On 4 Oct 2002, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> James Ralston <qralston+ml.redhat-psyche-list@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>
> > > Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window
> > > managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like
> > > Cheerios.
> >
> > Speak for yourself. Not only do I want Marshmallow Froot Loops, I
> > also want Lucky Charms, and I want to be able to mix them together
> > in a big bowl and then pick out the flavors I don't like. :p
>
> Metacity is clearly too health-food for ya. ;-)
Seriously, though...
My window manager's job is to make it easy for me to do *my* job. A
window manager that forces me to do extra work because of its
shortcomings is an affront to me, and I will purge any such window
manager from my desktop.
Here's my list of features a window manager should have:
1. The ability to set focus policy.
2. The ability to set raise policy.
3. The ability to configure multiple workspaces, with feedback
when moving among them.
4. The ability to set up arbitrary shortcuts, including disabling
any or all default shortcuts.
5. The ability to set edge resistance (or to disable it
entirely).
6. The ability to put a "pager" on the desktop, a la
enlightenment. (IMHO, the enlightenment pager is one of the
top 10 best UI inventions of all time.)
Metacity fails #3 (no feedback), #4, #5, and $6.
Sawfish fails #3 (no feedback), #5 (no customization), and #6.
This is why, for both Red Hat 7.3 and now 8.0, I've followed this
pattern:
1. Try to configure the default window manager the way I want it.
2. Try to find a window manager installed on the system (by Red
Hat) that I can configure the way I want it.
3. Go download/compile/install enlighenment, and use it.
I don't *like* to do #3, especially because enlightenment isn't
exactly a hotbed of deveopment effort these days. (I recall seeing
somewhere that Rasterman doesn't even work on it anymore, although I'm
not sure about that.) But until Red Hat ships a window manager that
aggravate me on a daily basis (by forcing me to work around its
deficiencies), I'll continue to use enlightenment.
If you think it'll do any good, I'll go bugzilla these feature
requests against Metacity and/or Sawfish.
--
James Ralston, Information Technology
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
