[xmonad] XMonad Efficiency

[Norbert Zeh]

Allen S. Rout [2012.04.17 1407 -0400]:
> On 04/17/2012 01:23 PM, Norbert Zeh wrote:
> >Well, actually that never happened to me.  From the user's point of view, focus
> >switching is snappy unless I increase the number of windows to an unreasonable
> >100+.
> 
> ..?  I've currently got 26 workspaces, some of which only have one
> window, but many of which have 4 or more.  I'm probably going to
> have upwards of 40 before my count really stabilizes.  Do you really
> think that's simply "unreasonable" ?
> 
> The thought that someone at the window-manager level ought to be
> saying "oh, it's simply unreasonable to do more than <X>" with other
> than stark technical reasons... well, it raises my hackles something
> fierce.

The number of workspaces should have no effect on this, as I would think that
invisible workspaces cause no traffic to the X server.  If they do, now *that*
would be something even more important to fix.  So what I was referring to was
the number of mapped (visible) windows.  Once I get to tiling 100+ windows even
on 4 screens, none of them is usable any more because it shows too little
information, except maybe if I tile them to have an Expose-like preview of all
my windows and then maximize each window in turn when I actually want to do some
work in it.  Thus, I would consider 100+ simultaneously mapped windows
unreasonable.

In the end, though, what I consider reasonable or not is unimportant.  The point
remains that a simple focus switch should not cause a major spike in CPU usage.

Cheers,
Norbert