocus), and none of the bugs, a lean XML
configuration file, and straightforward behavior made the transition possible
(I'm very difficult and intolerant of cr*p configuration and dependencies--
openbox has neither).
This email is mostly for what follows: for the others who have made the switch,
if you're missing the workspacemgr, you can use "bbpager" along with the
following script to toggle it:
pager-toggle:
#!/bin/sh
# Toggle a pager process running.
PAGER=bbpager
PAGEROPTS="-config $CONF/common/etc/openbox/blackboxrc"
if pgrep -x $PAGER >/dev/null ; then
pkill -x $PAGER >/dev/null
else
$PAGER $PAGEROPTS >/dev/null &
fi
In my openbox.xml config file, I bind Super-Tab to it:
<keybind key="W-Tab">
<action name="Execute">
<execute>~/p/conf/common/bin/pager-toggle</execute>
</action>
</keybind>
It's a bit of a hack, but it works well (apart from the occasional lag to start
it), and behaves like what I had under ctwm, i.e., when I press Super-Tab, I
get a large workspacemgr to move my windows to any desktop I like. I pressed
again to hide it. Note that you may want to set the geometry of the pager in
.blackboxrc.
I'm going to try to live with it for a while longer (it's not my first attempt
at switching away, ctwm is like an old girlfriend that just keeps coming back),
but after a month already it feels like home.
cheers,
