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Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

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Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#61

Post by malnourish »

preek wrote: post #5
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

See also Spectacle: https://www.spectacleapp.com/ Maybe not the most configurable but in return you get something that works out of the box and doesn't require you to read 38 pages of README.

I'm a long time user of a similar tool called Divvy[1]. However both these tools are _not_ tiling window managers. They help us scale Windows manually by providing customizable shortcuts. A tiling window manager would take care of that automatically. Popular examples are i3[2] and XMonad[3]. As a user of both Linux and OSX, having no access to a real tiling WM is probably the biggest downside to me from an end users…

I use Divvy as well (on Windows). I wish there were a real tiling windows manager for Windows.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#62

Post by gjcourt »

hntuesday wrote: post #32
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

See also Spectacle: https://www.spectacleapp.com/ Maybe not the most configurable but in return you get something that works out of the box and doesn't require you to read 38 pages of README.

Just wanted to throw in a mention of Slate ( https://github.com/jigish/slate ) in here while we're talking about different options. I've been a happy user for a while now. Haven't tried the others, though.

Love slate, switched to it after ShiftIt went unmaintained a few years back, though it looks like ShiftIt is back in active development. Slate config is really nice, you'll feel at home if you are used to setting up vim or tmux configs.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#63

Post by somebehemoth »

pmoriarty wrote: post #41
somebehemoth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Amethyst everyday and it is excellent.

How does it compare to kwm?

I've not yet tried kwm so I am not really a good person to ask. In reading about kwm it seems to compare well to Amethyst in terms of features and use case goals. I've used Amethyst through several releases and seen a lot of improvement. If I had to make a real opinion all I could say is that Amethyst appears to be more mature (my assumption is that Amethyst has been around longer). I do like that the author reacts positively to feature requests and maintains a transparent development path: https://trello.com/b/cCg3xhlb/amethyst.

All of this said kwm looks promising and I think it is awesome more people are using tiling wm's.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#64

Post by superuser2 »

jupp0r wrote: post #56
fit2rule wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give Terminal.app access, and launch kwm from the terminal ..

That is even more insane from a security perspective than the whole accessibility api in general.

Yeah, no. I hope this gets posted again when it has an app bundle.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#65

Post by tym0 »

simi_ wrote: post #13
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

See also Spectacle: https://www.spectacleapp.com/ Maybe not the most configurable but in return you get something that works out of the box and doesn't require you to read 38 pages of README.

I've used Spectacle for so long that I can't remember how it was to use OS X without it. The hotkeys are tied to my muscle memory, and don't clash with any of the stuff I care about (emacs, iTerm2, Chrome, etc).

I know, especially the full screen shortcut.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#66

Post by farresito »

virtualwhys wrote: post #26
farresito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use bspwm, but ended up moving back to i3wm. While i3wm is not perfect, I always found it to be more practical than bspwm. The ability to stack, for example, is very nice. What's the thing that you really like about bspwm? As much as I wanted to really like bspwm, when it came to using it for work, I just found it lacked something.

Curious, what issues do you have with i3? Have been using it for a few years, really hits the sweet spot of easy-config + awesome functionality (stacked terminal windows with remote server load averages piped through title bar are a real nice-to-have for example). Floatable dock (i.e. scratchpad) is also pretty handy for skype, music player, notes, etc. Only issue that's really bothered me is a minor one: with stacke…

Well, I would like to have more control over the floating windows (that will never happen), for example.

One of the things I did like in i3 better than bspwm, for example, is resizing. Another big advantage is it works out of the box very well. Oh, another thing I remember now is i3 is more intuitive when moving things around the screen, especially when trying to switch between vertical and horizontal splits, at least in my experience. I can't really recall all the reasons. They were all small things that build up. I do run i3 straight from the git repository (next branch).

That said, in my experience, tiling wm are way ahead of other wm, especially if you are a programmer. I'm a big fan of vim and tmux (and vimperator for firefox, which adds vim-like behavior to it) and I have no mouse. I have a trackpoint, for whenever I need it.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#67

Post by farresito »

cosarara97 wrote: post #44
virtualwhys wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what issues do you have with i3? Have been using it for a few years, really hits the sweet spot of easy-config + awesome functionality (stacked terminal windows with remote server load averages piped through title bar are a real nice-to-have for example). Floatable dock (i.e. scratchpad) is also pretty handy for skype, music player, notes, etc. Only issue that's really bothered me is a minor one: with stacke…

With i3, I never found an easy way to swap two windows at different levels of the tree. With awesome or bspwm, I can just mod+drag. Also, automatic tiling in various layouts is nice.

I don't usually have complex layouts, and I really appreciate the stacking from i3, so in that sense i3 wins for me, but I guess if your layouts are more complex, you might appreciate bspwm power in that regard.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#69

Post by iheartmemcache »

preek wrote: post #5
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

See also Spectacle: https://www.spectacleapp.com/ Maybe not the most configurable but in return you get something that works out of the box and doesn't require you to read 38 pages of README.

I'm a long time user of a similar tool called Divvy[1]. However both these tools are _not_ tiling window managers. They help us scale Windows manually by providing customizable shortcuts. A tiling window manager would take care of that automatically. Popular examples are i3[2] and XMonad[3]. As a user of both Linux and OSX, having no access to a real tiling WM is probably the biggest downside to me from an end users…

KWM looks like its actually hooking on the window creation event, so it functions like I3/ratpoison/xmonad/dwm/awesome/etc. I don't have a OS X machine to test it out (you'll pry Arch from my cold dead fingers, thank you very much), but it looks like the genuine deal compared to Divvy &co.

Re: Kwm, tiling window manager for OS X

#70

Post by wyclif »

mrits wrote: post #33
wyclif wrote: post #31

Kwm requires access to osx accessibility. I know what they mean by this, but it's written in an awkward manner.

OS X agglomerates functions like screen resizing and keyboard interaction under a silo labels "accessibility". I imagine OS X will prompt you to give access.

I know that; this is exactly what I was getting at when I said "I know what they mean..."

My only point, and it's a small one, was that there's probably a better way to write this.

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