[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: xmonad 0.4

[Don Stewart]

The xmonad dev team is pleased to announce the 0.4 release of xmonad! 

                           http://xmonad.org

xmonad is a tiling window manager for X. Windows are arranged
automatically to tile the screen without gaps or overlap, maximising
screen use. Window manager features are accessible from the keyboard: a
mouse is optional. xmonad is written, configured and extensible in
Haskell.  Custom layout algorithms, key bindings and other extensions
may be written by the user in Haskell, in config files. Window layouts
are applied dynamically, and different layouts may be used on each
workspace. Xinerama is fully supported, allowing windows to be tiled
across several physical screens.

Features:

    * Simple, intuitive user interface
    * Stable, fast and small memory footprint
    * Automatic window tiling and management
    * First class keyboard support: a mouse is unnecessary
    * Full support for tiling windows on multi-head displays
    * Full support for floating windows
    * XRandR support to rotate, add or remove monitors dynamically
    * Per-workspace layout algorithms
    * Per-screens custom status bars
    * Easy, powerful customisation and reconfiguration
    * Large extension library
    * Extensive documentation and support for hacking

This is a big release, with every feature we originally proposed for
xmonad implemented. Since xmonad 0.3, the following notable improvments
have appeared:

    * Powerful "rules" system: config files may specify rules about how
      particular applications are handled. For example, gimp might
      always be placed in the floating layer, or firefox always placed
      on workspace 2.  Gnome dock apps (such as kicker or gnome-panel)
      might always be placed in a status bar gap and unmanaged.

    * User-specified workspace tag types (not restricted to numeric
      keys). E.g. "web" or "www" are valid workspace tags now.

    * Layouts algorithms serialisable. Current workspace state preserved across
      restarts/reconfiguration, including user-written modules' state

    * User written code sandboxed from the core applicuation further, 
      making it safer to experiment with new extensions

    * 100% code coverage of logic core of xmonad by its testsuite,
      thanks to QuickCheck and HPC.

    * More hooks to make writing expressive extensions easier

    * mod-m to shift focus to the `master' window

    * many new binary distributions, for various flavours of Linux and
      BSD, OSX is also well supported.

    * extensions:

        xmonad comes with a huge library of extensions (3 times the size of
        xmonad itself), contributed by viewers like you. Extensions enable
        pretty much arbitrary window manager behaviour to be implemented by
        users, in Haskell, in the config files. For more information on using
        and writing extensions, see the webpage.

Get it!

    More information, screenshots, documentation, tutorials and community
    resources are available from the xmonad home page:

        http://xmonad.org

    The 0.4 release, and its dependencies, are available from
    hackage.haskell.org, here:

        http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/xmonad

Brought to you by the xmonad team:

    Spencer Janssen
    Don Stewart
    Jason Creighton
    Andrea Rossato
    David Roundy

with code contributions from:

    Brandon Allbery        Chris Mears
    Shachaf Ben-Kiki       Eric Mertens
    Alec Berryman          Neil Mitchell
    Gwern Branwen          Devin Mullins
    Joachim Breitner       Daniel Neri
    Alexandre Buisse       Stefan O'Rear
    Nick Burlett           Simon Peyton Jones
    Peter De Wachter       Hans Philipp Annen
    Aaron Denney           Karsten Schoelzel
    Nelson Elhage          Michael Sloan
    Shae Erisson           Ivan Tarasov
    Joachim Fasting        Alex Tarkovsky
    Michael Fellinger      Christian Thiemann
    David Glasser          Joe Thornber
    Kai Grossjohann        Matsuyama Tomohiro
    Dave Harrison          Daniel Wagner
    Juraj Hercek           Ferenc Wagner
    Sam Hughes             Jamie Webb
    Miikka Koskinen        Brent Yorgey
    David Lazar            nornagon
    Lucas Mai              timthelion
    Robert Marlow          Klaus Weidner

As well as the support of a cast of hundreds on the #xmonad and #haskell
IRC channels, and the wider Haskell, FP and window manager communities.

Thanks to everyone for their support!