Window managers
Mar. 11th, 2017 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcModern Linux desktop environments rarely behave as I would like. Not only are they built atop an opaque ecosystem of complex parts but they never seem to be configurable to strictly follow behavior that I desire, a prime example being focus-follows-mouse combined with that focus does not change without my action. If I am typing into a window then I am probably holding complex thoughts in mind and I do not want that to be interrupted by something as trivial as a notification or event from a different application. I want to be able to at least finish my thought, dumping it out into where I was working, before shifting attention. If windows demand action before I can continue what I was doing or, worse, somehow steal focus and have my ongoing input redirected to somewhere that may interpret it wholly differently, then that is a bug.
Of all things, the venerable twm from the late 1980s gets this right. Even if a window has popped up wanting to be placed I can continue typing and that input goes into the window in which I was working. Unfortunately, the cool kids these days are probably even unaware of it: for instance, Firefox 51, which continues the steady descent of recent years into worsening usability, pops up file chooser dialogs that more than fill my entire screen. Some googling on the matter finds that appropriate choices of desktop environment and GNOME configuration settings and whatnot can tame this bug but I would guess that after some point using a basic window manager may no longer be viable. Over the years I have tried various others such as sawfish but in actual use they came up short.
When I read investigations into odd behaviors like with Chrome under ctwm, a window manager that extends twm with good features like f.movepack, it generally turns out that the bugs arise from applications interacting with X11 rather nonsensically but, I presume, in a manner that does not cause trouble with the mainstream desktop environments; additionally, some of the behaviors that annoy me arise from processing extended window manager hints.
Twenty years ago things would just work or could at least be made to by tweaking shell scripts and the like. I hope that, on my personal computer systems, my little island of simple sanity can persevere for some time yet. At work I already bow to the contemporary and use XFCE4.
Of all things, the venerable twm from the late 1980s gets this right. Even if a window has popped up wanting to be placed I can continue typing and that input goes into the window in which I was working. Unfortunately, the cool kids these days are probably even unaware of it: for instance, Firefox 51, which continues the steady descent of recent years into worsening usability, pops up file chooser dialogs that more than fill my entire screen. Some googling on the matter finds that appropriate choices of desktop environment and GNOME configuration settings and whatnot can tame this bug but I would guess that after some point using a basic window manager may no longer be viable. Over the years I have tried various others such as sawfish but in actual use they came up short.
When I read investigations into odd behaviors like with Chrome under ctwm, a window manager that extends twm with good features like f.movepack, it generally turns out that the bugs arise from applications interacting with X11 rather nonsensically but, I presume, in a manner that does not cause trouble with the mainstream desktop environments; additionally, some of the behaviors that annoy me arise from processing extended window manager hints.
Twenty years ago things would just work or could at least be made to by tweaking shell scripts and the like. I hope that, on my personal computer systems, my little island of simple sanity can persevere for some time yet. At work I already bow to the contemporary and use XFCE4.
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Date: 2017-03-12 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-15 10:33 pm (UTC)