Window Management

James ''Wez'' Weatherall writes:

Thanks for your comments. I'll add my opinions below.

> I've been tinkering with ion and blackbox and afterstep 1.0 and
> I've come to a few conclusions about how an iPAQ's desktop should
> probably operate in order to be easy to use(*):
>
> - Conventional draggable, sizable windows are BAD.

I agree.

> Instead, the way ion does things, although dumb, is usually a fair
> approach.

I also like ion very much. What do you mean by "dumb"? I've found a
few aspects of ion that can make it hard to use, but most should not be
too hard to fix:

        1) Going from 2 clients in 1 frame to 2 clients in 2 frames
           requires too many operations.

           FIX: Drop a client titlebar into its own frame for an
                autosplit. My current hack for this is too sensitive
                -- sometimes a tap to switch clients registers as a
                drag and splits the frame which is very annoying. I'll
                fix this by requiring the titlebar to be dragged more
                completely into the frame before splitting.

        2) Empty frames waste space

           FIX: Auto-destroy empty frames. My current 5-minute hack
                job to do this mostly works, (some segfaults though
                *blush). But it demonstrates a reasonable concept.

           OTHER FIXES: Always move an existing client into the new
                frame after a split. If there is only one existing
                client, maybe have a user-configurable default client,
                (perhaps a Program Launcher).

        3) The titlebars waste pace.

           FIX: allow a toggle for titlebar display.

        4) Workspace creation forces name selection.

           FIX: new command that auto-generates a unique workspace
                name.

> - Audible feeback within reason (and to the user's tastes) is
> - GOOD.

I agree.

> - Having dockable apps such as xmms, the clock, fscrib, xvkbd
> managed by the window manager such that they steal space from the
> main app dynamically, when they are made visible, is GOOD.

I agree, but I think that the dock should be implemented as a separate
application from the window manager.

> - Being able to hide stuff as much as possible is GOOD.

I agree.

> - Having help available so that, for example, you can get a table of
> fscrib symbols, is GOOD! (But annoying to write...)

Absolutely agreed. I'm hoping to write a help module for fstroke this
weekend.

> Anyway, I expect that people with have various gripes with the above
> statements. They're just a few things I've decided after having used
> PalmPilots, Psions and iPAQs. I've found the iPAQ more or less unusable for
> anything real because the apps are all designed for a desktop UI. This is
> no surprise and certainly not a criticism.

> I've come up with a combination of a window manager layout and
> an app launcher/dock layout that might be sweet, based on
> experience designing a simple iPAQ user interface as part of my
> PhD. I can post a mock-up of it if anyone expresses an interest.

I would be very interested, for one.

> I'd also be interested to know what stuff other people are using on the
> tiny iPAQ display!

Well, I use ion and fstroke. Another user-interface thing I have been
doing is to use gestures to launch programs. Right now I do this by
holding down an iPAQ button mapped to Alt, performing an fstroke
gesture bound to a key, and using the ion Alt-key binding to exec the
application of interest. This is working quite well in practice.

I also have many ion functions, (new workspace, next/previous
workspace, vertical split, horizontal split), also bound to
gestures. This is also very nice.

-Carl

-- 
Carl Worth                                        
USC Information Sciences Institute                 cworth_at_east.isi.edu
4350 N. Fairfax Dr. #770, Arlington VA 22203	          703-812-3725