[xmonad] xmonad user survey!

[gwern0 at gmail.com]

On 2007.12.22 21:47:34 -0800, Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> scribbled 0.7K characters:
> Hey all,
>
> xmonad's reaching a fairly stable place featurewise (and stability-wise too).
>
> Now is perhaps a good time to ask people what we can do to improve
> xmonad further.
>
>     * What things annoy you?
>     * What things do you like?
>     * What things can be done better?
>     * What things are missing?
>     * What things do you     miss from ion/wmii/dwm/compiz
>     * What things do you not miss from ion/wmii/dwm/compiz ... :)
>
> If you've any suggestions for things we can change to make xmonad better
> fit your workflow or whatever, please shout out!
>
> If you grumble when xmonad doesn't do something you think it should --
> let us know!
>
> With information like this we can continue to improve our progressive
> window manager :)
>
> -- Don

One thing I'd like improved is tab-completion. As it is, to edit my ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs is currently a bit of a pain.

So I start with 'emacs .xm' (to avoid .xinitrc), and tab complete. That hits up against .xmodmap. Not a big deal, I don't use it, so I rm it. Tab again: this time I hit up against .xmonad_history. So by this point I'm at 'emacs .xmonad' and I'm still not even in the right directory!

This is because Prompt.hs (which I use) sticks its history into ~/.xmonad_history. This can be improved by renaming to ~/.history_xmonad or moving it into ~/xmonad/. I like the latter solution and I am sending a patch to do that.

OK, so I add a /. But all is not roses: now I am completing on 'xmonad xmonad.errors  xmonad.hi  xmonad.hs  xmonad.o  xmonad-x86_64-linux'! What? Why do they all have the same exact prefix? This is death on tab completion.

OK, we can move xmonad.errors to errors or errors.xmonad (it's *already* in .xmonad, so I like just 'errors'; patch too). That leaves us the intermediate files and the arch file. The same logic can be applied for the arch file - os-arch-"xmonad" doesn't seem like a bad order.

As for the intermediate files, I'm not sure how to get rid of them. We could perhaps put a dist/ into ~/.xmonad/ and use "-odir ~/.xmonad/dist/ -hidir ~/.xmonad/dist/" in the GHC invocation, or perhaps -ohi if that'd work, or maybe add in a 'rm xmonad.hi xmonad.o' after a compilation.

I'd like them gone, though.

--
gwern
AMW AUTODIN Veiligheidsdienst covert Center Merlin PRIME SGC *& football
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