[xmonad] automatically generating template xmonad.hs if it doesn't exist

[gwern0 at gmail.com]

On 2008.01.04 10:23:52 -0800, Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> scribbled 1.0K characters:
> daveroundy:
> > On Jan 4, 2008 1:12 PM, Brent Yorgey <byorgey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > If you never customise xmonad, then that runtime dependency isn't
> > > > required. But maybe that doesn't matter?
> > >
> > > Well, that's a good point. An idea to get around this easily would be to
> > > copy the template to a file called something different (e.g.
> > > xmonad.hs.customize-me) with a comment at the top saying to rename it to
> > > xmonad.hs .  I really can't imagine there will be many (if any) users that
> > > use xmonad without customizing it, though (?).
> >
> > Another possibility would simply be to only compile xmonad.hs if ghc
> > is in the path.  So the only runtime overhead of putting that
> > xmonad.hs there (if ghc isn't installed) would be to check the PATH
> > for ghc.  Doesn't seem too onerous for those mythical users who are
> > content with xmonad's default configuration.
>
> Maybe it's also time to look at the default configuration, so
> that more people are satisfied with it.
>
> -- Don

Well, we could revisit some old decisions.

# Does it *have* to be mod1Mask? It makes more sense to steal Alt than Ctrl, I'll grant, but stealing the useless Windows is even better since even fewer apps use that; I notice that there are at least 4 or 5 configs on the wiki which change mod1Mask to mod4Mask.

# Maybe change the default border colors. Looking through the configs, I don't see much consistency though.

# Random note on configs: they seem to either be long or short, with all the long ones doing complex stuff with Dzen; I don't use Dzen and don't entirely understand what they are doing, but it looks pretty repetitious. This seems like a fruitful area to examine for abstracting and factoring out stuff. Similar comments apply with Xmobar, although the situation doesn't seem as bad there.

# Add some more convenience functions for manipulating keymaps. Look at Rossato's config in XMC - you see line after line of stuff like
>           , ((modMask x              , xK_F6    ), windowPromptBring defaultXPConfig     )

Bleh.

--
gwern
777 bce data-haven NSV 2600 NAWAS devices nowhere the Bess
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