Re: Tiling window manager based desktop environment (was: Re: MICROSOFT HIRED THESE PEOPLE TO SABOTAGE OPEN SOURCE)
Le 09.04.2013 00:58, Joel Roth a écrit :
berenger.morel@neutralite.org wrote:
Now, I am not using a DE anymore, and also planning about creating a
DE based on a tiling WM and minimalistic tools that you can use in
keyboard only.
There are a lot of tiling WMs to choose from:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Window_Managers
I've been using StumpWM in the default configuration
and mostly happy with it.
I'd like to know what you're planning to add!
Cheers,
Ah, a more serious post :) (honestly, I've taken some great fun to
write the one I just sent in reply to Ralf, but at my discharge (is it
the right word?) I was more than 3 hours late at home because of
problems on train... apologies, guys, for the out-of-thread and probably
sad humor :))
Yes, there are many tiling window manager. On my side, I am using I3
for various reasons (the most important one is good default config and
that it's easy to change).
But a window manager is *not* a "full" desktop environment, and will
never be while we will have no basic tools not duplicating their job:
* file managers have tabs (even stacking: what do you think are
taskbar?)
* terminal emulators also
* text editors (like vim) often implement their own WM
* browsers (firefox, chromium....) have WM or at least tabs
* ...
Another problem which forbid us to call a TWM a DE is that they have no
centralized configuration center able to manage the tools which are, in
my opinion, the basic tools we use everyday: text editor, file manager,
file viewer, web browser...
So we have disparate collections of tools implementing the same
features (window managers, scripting system to simulate a DE -vim is
able to be configured as an IDE, as example-) and with no easy
possibility of synchronized configuration.
What would I want to add?
Replacement for bloatwares like vim (yes, I guess that it is quite
uncommon to see someone write something like that, but if one disagree,
just explain me why it re implements a window management mechanism, a
copy/paste mechanism and other stuff which are made by other tools like,
for example, screen, and which makes it hard to use correctly in a X
server? For me, a bloatware is a tool which does things which should be
managed by other specialized tools.) or i3 (the bar it have at bottom
should not be managed explicitly, but by another software, am I wrong?)
and a tool to synchronize configurations (I would like that my system
understand that when I am CTRL+T I want a new instance of the
application which have the focus in a new tab or in a split container,
according to my choice, choice which should be managed by the tiling
window manager).
Do you know what is most funny in my (voluntarily stronger than needed)
words? It is that I am currently using vim and i3, and that when I speak
about them, I am saying that they are good softwares.
I am not lying, but simply thinking 'in the current choice' and 'you
will not find their problems in 2 days'. I am not a vim expert, nor an
i3 hacker. I respect those projects (yes, really, despite my previous
words) for a part of their spirit, but I think they can be fairly
improved, and that a tiling DE could show enhancement they could
receive.
To understand my words, I think it is important that I explain what I
wanted when I switched to a TWM:
* resource efficiency (which I find for i3, but not vim or uzbl, for
example. It includes screen's space.)
* easiness of configuration (partially found for i3 -but, it lacks
already made tools to replace status bar- , again, but not i3 or uzbl)
Also, I've said that people often speak, rarely act (if I did not, I do
so now). I am as most people, never acting, but I started more or less
recently to implement a text editor which could follow the same model
than mpd, since it is the most impressive tool I have used: easy to
configure, does only it's job (even the presentation is left to another
one), lightweight....
I simply have not still announced it, because.... well, I'm a little
ashamed of the reasons:
* I have no correct financial situation, and simply releasing such a
tool as free/libre will obviously - at least in my opinion - only maybe
give me a potential recognition and no way to eat. Licensing could
potentially give me that possibility.... really sad thought...
* it is not usable in it's current state
* giving the ideas I have for it (not about the features it should not
have, but about features it should have) could burn me by people more
efficient than me (and you are legion, since it's not an easy task for
me)
When (it will be ready, and when) I will have made it good enough, I
plan to "sabotage" the i3 project, to take a look at it and decouple the
window management system from the bottom toolbar, for the sake of the
text editor I will have made, then write a tool to synchronize both
configurations (of i3, of the text editor's client I will have made, and
probably of some random terminal emulator).
The idea at first was simply that IDEs (Integrated Development
Environment) are simply specializations of DEs (Deskvelopment
Environent? XD). All of those tools tries to do the same things: to give
a set of tools to do a variety of tasks.
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