Re: GNUstep Window Manager (was RE: Idea)

[Philippe C . D . Robert]

Hi,

Nicola Pero <n.pero@mi.flashnet.it> wrote (Sat, 6 Jan 2001 02:46:40 +0100 
(CET)):
> > well, I have thought about that a little bit in the past... It would 
> > certainly
> > a big plus to have a WM written in ObjC which could offer tight integration
> > into GS with less effort. 
> 
> Ahm - I'm not sure having a WM written in ObjC would make such a big
> difference.  WindowMaker is an excellent piece of software and I'm quite
> proud it's part of gnustep.  Certainly, it doesn't make sense to take the
> effort of rewriting all of it just because we want it in ObjC.  If someone
> has all that time to devote to coding, why not write a brand new gnustep
> application in ObjC - that would be much more useful.

Well, you did not get my point, then...;-) I do certainly not want to reinvent 
the wheel! What I would like to see is a window manager which offers tight 
integration with GNUstep. This window manager should:

- be fast
- have a small mem print
- be responsible only for drawing and handling windows
- offer virtual desktops
- *not* include extensions like a dock, config tools and so forth!

Thus I thought it could be a reasonable way to take an existing window manager 
which has more or less the same goals (like blackbox) and convert it (or better 
wrap it) to use GNUstep as foundation. By using DO it could be possible to make 
a nice interface for GS apps which would be used to offer the enhanced 
features, i.e. a dock, GWorkspace and so forth. It could also be possible to 
control the 'global' menu to be the same as the active application's menu and 
so on (I really hate the fact that on X there are always 2 kind of menus, the 
app's menu and this 'speudo NEXTSTEPish global menu'). 

I do not want to write 'yet another window manager', I would like to see 'the 
perfect GNUstep window manager'!

> Rather, if we want better integration with the window manager - I don't
> actually know much about that part - Enrico might know better - anyway if
> we think we could have better integration between the wm and the workspace
> manager/appkit - we could implement it as a little couple of additional
> files in Window Maker sources, written in ObjC and which talks to gnustep
> stuff using DO or whatever needed etc.  These files would only be compiled

Exactly my idea - with the exception that I don't like WindowManager very much 
due to the huge number of its integrated features, and therefore I was talking 
about blackbox instead...;-)

> As for me, what I really still miss in WindowMaker is the integration of
> gnustep app icons etc.  For example, it's a pity I can't yet dock gnustep
> apps.  I know this sounds a little childish - but I really use the
> Finger.app to ping/traceroute remote hosts <that's why I wrote it> - and
> it's a pity I can't dock it into the WM dock.

See...;-)

cheers, Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert | http://www.nice.ch/~phip/