April 2009 - xmonad - Haskell.org

Re: [xmonad] Project to make tiling window managers more accessible to newcomers
by Norbert Zeh 09 Apr '09

09 Apr '09

> > Traditional UI's aim to be intuitive to non-experts and, in doing so, > > completely forget to provide the functionality that is needed for > > efficient computer use once one is beyond the learning stage. > > I have to disagree here. What we define as "intuition" is often just > some kind of "trained knowledge": People have to learn how to use the > first GUI, regardless of how it works. In the future they expect other > GUIs to work in the same way, and because they don't need to think > about it, they consider it to be "intuitive". > This is a rather complex topic and might better be branched of into > another thread. Interesting point. In that case, however, it is even less valuable to stay close to the philosophy of traditional UI's. Cheers, Norbert

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Some ideas that could be implemented
by Ismael Carnales 09 Apr '09

09 Apr '09

And make XMonad more begginer friendly If Newcomers like it You got another user With another point of view to contribute to the project And get more name, jobs, etc :) And some ranters :) Anyway here goes some ideas that i spitted out in the xmonad channel, suggest, criticism help and such welcome * Layout constructors: Layouts could export alongside their constructors, a constructor function that calls the latter with some default arguments, this allows to aliase more common used layouts and become friendlier with newcomers. Also is good that users don't invoke the "official layout constructor" from their configs so mantainers can change the arguments it takes without breaking compatibility. Other modules could use the same approach, for ex: defaultShellPrompt = shellPrompt defaultXPConfig simpleDefaultConfig A module that provides an structure to configure XMonad by editing some hooks, instead of hoving to build them, usefull to make some non-default configs default in this module, like modkey, borders, avoidstrust, more friendlier managehook, with hooks for floats, moveTo, etc. Other configs can be based on simpleDefaultConfig providing some pre-feeded values on some hooks, usefull for statusbars i.e.: dzenStatusSimpleDefaultConfig, xmobarStatusSimpleDefaultConfig. Or better, simpleDefaultConfig could inherit some defaults from another Config like dzenStatusConfig, so you would pick the parts that suits you. This approach will give easier entry point to configs for newbies without loosing power, all normal config items would have to be available, these funcions will only provide helpers and shortcuts. A GridSelect oriented program launcher: Inspired by "intelligent launchers" we could make an app launcher that shows its options arranged like a keyboard, inteligently ordered, so most used apps will be in the home row an continuing outside. Also I think that providing a "directional free" navigation to promp options would be good, maybe that when the prompt is showing options it could capture some keybinding that says, move to right, up, JKL, et. To make long lists more usable. Lego Layouts If we succed in extracting every repeated behaiviour from different layouts: i.e: respecting Hints, we could expand the targets that get that behaiviour, and also make a new way of constructing layouts by stacking a base one and adding modifiers, so each piece providing some Layout functionality or behaivour will be unique. DRY As always these are from my mind, but try to spend 3 seconds on each and comment :)

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Gimp always floats whether I want it to or not
by Kathryn Andersen 09 Apr '09

09 Apr '09

I don't want Gimp to start floating, but it always does. This is my manage hook: myManageHook = composeAll [ className =? "Firefox" --> doShift "www" , className =? "Gimp" --> doShift "lath" , className =? "Wine" --> doShift "lath" , className =? "mailterm" --> doShift "mail" ] As you can see, I do not apply a doFloat to Gimp, so I would have thought that it wouldn't start in floating mode, but it always does. What do I have to do to force it to be tiled? Kathryn Andersen -- _--_|\ | Kathryn Andersen <http://www.katspace.com> / \ | \_.--.*/ | GenFicCrit mailing list <http://www.katspace.com/gen_fic_crit/> v | ------------| Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia -> Southern Hemisphere Maranatha! | -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy -> Universe

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Issue 283 in xmonad: Xmonad hangs up often
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 09 Apr '09

09 Apr '09

Comment #4 on issue 283 by sonuxp: Xmonad hangs up often http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=283 Sorry for the late reply. I did not face any problems after taking Braden's Suggestion. It was a xmobar bug. Thanks for the help and support. -- You received this message because you are listed in the owner or CC fields of this issue, or because you starred this issue. You may adjust your issue notification preferences at: http://code.google.com/hosting/settings

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First steps (not only words)
by Ismael Carnales 09 Apr '09

09 Apr '09

Breaking gwern's suggestion this is my second mail today :) The way to implement some of my suggestions? * Clean XMonadContrib of duped functionality modules * Reviews XMonadContrib in search of dupped/common-used code * Move this code to another contrib module, and maybe implement a better interface over it * Write good docs about the new module, it will be the base from new modules to come * Maintain this module in partial-stable situation (limitting commits) * Move some functionality of this module to core With these steps we can assure less breakage fom updating contribs, and that will be more easy to write new modules because there's a common codebase written and approved by core devels. bye!

