On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 07:34:38PM +0200, Uriel wrote: > On 5/6/06, Sander van Dijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >On 5/6/06, Uriel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> You guys are wasting your time, larswm already got swapping and > >> cycling(which is even more important) right many years ago, but Im not > >> even sure garbeam ever learned to use cycling in larswm, no wonder it > >> has never worked in wmi(i), but it was one of the greatest larswm > >> features. > >I've used larswm for quite some time and I agree that swapping was > >very useful there. That does not mean that it can be copied to wmii > >"as is" however. There's a fundamental difference between larswm and > >wmii: in wmii neither the amount of columns, nor the amount of clients > >per column is fixed. The reason swapping is simple in larswm is that > >is has only two columns, of which the left one cannot contain more > >than one client. Under those circumstances it is very easy to tell > >where a client should go on swap: to the left "maxcol" if that's not > >where it is, or to the top of the track if it was in the "maxcol". Due > >to wmii's more general column layout (which allows much more > >flexibilty), the decision of what client to swap with is more complex. > >From my pov, as I already explained yesterday, swapping doesn't really > >fit in the wmii approach, hence I'd personally like to see it removed. > >However, if it is to stay, it should better work _predictable_, which > >it doesn't right now; I'm not trying to reinvent any wheels here, just > >to adapt them so they fit on the wmii vehicle a bit better :-) > >Greetings, Sander. > > If Wmii can't do swaping and cycling like larswm I would find this > this sad and pathetic. > > I don't buy the excuse that wmii's multiple columns system is a > problem, you can always handle cycling and swapping in the context of > the current column and the one to the left of the current column (if > there is one, otherwise the one to the right). > > uriel Hmm... Implementing cycling with more than two columns doesn't make any sense. The much I liked it in larswm, the useless it is if you have more than two columns. Trying to fix this by saying "cycle with the next column to the left/right" is bad.
And actually one doesn't need cycling if swapping works well. Cycling to the n-th client in the slave column is n keystrokes. With swapping it's always n+1 keystrokes, but swapping is more flexible and doesn't need an assumption of whether to cycle left or right. Swapping is even more powerful if you think of a three column layout with the master in the center. The only problem swapping currently has is the lack of visual representation of the swapping target. I think here we have to get a bit more creative than just highlighting the tags but not the full title bar or adding a sign to it. A second less-highlighting color is not very creative as well, but may work as a start and can flexibly be set to not be too attention-rising. Regarding the question "where does my focus go?" this is not as relevant, but would help as well. So it's not just for swapping. Since there is a selected client in unselected columns there should be some representation for it (and then unpredictability is gone). Entirely removing swapping of wmii is not a good idea, and even less good if its current unpredictability and some lines of code are the only reasons to do so. Swapping offers a well-usable functionality which is not easily replaced by several moves! And being open- minded one should see this point. Who ever really used all features of the software he uses? It's good to remove useless ones, but not-used-by-everyone does not imply they're useless... Regards, Stefan _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://wmii.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/wmii
