Re: [RP] Cameron's xinerama patch in CVS & Usability

[Shawn Betts]

Cameron Patrick <address@hidden> writes:

> Shawn Betts wrote:
> 
> | I don't think scrselect made it in. I applied your
> | cjp-xinerama-4-cumulative.patch patch.
> 
> Okay.  So screens and scrselect aren't in.  (Just as well because the
> patch I posted to the list for scrselect didn't quite work.)
> 
> | > BTW on a non-dual-head-related note, one thing I wouldn't mind seeing
> | > in ratpoison would be the ability to force certain windows to go into
> | > certain frames.  Then I could have a script set up a GIMP frame set
> | > with one frame on the big monitor for the image and a few frames on
> | > the smaller monitor for the toolbar and other misc windows.  I'd have
> | > to think a bit more about the exact semantics of it though.
> | 
> | Do you mean something like a 'pull' command? ie ':pull 2' would pull
> | window 2 into the current frame. and ':pull 2 1' would pull window 2
> | into frame 1?
> 
> No, not really.  I meant a way of giving a pattern to match a window,
> then forcing new windows that matched that pattern to appear in a
> particular.  And also perhaps limiting the windows that are scrolled
> through with :next and :prev - though groups do this already, it seems
> inconvenient as windows in other groups don't show up in C-t w and
> can't be selected by number or C-t '.
> 
> In particular, I was thinking was that I could script something like
> this:
> 
> :scrselect 0
> :only
> :vsplit
> :hsplit
> :bindwin name ^The GIMP$
> :focusdown
> :bindwin default
> :focusright
> :bindwin role gimp-dock
> :bindwin role gimp-file-open
> :dedicate                     # only bound windows can live here
> :scrselect 1
> :only
> :bindwin role gimp-image-window
> 
> (Where 'role' and 'name' refer to the WM_WINDOW_ROLE and WM_NAME
> properties, and 'bindwin default' is the equivalent or John's
> spawn-select, specifying a default frame for new windows to appear in
> if they don't match any other patterns.)  Then I could start GIMP, and
> windows would automagically appear in the frames I wanted them to.
> Cycling through windows with :next and :prev would ignore windows that
> had been bound to another frame and selecting them with C-t N (for
> integer N) would bring them up in the frame they were bound to.

That's a damn cool idea. I've been thinking about it for a while. I
figured one could write scripts that handled certain gross apps like
gimp to make them usable and hopefully more usable than conventional
WMs.

I think this is well within the realm of ratpoison's mandate as that
would be getting the window manager to manage windows.

Perhaps adding hooks like new-window and raise-window would allow, in
combination with a 'pull' command, you to do that. 

I was unaware of the WM_WINDOW_ROLE property. I'll have to add it.

-Shawn