[Xmonad] darcs patch: first shot at a floating layer

[David Roundy]

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 01:13:31PM +1000, Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:
> > Ah, but that's tricky for xinerama, as I understand it.  Anyway, I was
> > just suggesting one new layer per screen, so that doesn't feel huge.
> > Admittedly, presumably it's conceptually a new kind of layer, which is
> > bad.  And maybe it's not worth it.
> > 
> > My hunch is the right way to do this is to have some windows always
> > present on a screen.  I'm thinking of that in terms of something like
> > the new floating layers, but maybe there's a cleaner way to do it.
> 
> I note that by explicitly unmanaging a window, and using float mode to
> move it into the gap, you can set any client whatsoerver as sticky/
> statusbar:
> 
>         , ((modMask .|. shiftMask,  xK_u    ), withFocused unmanage) 

I guess, it seems to me that the gap itself is a horribly ugly hack to work
around the inflexibilty and lack of power in the layout algorithms of
xmonad.  The right way to create the gap (apart from Xinerama) would be to
express it as a layout in some sort of a nested workspace, so that you
could go into true full-screen mode, or have some layouts that don't
include the status bar.

I've never wanted a status bar, because I've never felt that my screen was
too large in any direction.  So I prefer to put information in a corner
(e.g. xclock, which is also nicer to read--my eyes don't need to focus on
it to tell the time), so that I can use all the width and height of my
screen.  But, of course, this kind of configuration requires actual window
management, and the gap is just precisely a case of giving up on managing
windows.  Better to have a window manager that is sufficiently powerful to
manage all the windows right.
-- 
David Roundy
http://www.darcs.net