[H-GEN] Why no keyboard with NO Window Manager ?

Jason Parker-Burlingham jasonp at uq.net.au
Fri Apr 25 23:01:38 EDT 2003


[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

"Christopher Biggs" <listjunkie at pobox.com> writes:

> Jason Parker-Burlingham <jasonp at uq.net.au> moved upon the face of
> the 'Net and spake thusly:

> Simple apps like "xterm" et al work because they stick to a single
> window.   (Try turning off autocompletion in mozilla and see if that helps).

What you say is probably true but I wonder about things like the menus
available with control-clicks in xterm and such.

> > It seems to me there's some widget issue here; maybe mozilla *needs* a
> > window manager (which I think is pretty ridiculous) 
> Not really ridiculous when you look at the underlying definition of
> "window".

It seems a shame it isn't possible to simply run the browser without
the window manager hovering over everything when at least conceptually
it shouldn't be required:  the application's menus still work, and the
autocomplete bar doesn't really behave like a "window", so I wonder
why it is one.

On the gripping hand I guess the URL bar and such need to understand
ICCCM (is that what it's called?) to be able to accept pastes and the
like, whereas menus do not.

> I run larswm at ork and wmx at home.  ratpoison is worth a look,
> just to tie your brain in knots...

I used to use ion but eventually gave it away because of what happens
to modal dialog boxes---they'll pop up for selecting files to operate
on and whatnot and most applications just aren't built to expect a
tiny "click `okay' to continue" box to fill the entire screen or even
a significant portion thereof.

Mozilla and ImageMagick seemed to me to be the worst offenders.
-- 
``I didn't program you for sarcasm.''

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/



More information about the General mailing list