On Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 12:11:06PM -0500, Devin Mullins wrote:
At this point, I wonder whether we should follow the layouts more closely and make the MessageHooks be data rather than functions, so that they can store state that persists across mod-q. So we'd have something like:
*That's* specifically what I don't want. The whole point of eventHook (or messageHook) is that it avoids the Read/Show requirement, so users can specify custom (in this case) urgency hooks without a load of class/instance boilerplate. Otherwise, I'd just leave it as a LayoutModifier, as it is now.
I suppose it's a bit of a tossup. I don't see that as the whole point. To me, the whole point would be to allow the definition of hooks that aren't workspace-specific, as is the case with layout hooks. Also note that you could make a read-failing messageHook, as you did (I believe) with your layout modifier, and the users' result would be much less annoying than losing state. And we could also allow storing of state without maintaining it across restarts, which would capture most of the usefulness of state-storing.
I'm intrigued with the state idea. What did you have in mind?
What do you mean? How it'd work or what it'd be used for? The most obvious use would be to simultaneously eliminate the unsafePerformIO global variable hack from for the urgency hooks, and simultaneously allow the list of urgent windows to be maintained on restart (if that's what we want). Another obvious use for state would be to allow us to implement notification windows (to work with urgent hooks) for instance. Or to allow dynamic switching between focus-follows-mouse and click-to-focus behavior. Or perhaps implementing a "sticky" bit for windows, which causes them to be automatically added to any new workspaces. I'm sure more uses will follow that I haven't yet imagined. But basically, my expectation would be that just as layouts are now used for interesting features that are unrelated to the original "layout" feature (e.g. WorkspaceDir, WindowNavigation, your urgency layout modifier) I suspect a general event hook will soon be expected to do more than a static function can describe. In fact, I think your UrgencyHook is a perfect example: it already requires the storage of state. -- David Roundy Department of Physics Oregon State University