[xmonad] Bluetile

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 9:19 PM, Don Stewart<dons at galois.com> wrote:
> xmobar and dzen aren't in core. why should greeter be in core?

They could be a bad idea to put in XMonad for dozens of reasons: they
aren't maintained, they do way too much, they're hundreds or thousands
of lines, they bring in further dependencies, they aren't as
well-coded or well-tested or well-documented as they could be, etc.

A greeter could be as short as 3 (non-golfed) obviously correct lines:
1 line to do the 'if (not fileExists) $ spawn xmessage ++ helpMsg; a
2nd line to touch the file; and a 3rd line to define helpMsg. What the
helpMsg would be is something worth discussing.

I'd like something like the Ratpoison help that briefly covers the mod
key issue ('all XMonad commands are keystrokes which start by holding
the modifier key; the default modifier key is mod1Mask, usually your
Alt or Meta key') and then lists all the default keybindings, but this
might be hard to do in a non-copypaste fashion (it should be easy to
call show on the list of keys, yes, but how does one do Show on the
X() functions those keys correspond to?).

But maybe a shorter help might work - perhaps a hyperlink to the docs
like http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Config_archive/Template_xmonad.hs
?

> its the
> xmonad microkernel -- you don't go bloating it without reason.
>
> i'm all in favour of easier user experiences.
>
> -- Don

I think giving first-time users crucial information is not bloating
the microkernel 'without reason'; I don't see how keeping the kernel
static or shrinking it even more could lead to an easier user
experience.

-- 
gwern