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

[Donald Bruce Stewart]

droundy:
> 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

Oh, its not so bad. its pretty much precisely what the extended WM spec
states window managers should do for docks and status bars -- leave an
area unmanaged.

> 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.

yes, i do see how we could do this. 

> 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.

Time and code :-) we'll be refactoring for genericity for a while, i'd
imagine, so we may end up with generic zippers of stacks.  I'm happy to
make xmonad the most generic, beautiful code base, just a matter of
time and effort.


An interesting aside, i note Anselm's not planning any significant
changes to dwm,

    <arg> dwm is finished, only bugfixes and minor feature will be accepted

which leaves xmonad with good room to fill out Xinerama handling, and
notable extensions like a true fullscreen tiling mode, mirroring and so
on. I think we can take a good piece of the wm market :-)

-- Don