[xmonad] Re: A special 'normal' WM-ish virtual desktop

[Ben Boeckel]

Joseph Garvin <joseph.h.garvin at gmail.com> wrote:
> What would be the easiest way to setup having a specific virtual desktop act
> more like a traditional WM? Most of the time I want tiling, but occasionally
> a coworker will want to show me something in a multi-windowed app and be at
> a loss as to how to move things around, resize, etc. It'd be nice to just be
> able to switch over to a desktop that acts like a regular window manager and
> have them use that. Alternatively, if there's a way to setup a key combo to
> switch between tiled mode and normal-WM mode, that might even be better. I'm
> sure this is possible since bluetile does it, but I'm not sure how to put it
> together.

I have a patch[1] to add a module which allows you to toggle
manageHooks. Search my xmonad.hs[2] for 'hookFloat' to see how I
configure it. Allows me to tell XMonad to float the next window or all
new windows and toggle it at runtime. As long as the other user knows
about mod+click/drag to resize or move windows (and that's configured),
most everything should be fine. Window stack order might get confusing.
Hope this helps.

--Ben

[1]http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2010-June/010358.html
[2]http://git.benboeckel.net/?p=dotfiles.git;a=blob;f=generic/home/xmonad/xmonad.hs