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Opinions (skip if you are busy)
by Ismael Carnales 08 Apr '09

08 Apr '09

Hi, I was bothering some people on IRC and someone suggested me to send my opinions in an email, so here it goes: To clarify things: I love Xmonad, I admire much of it's simplicity in some ways and complexity in others (taling about code) but I think it fails in one main thing: communication. I'm relatively new to Xmonad and totally new to haskell, but when some of my co-workers show me Xmonad I fell in love with it at the moment, and I tried to learn everything I could about it. So I reviewed the hole contrib documentation. What was my first thinking? No screenshots of the results of the usage of the module (only the withIM LayoutModifier had one, my preferred contrib), overlapping and difficult to understand functionality and some real gems that make your day-to-day life with Xmonad worh it. I'm really amazed of how some really experienced Xmonad users are recently discovering UrgencyHook, I myself had encounter recently ShellPrompt and replaced dmenu for good. What was the difficult thing? finding them, and understanding their intended usage. UrgencyHook can tell you about Pidgin messages, Mutt mails, IRSSI messages, everything (unluckly it depends on extenal programs) and it's poor documented. When I found smart borders I thought: "why isn't it the default behaiviour for all layouts and make me explicitely add it", also found that perworkspace makes Xmonad so much powerfull that I think it should be a main feature selecting the layouts to apply to a workspace. Even Tabbing is hidden and Full is the preferred one, altough they deliver almost same funcionality only that Tabbed doesn't hide windows like Full does. When I told my coworkers of my discoveries (they were using xmonad for ages) it was really difficult to convince them to use withIM (or IM in that time) Layout for their Pidgin workspace (we all work connected to jabber channels), they found difficult to configure and were using the "remember windows placement" feature of xmonad. Short time after they've seen my buddy list aligned to the right of my screen (Reflect++ and Roman++ for an excellent doc in its module) they were all asking me how to get that. I did't understand a line of Haskell, it was only preety readable and logic to me. Then i saw SPJ (Simon Peyton Jones) using xmonad to do a great talk about Haskell, I fell in love instantly, but was very difficult using this new approach of doing things, then looked at some Haskell books, liked the type system and how you can abstract and describe the world with it, but I still can't code Haskell :). So, I think Xmonad is the most usefull thing installed on my machine right now besides vim, and I think that Xmonad should tell the world why we think it's like this. Awesome ... pleople are switching to awesome cause they provide widgets out of the box, I don't say that providing them is good, Xmonad should care about windows, but making easy to integrate a status bar will be great (I'm aware of the contrib efforts being done to do this), Xmonad should sail away from maintaining dwm compatibility (in keybindings) for ex, and making it own standards, provide more sane defaults for new users and hooks (or facilitators) to modify the config in the most-changed parts. So ... what could be done, first ... make XMonad findable to an average person, and tell him what he can do with it, show him the goodness of tiling WMs, preconfigured workspaces, known windows positions, screen usage maximization, low resource usage, etc. How to do this ? Pimp your XMonad is a good example, but aimed at people that already know XMonad, we should target new users, and show them the benefits of using Xmonad over the "pain" of learning/downloading (ghc is huge) a new language/compiler. Also make Xmonad gentler to newcomers (keeping haskell config file, but maybe providing some config hooks), more sane or complete defaults, maybe with config templates, xmonad.hs, xmonadDzen.hs, xmonadXmobar.hs, xmonadGnome, no need to import some config that they don't know what is doing or to copy/paste, give them tools to understand it and in the future tweak it and become interested in haskell, so they became future contributors of xmonad. In short, I think that Xmonad core should care about providing the best abstractions of everything a Tiled WM coul implement and some basic implementations. Also provide a common Library or Framework to contribute/extend it, and XMonadContrib should do the rest. Sorry for the ranting, I'm willing to help in everything that I can, bye!

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Issue 226 in xmonad: Verify GHC 6.10/x86_64 optimizer fix
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 08 Apr '09

08 Apr '09

Comment #21 on issue 226 by vogt.adam: Verify GHC 6.10/x86_64 optimizer fix http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=226 I can't reproduce this with ghc 6.10.2 -- You received this message because you are listed in the owner or CC fields of this issue, or because you starred this issue. You may adjust your issue notification preferences at: http://code.google.com/hosting/settings

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Issue 283 in xmonad: Xmonad hangs up often
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 08 Apr '09

08 Apr '09

Updates: Status: Invalid Comment #3 on issue 283 by wirtwolff: Xmonad hangs up often http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=283 sonuxp has not re-posted, so assume this was not an xmonad bug. -- You received this message because you are listed in the owner or CC fields of this issue, or because you starred this issue. You may adjust your issue notification preferences at: http://code.google.com/hosting/settings

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Issue 249 in xmonad: XMonad.Util.Scratchpad cannot be configured to use gnome-terminal
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 08 Apr '09

08 Apr '09

Updates: Status: Fixed Comment #3 on issue 249 by wirtwolff: XMonad.Util.Scratchpad cannot be configured to use gnome-terminal http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=249 Fixed in darcs, and tested with gnome-terminal supporting --name. Note that some versions of gnome-terminal do not seem to allow setting resource. Currently Util.Scratchpad can be used with any single application that allows the user to set its WM_CLASS resource to "scratchpad". -- You received this message because you are listed in the owner or CC fields of this issue, or because you starred this issue. You may adjust your issue notification preferences at: http://code.google.com/hosting/settings

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Issue 268 in xmonad: U.Run.runProcessWithInputAndWait calls waitForProcess
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 08 Apr '09

08 Apr '09

Updates: Status: Fixed Comment #1 on issue 268 by wirtwolff: U.Run.runProcessWithInputAndWait calls waitForProcess http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=268 Fixed in darcs. -- You received this message because you are listed in the owner or CC fields of this issue, or because you starred this issue. You may adjust your issue notification preferences at: http://code.google.com/hosting/settings

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