Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!EDRC.CMU.EDU!Sean.Levy From: Sean.Levy@EDRC.CMU.EDU Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Tiling window managers (long, theoretical post) Message-ID: <8805272034.AA10477@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> Date: 27 May 88 20:34:37 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 68 My initial reaction to a tiled window manager (Andrew) was "ugh! I *hate* this." However, after using the X window managers (uwm under both 10 and 11 are the only ones I can stand) I've come to the conculsion that there is a point to tiled window managers (emprical studies notwithstanding). My ideal window manager (that I may end up hacking myself, if I ever get the time) would be a combination tiled/overlapping deal. I would like to be able to define groups of adjacent windows that tile relative to each other. This is essentially a more general case of subwindows, except that I would not care to have any one window in the group be the parent of the group -- I'd like to be able to treat the whole thing as an entity if I want to, or to treat individual members as entities. I'd also make it so that the whole group could be expanded, e.g. once you create the group you aren't stuck with that size of rectangle. And, tiling window groups could, of course, tile relative to one another. The reason I find this idea so attractive is that it approximately models what I'm thinking about the windows on my desktop. There are related groups of windows, and I need to be able to see the information in each one of these windows at the same time. Using (GNU)emacs under X essentially gives me this functionality (one emacs per group, multiple lisps, files, etc. under each emacs), but begins to have an effect on the performance of my machine. Essentially, having emacs use X directly not only for its main window, but also for emacs windows would do the trick, but I am tending towards thinking that this is a function more fit for a window manager than an editor, however flexible this editor may be (of course it could be argued that emacs is more of an environment than an editor; I don't disagree). Generally, my compromise now is to have my emacs loaded up with whatever I'm working on at the moment and to use separate, small, throw-away xterms for unrelated tasks. A couple times a day I end up cleaning out my emacs (C-X C-B DDDDDDDDDDX) and loading up another bunch of stuff. This is satisfactory, but I'd like to have multiple groups of stuff sitting there at one time so that I can switch when I get frustrated (let's be honest). Having two or three emacsen, one with a CommonLisp, another with three csh's, another with two debuggers, a partridge and a pear tree under them (not even mentioning to 50-100 or so .c, .lisp and .h files haning around) would put my valiant Sun3/60 in an amusing but otherwise unuseful state. If anyone has any comments about such an effort, and specifically whether they think an emacs or window-manager approach is best, please drop me a line. I have not seriously gotten into X programing (and what I have done has been under 10; until a couple of things I do daily work with have X11 drivers, I'm afraid that I won't be able to use it as my default environment) and see this as a way to get into it. One further note: maybe there should be some sort of Window Manager Developer's mailing-list/newsgroup? (I read Xpert on a locally redistributed CMU bboard, which comes from the newsgroup, I think). The diversity of content in posts to xpert makes it somewhat of a pain to wade through, particularly after a weekend or if I have been too busy to look at it for a couple of days. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sean inet email: snl @ edrc.cmu.edu Nathaniel 4.3bsd inet `talk': snl @ rhine.edrc.cmu.edu Levy voice: 412/268-2257 CMU address: CMU, EDRC, DH A219, PGH PA 15213