[xmonad] XMonad 0.5, combo layouts, swapDown and swapUp

[David Roundy]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2007 at 05:13:02PM +1100, Dave Harrison wrote:
> Quick "maybe glitch" though, I'm using ComboLayout with Tabbed, and I
> find that when I first add lots of windows to the layout the alt-tab
> order is correct (also when adding windows into the middle of the
> stack it's correct).  When I swapDown or swapUp _in_ the stack, the
> order is correct.  But if I swapDown or swapUp at either end of the
> stack the ordering goes rather pearshaped (the ordering is no longer
> correct "visually" if you see what I mean).  Is this a known thing ?
...
>             , layoutHook    = smartBorders ( combineTwo (TwoPane 0.03
> 0.5) (tabbed shrinkText defaultTConf) (tabbed shrinkText defaultTConf)
> ||| mytab ||| tiled Tall ||| tiled Wide ||| Full )

First, let me note that you could create the same layout more elegantly as

layoutHook = smartBorders ( mytab *|* mytab ||| mytab ||| tiled Tall |||
                            tiled Wide ||| Full )

Secondly, with regard to focus order, Combo separates the focus order from
the visual representation, because the focus order is handled by core
xmonad, which has no knowledge of the hierarchical grouping, and isn't
friendly to layouts reordering windows.  A proper fix would be to implement
hierarchical Stacks in the core, but that seems unlikely, so we are left
with ugly hacks, and ugly hacks are likely to remain ugly (although, we
*can* give them beautiful syntax).
-- 
David Roundy
Department of Physics
Oregon State University