Re: The one improvement I'd like on ctwm

Steve Litt [email protected]
wrote:

> I switched away from Openbox, to ctwm, for about 2 months, before
> switching back to Openbox.

Ctwm was my favourite for many years (from around 1995?) but for a while I
switched to Openbox because ctwm wasn't available for some reason, or had
stopped working properly (on my fedora PC and laptop). I don't remember
details.

As soon as ctwm came back to life I returned to it. One reason I prefer
it is the *much* simpler syntax for .ctwmrc compared with the xml format
of openbox.

> .....

> Contrastingly, ctwm keeps the windows on a given workspace in a ring
> buffer. This requires two different keystrokes: One to navigate
> clockwise, and one to navigate counterclockwise. For whatever reason,
> even after 2 months using specially created hotkeys for these
> circular navigations, I couldn't get my muscle memory to work with the
> 2 key solution.

I wonder whether it depends on the keys you choose.

I have

    WarpRingOnScreen
   "Left" =   m : all : f.warpring "prev"
   "Right" =  m : all: f.warpring "next"

This means that Meta + Left arrow goes one way round the windows in the
current workspace and Meta + Right goes the other way. Surely easy to
remember?

I have a similar scheme for cycling through my 12 workspaces, using
Ctrl + Left and Ctrl + Right

 Function "GoLEFT"
 { f.prevworkspace
   f.unfocus
 }

 Function "GoRIGHT"
 { f.nextworkspace
   f.unfocus
 }

## invoked by Ctrl + Left or Right Arrow key

"Left"  =  c    : all   : f.function "GoLEFT"
"Right" =  c    : all   : f.function "GoRIGHT"

===

If I have a lot of windows in a workspace, and only a few of them are open
and stacked, I can cycle through the open ones, whose boundaries contain
the mouse pointer, using Ctrl + Up

 "Up"    =  c    : all   : f.raiselower

However if the windows occupy different portions of the screen, with only
partial overlaps, what becomes visible will depend on where the mouse
pointer is.

But I may have failed to understand the requirement.

> As another useful enhancement, most WM/DEs (Window managers and Desktop
> Environment) flash on the screen the name of the program that would gain
> focus if you let go. I have no idea how easy or difficult that would be.

Not sure I understand this. Let go of what? Perhaps I don't need this
because I set focus to follow mouse always?

Aaron
PS
For several months I've been worried about ctwm because I use right click
on titlebar to minimise a window and it only worked intermittently.

Then a few days ago it stopped working altogether, just after I had
installed the latest ctwm. I was about to start investigating whether ctwm
was broken then thought I should try another mouse. It worked. Apparently
the old mouse had an intermittently failing right mouse button for some
time, and now it's completely dead.

Moral: stop assuming that only software goes wrong...?