On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 06:14:37PM +0200, Thorsten Wilms wrote: Actually, something that's kinda nice is that I think in the opera web browser you can configure it to use either one monolithic window for everything (the original behavior), or use the wm for windowing. I think it's nice to give the user these choices. There are some programs that "remember" where all your windows were, but if you shut down the app and start it back up (yay for dev software!), you're pretty much out of luck. I agree with being able to completely fullscreen one little bit for a short period of time to make a minor tweak. I prefer the blender interface to many others I've used (Lightwave, at least a few years ago, gave me a headache with its very inflexible 2x2 matix). Hrm, I guess the only thing that bothers me about the Ion approach, is how to get the wm to organize the windows in a useful manner on the screen (similar sorts of windows next to each other). In order to get these sorts of things working in one big monolithic window, everything is taken care of by the main program, but when a window manager is involved, I'm concerned that too much effort on the part of the user will be expended trying to get the two to play nice together and in the end there will be a whole bunch of little config file hacks that would be completely unneccessary if the wm and the app were able to communicate better. Of course, it would be nice if things just worked like this so you could have a whole bunch of useful windows from different programs on the same screen in a unified fasion... - Mike

On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 05:34:42PM +0000, will(a)malefactor.org wrote: Yes, but when you have floating, overlapping windows everyone expects look and behaviour of the WM (focus model, button placemnet ...). An older Hydrogen release I tried was not a nice experience for me, because I have placed the close button on the left side (to not hit it by accident when I aim for minimize) and use sloppy focus (+ auto-raise). Hydrogen confronted me with different button placement and click-to-focus ... Normal windows should be left to the WM at all times, what happens inside a window is a different thing (with the exception of pseudo MDI, which should be avoided). And I guess I shouldn't have used Blender's terminology at all, because of what I'm talking about is better called panes or viewports (no docking/undocking, no overlap, just resizable areas inside one window). --- Thorsten Wilms

On Wed, Apr 14, 2004 at 10:52:49AM +0200, Tim Orford wrote: I was more thinking along people using distro defaults or especialy Gnome with Metacity. We can't expect people to change WM to step into audio stuff. And if I could convince some linux audio developers that would already be an achievement. But convincing Gnome and KDE folks to implement new ways of presenting application interfaces ... don't feel like even trying right now. Inside the current Linux scope I would rather avoid the dependency on a special WM. Having a sequencer, effects, mixer, modular system and softsynth support such a framework would be a very nice start. There's less (or maybe even no) need of such features for general filemanagement and office stuff. There was something going on about seperating the interface system, but I don't know the current status. And it's all OpenGL. But in case you havn't already done so, you should give Blender a test ride (using the tutorial I linked to). It's a very small download and runs on several plattforms. The new Gimp is quite nice, as long as I can put it on it's own screen (what I always do, of course). I switched from Sodipodi to Inkscape. It's dialogs stay above document windows, what makes it a joy to use with my sloppy-focus and auto raise. And better fixing one app than no app because tackling the issue on the highest level takes to much effort. Like I said, I see a special need for such viewport functionality inside very complex apps (just like Blender) and for using many related apps like happens through Jack. For most other things standard windows and maybe tabbing is fine. That's my pragmatic view, the stuff I'm working is meant to provide a 'vision' so it will be quite radical. I've read the research paper and was on the mailing list of the Y-Window project. They seem to be quite informed, and it's not about X bashing, rather learning from it and trying to build 'the next step'. I don't know enough about the technical side to comment on the widget handling, but I think there should be only one set of widgets for everything, and this is the only chance for this to happen (as I see it currently). I use kahakai because it comes without any panel I will not use anyway, has alt-click functionality for moving and resizing and snapping. It's very light-weight. No tabbing. Tried that with Fluxbox, but found out that I want that feature only for browsing and terminals, so I prefer to use a multi-terminal and any browser with tabbing. Everything else is handled by using virtual desktops. You wouldn't say so as a Blender user. ... or you would need even more virtual desktops, all being persistent, including what they show. Year, kinda hard to imagine, but being concerned with usability and aesthetics everything else than an unified desktp is not realy acceptable. Oh, and themes are not enough for unification, since there are differences in behaviuor of some widgets (besides shortcut conventions and dialog standard button placement). No, I said I can't stand it anymore. Been using Linux for some years now. Also have some Mac experience. Windows feels so restricted to me, but i have to use it for Solidworks (and I own a Cubase license). I somewhat agree about Windows, KDE, Gnome and Grannies, but I think it's possible to build an environmet well suited for both naive and powerusers. (And I happen to like Gnomes new simplicity). --- Thorsten Wilms