On 10/16/07, Andy Gimblett wrote:

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 04:22:17PM +0300, Valery V. Vorotyntsev wrote:

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1) Fixed number of workspaces is too inflexible and somewhat ugly, IMO.

What about creating workspaces by demand, instead? The same way `ion' does to workspaces or screen to its "windows".

[...]

When I say "you can easily only care about the ones with contents" I mean: using the dynamicLog and RotView contrib modules, I see and move about in a list of the workspaces with things in them, which grows if I send something to a new workspace, and shrinks if I empty a workspace - so I have the appearance of a constantly growing and shrinking set of workspaces. Their names happen to be in the range 0-9 but that range could be made bigger. In practice I never need more than 9, but the possibility is there. It really is a lot like having them created/disposed of on demand, and works quite seamlessly for me at least. It's definitely the closest thing to virtual desktop perfection I've yet experienced.

Oh, thank you. I'll try these modules. And I have a strong suspicion the desired functionality is already there. :)

(I believe there's also a way to assign names to workspaces, though I haven't felt the need to try it out. That might be one possible advantageous side-effect of on-demand workspaces, but OTOH, thinking of my wmii days, having to think of names for workspaces would probably slow me down. ;-) )

I don't have such an experience. Ordinal number (up to 4)) are good enough for me. Thanks again! -- vvv

On 10/16/07, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:

On Oct 16, 2007, at 9:22 , Valery V. Vorotyntsev wrote:

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2) When xmonad quits, it forgets layout settings -- number of windows in master pane, current tiling algorithm, focused window, master/subordinate ratio, etc. Doesn't it?

We could save this information to `~/.xmonad' file and read it at next startup.

This is kinda tricky if the windows in question don't exist at startup, no?

But xmonad already remembers m/s ratio while running, even when all of its clients are killed. And new clients are created with the "customized" proportions. Which even differ for `tiled' and `Mirror tiled' modes! (The number of clients per master pane is also remembered.) But the next time I enter my X session, the ratio is 1:2. :) All runtime customizations are gone. This is not the case with ion3.

The correct way to handle it is to support session manager integration: on exit, save the serialized layout in the session manager as a -layout option; the session manager will then restart xmonad with the specified options, at the same time that it restores the other programs in the session so that all the windows in the layout are (hopefully) also recreated. But then xmonad needs to know to hold on to it until it at least has the windows explicitly mentioned... and, does -layout work by windowid, or by class/name/ role? windowid is a nonstarter across X11 server instances/ instantiations.

Could you tell me, where to read about this `-layout' option? Does it relate to gdm? And I don't actually care about where my xterm goes at startup. I just hate my daily routine of tuning emacs 80 characters wide. :)

...

3) Can I define a key binding like, say, `Win-k 1'?

See XMonadContrib/SubMap.hs.

Thanks a lot. -- vvv

On 2007-10-16 17:41:38 Valery V. Vorotyntsev wrote:

On 10/16/07, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:

...

On Oct 16, 2007, at 9:22 , Valery V. Vorotyntsev wrote:

...

2) When xmonad quits, it forgets layout settings -- number of windows in master pane, current tiling algorithm, focused window, master/subordinate ratio, etc. Doesn't it?

We could save this information to `~/.xmonad' file and read it at next startup.

This is kinda tricky if the windows in question don't exist at startup, no?

But xmonad already remembers m/s ratio while running, even when all of its clients are killed. And new clients are created with the "customized" proportions. Which even differ for `tiled' and `Mirror tiled' modes! (The number of clients per master pane is also remembered.)

But the next time I enter my X session, the ratio is 1:2. :) All runtime customizations are gone. This is not the case with ion3.

You can set this stuff in Config.hs. Not as easy as just having your runtime changes saved, but also not so easy to mess up. /J