Re: [STUMP] Flipping heads in group to groups in head!

[Lionel Flandrin]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 03:35:53PM +0400, Michael Raskin wrote:
> <address@hidden>)
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> >>>>> What would be needed to get this support into StumpWM ?
> >>>>> As far as I understand it its not possible to get it done in stumpwm.
> >>>>
> >>>> It would require changes more or less everywhere.
> >>>>
> >>>> I sent out the idea to get feedback on whether the design is sound or 
> >>>> not.
> >>>
> >>> It would probably mean breaking a lot of code and stumpwmrcs
> >>> everywhere, but I really support this motion. Having independent heads
> >>> would be a killer feature for me.
> >>
> >> The problem is that _both_ heads-in-groups and groups-in-heads can be very
> >> useful. So we either have to provide both and share code, or develop some
> >> new concepts which allow simple expression of both cases.
> >>
> >heads-in-groups is a superset of groups-in-heads.
> >
> >I described in my original post how to emulate the latter behaviour by 
> >gluing heads together to make the group switching happen for all heads 
> >at the same time.
> 
> And we need to rethink bindings for group operations, because when my wish
> "I want to see group my email client", I would obviously prefer to be able
> to summon the relevant group in some consistent way, even if my focus is on 
> another head.
> 
> In that case I guess we change quite a lot of things at once (not only in 
> code,
> but also conceptually), so the question is what do we want to get if we 
> change 
> everything anyway.

Obviously if such a fundamental change is to be made, it should be
done in a branch on its own and then see if it does work or not.
 
> Maybe I should not care because I have reached the state where I almost
> avoid group switches. I have even managed to overcome dirty hack with doing
> a pseudo-modeline out of XTerm by use of frame tagging (using XTerm is not 
> a dirty hack per se because I have some status watching sripts for longer than
> I use StumpWM and I want seconds in my clock). In some sense, I 
> have virtual heads inside heads and groups of windows are inside them. (I will
> probably post something on this tag-based solution to the list later, I want 
> to play with it to be sure it works as I intended - if anyone wants to look at
> complete beta, I can send this now)

Well, I must say that I too have found many workarounds that end up
making my dual-head experience pretty smooth and I don't really miss
independent heads so much anymore.

The problem is that I don't see anyone volunteering to make such a
drastic change to the stumpwm codebase. Sabbets or Male are the only
two contributors to the project that I've ever seen making such huge
modigications (Male, by the way, wrote most of the current
Xinerama/multi-head code, and it was no small chore).

Maybe the morale is that the current behaviour is the Stumpwm Way and
such a fundamental change would belong to a whole new WM? After all,
stumpwm started as a rewrite of ratpoison, and I've seen several
people complain of a certain code rot in the stumpwm codebase. Maybe
it'd be simpler to just start a new WM, having learned of the
strengths and weaknesses of stumpwm. Of course then the question would
be: what language next? :)

-- 
Lionel Flandrin

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