[Xmonad] [HUMOR] xmonad useless without programming skills ?

[Alex Tarkovsky]

Don Stewart wrote:
> How many non-programmers are using tiling window managers in X11 though?

Why should a tiling window manager preclude use by non-programmers?

Given that xmonad (and other window managers like it) allows you to use
a mouse, the UI part of xmonad's learning curve is still gentle enough
to appeal to a more general audience. Also, users with disabilities may
be attracted to xmonad's truly first-class keyboard navigation support,
something which Gnome and KDE don't offer. I can also envision novel
uses of xmonad in setups for media center PCs, multimedia presentations,
and media production workstations. These domains aren't exclusive to
programmers.

At the very least I hope you can agree that one needn't be a programmer
to loathe traditional desktop environments. ;)

> We use Haskell as the configuration language for expressivity only --
> leading to the amazing explosion of extensions.

Extensions written by users who happen to be programmers. ;)

> What would the alternatives look like? Some ad hoc 1st (or 0th) order,
> configuration language like .muttrc or something nasty like VimScript?

Ideally a GUI-based configuration utility could be offered -- xmonad is
an X11 application after all. If designed well, it could capture the
flexibility of Config.hs. As for text file based configuration, the
traditional UNIX option=value style is probably too limiting, so I
concede that Config.hs should probably stick around for the more
intrepid users.

-- 
Alex Tarkovsky