Suggestions, enhancements and other notes. :-)

[WildCryptoFox]

Hello Kintaro, loving your window manager; intend to switch away from XMonad! Although, before I do; I'd like to make a number of suggestions, enhancements and other notes. :-)

Layout notes

• Fullscreen looks better without borders
• Resizing panes is fun, but better when you can resize both axises. (I.e. Shift for the other)
• Spacing variable is ignored; is this meant to be the gap between the windows and the screen's edges?

  BYO panel?

• A problem that I've had with xmobar is that it doesn't compile into XMonad, it would be nice to see a bar that compiles into the window manager.
• Integration means that we don't need to redraw the entire bar when any single component changes; I.e. A clock ticking.
• Overloaded panel? Prompt for running programs, notifications or dynamically setting various variables (I.e. MPD_HOST env variable for MPD related functions; which works very well for audio controls).

  Expanding on keyboard keys?

• Wouldn't it be nice if we could do for example "M-s-<Return>" or scan for delayed keys for combinations such as "M-s a" to have M-s for search; and a for ArchWiki.
• Not sure if this could be expanded through using macros? Hopefully so.

  Window groups/border colours

• Something that I've considered for a while is having various border colours for windows in different groups; I.e. As a class or role associated to the window.
• An example for where this is useful is when you have various jails/chroots with different networking rules or file access.
• Active colour could be a modifier (I.e. +#222222) and would apply against any underlying colour.

  Potential libraries for wtftw-contrib ;-)

• Rust bindings to libmpd (for tighter integration and less shell I/O).
• Tmux listing and auto attaching; like https://github.com/vodik/dotfiles/blob/master/xmonad/lib/XMonad/Util/Tmux.hs.
• Each of the above 3 sections (panel,keyboard,window-groups) if modular enough.

Sadly; I'm a bit too rusty with rust; I'm learning and I'm looking into the layout suggestions currently. :) P.S: Great to hear that Wayland is also a possibility as it would mean that the efforts for X continue to be of value when people switch to Wayland. ^,^ Oh and Merry Christmas!

-DarkFox

[Kintaro]

Wow, that's a good Christmas present for a developer :D I'll try to address some of these issues/notes and will later create a list of issues for them. If not only for myself as a todo list.

Layout notes

I am working on that. Have to figure out a clean way how layouts could handle this. I have 1-2 rough designs. As for the resizing: yeah. Though that is a bit trickier. WIth the horizontal resize, it's only one fraction that needs to be increased/decreased. With vertical resize, it potentially involves more of them. Spacing is a dead remainder from the good ol' days ^^

BYO panel

Maybe I should open a separate thread for this, but wtftw is a window not a desktop manager. I'd love to keep it compartmentalized. Tying a panel right into the wm is somewhat against choice. I can't really put my finger on it, but I think the WM and the panel should be separated. But a xmobar-like panel is in the works. Including plugin-like modules for the bar.

Keyboard keys

Hm, that one could be tricky. I'll have to think about it. I may have an idea, but I'll have to sketch it up first.

Window groups

Should/could be possible with a layout. Will be on my list. At least to provide the needed mechanisms that such a thing can be implemented.

Contrib

If you mean mpd in the panel/bar, that depends on the panel. For inside the wm itself...hm, too specific and not for a window manager, I think. But a binding to libmpd would certainly be nice. I may write one when working on the panel/bar.

[WildCryptoFox]

^,^ Yay; I hope you enjoy the present!

I lightly touched on it in the contrib, but I did mean to imply that the BYO panel would be better as contrib; just like with xmonad-contrib there are panel-like modules including search, run dialog/prompt, and various others. IIRC; xmonad-contrib also has mpd bindings. They were ideally for wtftw-contrib in the same style; keeping the WM itself clean.

-contrib's are generally to enable the user to take their configuration file and build a desktop environment. :-P

I'm keen to see which of these will be implemented and for how. After publishing this issue (not the best word for a request?) I considered that the window groups might be easier then the layouts; so I might give that one a try myself. :-D

[Kintaro]

Ok, fullscreen without borders is implemented. Layouts now feature a "post layout" functionality that is applied after the layout step and internal updates. It cannot alter the internal state of the wm, but is allowed to access the window system to alter borders, positions, sizes etc.

Just change from "box FullLayout" to "NoBordersLayout::new(box FullLayout)"

[Kintaro]

There is a small flickering bug when the noborderslayout is active and focus in another screen changes. A fix is in the pipeline.

[Kintaro]

Ok, is fixed.

[WildCryptoFox]

Awesome! Trying this out now. :-) Nice code changes.

[WildCryptoFox]

Ahem; kintaro; this "issue" was a collection of many ideas...

[Kintaro]

And they are noted. They will come back as separate issues that I'll work on and set them for separate milestones and priorities :)

[WildCryptoFox]

:-)