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From: poepping@sei.cmu.edu (Mark Poepping)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Window managers grabbing buttons
Message-ID: <625@aw.sei.cmu.edu.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 6-Mar-87 11:49:18 EST
Article-I.D.: aw.625
Posted: Fri Mar  6 11:49:18 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Mar-87 06:18:30 EST
References: <8702211303.AA01735@gjetost.wisc.edu> <1024@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <8227@decwrl.DEC.COM> <1295@ucbcad.berkeley.edu>
Sender: netnews@sei.cmu.edu
Reply-To: poepping@sei.cmu.edu (Mark Poepping)
Distribution: world
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, SEI, Pgh, Pa
Lines: 43
Keywords: uwm grab
Summary: More extensions to uwm


We had also modified uwm to select on the root window (not grab).
However, we did it to depart from the "Magic Button" interface.
We've got a lot of 'naive' users who long for a Macintosh style
of interface (they wish they had borders).  Our alternative is
uwm with an unshifted button bound to a Window-Ops menu on the
background.  Of course, this scheme involves a lot more mouse
movement than magic buttons.  You need to: move mouse to background,
pop up menu, select item, provide parameters if necessary...

Of course, I still retain the meta-magic because I can remember three
buttons, but most everyone else has been very appreciative of the
simple-button menu interface.

It has also aided in the programmer portability issue.  Everybody
leaves the default menu alone.  I can go to my neighbor's machine,
mouse to background, pop up menu.....  just like at home.

Of course, I couldn't leave well-enough alone.
Puzzled as to why uwm (and xterm and others by the way) had its own
menu implementation, I stripped it out and used XMenu instead.  In
addition, I (now called menuwm) allow extendable menus.  So, this
default menu pops up from the middle button on background.  By default,
the window operations pane is all you get, but you can add panes from
your .menuwmrc.  This helps the standards effort, makes it EASY for
people to retain the default menu while still adding their favorite
function.

Troubles/Changes:
- of course XMenu doesn't do color very well, uwm is much better,
	but I don't have color so I don't miss it.  Besides, I like
	deck-of-cards stacking better than hidden-pane.
- Only one real change to XMenu, to get it to place the menus wholly
	on the screen, it's annoying to have half your menu off the edge.
- uwmrc syntax for menus was cleanly extended to allow the definition
	of multiple panes for a menu, in addition to allowing
	the addition of panes to existing menus.

All in all, it's been a big help.
Now if I only had a REAL drawing package, and a postscript previewer,
and a netnews reader, and an applications description language...

Mark Poepping