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

[David Roundy]

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 10:22:22PM +0100, Bruce Stephens wrote:
> David Roundy <droundy at darcs.net> writes:
> > On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:37:34PM +0100, Bruce Stephens wrote:
> >> Maybe there's a place for a per-screen decoration layer, always
> >> visible, in which I can stick clocks, status bars, GNOME panels, etc.?
> >> Hmm, maybe just things that just display information (rather than
> >> interact)?  (And then maybe I could use xcompmgr or something to make
> >> them translucent?)
> >
> > Let's keep the number of layers down, and just allow windows to be present
> > in multiple workspaces.
> 
> 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.

I've never used Xinerama, so I usually restrict myself to asking how it
would best work for the (normal) case of just one screen, and let the
people with multiple screens deal with the fallout.  Ultimately, it's good
for them, too.  A clean flexible design is good for everyone.

> 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 should confess to being attracted by the tagging approach of wmii,
> dwm.  That would presumably be a good way to allow windows to be in
> multiple workspaces.  However, I'm not sure whether that's the best
> way.  It feels like it would be a radical change for xmonad.)

Actually, that's basically what I (thought I) was suggesting.  It's
actually not much of a change for xmonad.  Just a few places need to be
modified.

If I have time and energy for more xmonad hacking, I'm interested in
implementing an explicit "tagging" of windows, which would associate zero
or more String tags with each window.  The simplest use would be to allow
the user to execute a given command on more than one window at a time
(e.g. to move all tagged windows to a given workspace, or delete them all).
I find it tedious having my workspace redraw N times as I move N windows to
another workspace.  Doubly tedious if those windows are interleaved with
the rest, so I have to do some swapping around (mod-tab or mouse) between
the mod-shift-n.
-- 
David Roundy
Department of Physics
Oregon State University