Re: The one improvement I'd like on ctwm

Rhialto <[email protected]> Fri, 12 Oct 2018 00:19:06 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.window-managers.ctwm
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Mon 08 Oct 2018 at 20:40:55 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> 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.

The window manages that keep a stack instead of a ring also have 2
different key bindings for forward and backward, but the second one
isn't used much, typically. Usuallt ALT-TAB and SHIFT-ALT-TAB.

I just looked at the code, and in principle it isn't hard to change the
ring into a stack. Adding an option to do it is just a bit more work.

BUT: it would be useless.

Other window managers keep some kind of box open as long as you keep the
ALT (or for me WINDOWS) key down. You can press TAB several times. When
you finally let go of ALT, the then-selected window is really made
active, and pulled to the top of the stack.

But ctwm doesn't work like that. Every time you hit the key combination,
it immediately switches to the next window in the ring. If you pull that
one out to the "top", you'd simply keep switching between two windows.

MAYBE if we can link an event to "letting go of ALT", that could be
bound to a new action that modifies the ring to behave like a stack. But
I haven't looked yet how easy or hard that would be. But if it is
possible it would be a nice configuration flexibility.

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert  -- "What good is a Ring of Power
\X/ rhialto/at/falu.nl      -- if you're unable...to Speak." - Agent Elrond

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