[aklug] Re: xmonad

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011, Shane R. Spencer wrote:

> I remember cascade arrangement hotkeys.. and I sort of remember a hotkey to attempt to
> tile windows in Windows 3.x. Maybe that ain't so.

I think what we have here is a failure to truly understand what a tiling
window manager is. Cacscading is not tiling. Tiling floating windows is
not tiling.

Look, a true tiling window manager means that window frames and decorations
are not needed because there is *no* arbitrary window placement, application
windows are set to specific geometry based on a layout template. The main
reason why you have frames, title bars, etc., is to allow arbitrary
placement and geometry.

Windows doesn't "tile" windows by default, you have to make an arbitrary
decision to "tile" open windows. On top of that new windows have zero
impact on the arrangement of the existing tiled windows, and can "float"
above/below the "tiled" applications concurrently. And you can't turn off
window decorations for your regular clients.

In a nutshell, Windows allows a "tiling" arrangement, but that is not even
close to what a tiling window manager does.

Xmonad is a hybrid window manager whose primary mode is tiling, but can
support floating windows. Even with "tiling arrangments", though, Windows
is still not a tiling window manager, it is not even a hybrid.

Chris: I look forward to hearing more of your experience with xmonad. With
my little toughbook only having an 800x600 resolution tiling window managers
are at the top of my wish list. Xmonad is at the top of that sublist, I
just haven't gotten around to rolling up a haskell package yet.

         --Arthur Corliss
           Live Free or Die
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Received on Tue Apr 12 10:34:27 2011