Hi!

I like the concept of Ion, though I have yet to try it "for real" (I've only
been playing around in it so far). Kudos for such a nice WM. :)

There's just one thing I miss, that I haven't found in any of the tiling WMs
so far; There's no way to set up templates to tell your apps where they
should go. :(

What I mean, is this; Say that I have a few workspaces.  I use one for
internet things (web, IM, chat), one for multimedia and handling my files,
one for the GIMP, and one for developing stuff.

My internet workspace has the contact list and RSS feed in two areas to the
right, a bar at the bottom is for chat stuff (IM and IRC), and in the space
left is my browser.  Browser has perhaps  80%*80% of the workspace.

My GIMP workspace has the toolbars to the right, and everything else is
floating on top of the grid, with the toolbars being on top of course (for
easy access).

My multimedia/file window, meanwhile, has a media player in a narrow strip
at the bottom and a file manager with commander-like structure at the top.
About a 60/40 ratio. If I play, say, a movie, I want it to appear as a
floating window on top of this.

Finally, my developer workspace, has a terminal at the bottom, and Emacs at
the top, 75/25 ratio with Emacs taking up the upper part of the screen.

Now, I hope most persons here are mature enough to see that this is not
ideal for everyone; it sucks on a small resolution for one thing. But I like
it this way. Only problem is, it doesn't get saved when I have to reboot
(damn kernel devs can't design a proper secure kernel... ;)). So I have to
spend 10-20 minutes on getting everything up-to-speed again.

So, I'd like to see what I call "Workspace Templates" - You basicly define
which programs open where (per default that is). This would require a small
configuration change. Below is an example of such a file (modify it as you
see fit);

[Workspace 1]
name=Internet

[area]
workspace=Internet
dimensions=80 80           // In percentage
location=left top
name=browsers

[area]
workspace=Internet
dimensions=20 50           // In percentage
location=right top
name=rss

[area]
workspace=Internet
dimensions=20 50           // In percentage
location=right  bottom
name=contacts

[area]
workspace=Internet
dimensions=40 20           // In percentage
location=left  bottom
name=irc

[area]
workspace=Internet
dimensions=40 20           // In percentage
location=left top
name=imchat

[programs]
item=firefox browser
item=akregator rss
item=pidgin contacts
item=pidgin-chat imchat
item=xchat irc

There's only one thing missing for this puzzle; how to handle child windows
from applications? Otherwise I think it should be pretty straightforward to
develop. Though, I am not really a developer, so I might be wrong.

Thoughts? Comments?

Regards,
- Per Ekström

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