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Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

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Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#41

Post by mateuszf »

aerique wrote: post #28
mateuszf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another vote for Ion3, I tried dozens tiling wm-s, none of them come even close to ion3.

How does it compare to i3? After evaluating quite some tiling window managers i3 ended up as my favourite. However I can't recall evaluating Ion3.

ion3 is one of the tools that you start to appreciate only after you use it for some time and you can't just explain it by enumerating features. Because alone those features don't sound that impressive and distinct. But it's the combination that matters.

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#42

Post by dllthomas »

icantthinkofone wrote: post #40
shapeshed wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm another advocate for dwm and st. Compiling dwm takes seconds (it is a small codebase) and keeps configuration out of the core.

Compile time never trumps best practice.

It's not "we need to keep compile time down to seconds, therefore configure in the source"; it's "compile time is seconds (if that), so there's not much difference between configuring in the source and configuring in a file except complexity". One part of the motivation for the best practice you cite is that compiling can be complicated and take a long time, and configuration changes should be quick. This is a solid argument against that portion of the motivation. Following practices because they are known as best practices when the motivations for those practices don't apply has another name - cargo culting.

Edited to add: Which is not to say that this best practice should be simply discarded, but to say that the appropriate response is to point to the other motivations for it and determine whether they are more important than the upsides of configuring in the source.

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#43

Post by keenerd »

blux wrote: post #22
joaomsa wrote: post #21

Really dislike software with configuration baked into the code, every key binding and experiment requires recompilation which prevents managing it sanely through a package manager. I get the appeal of "minimal" in this case, but it just doesn't work for me.

This is kind of a default approach for minimal WMs (probably inspired by DWM).

Do you consider an 85 megabyte configuration parser to be minimal?

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#44

Post by pweissbrod »

Rampoina wrote: post #26
pweissbrod wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a great list thank you! I never heard of i3wm I promise to read the docs. Yes, microsoft windows. I use version 8.1 and while most end users loathe the interface I've studied the "windows" key and "context menu" key and found it quite fast to perform all my daily operations (except web browsing) mouse-free. My experience with linux is that some programs are great but too many dont follow standard on very common…

I use awesome WM and I didn't need to customize any of the keyboard shortcuts; it uses the windows key as the modifier key and as far as I know no other program uses it. Also I don't get how the Windows 8.1 window management comes even close to the 2 programs you mentioned (Ratpoison and Awesome WM). With both of those (or any other tiling manager) you can do much more than just maximize and snap a window to the side…

Maybe I need to invest a little more time into it. I agree with you that the docking keyboard shortcuts are far less powerful in windows. In practice however, this limitation doesnt really become an issue for me. Maybe it is because I have tunnel vision but 2 programs per monitor with a quick means of switching things around hasnt left me wishing I could have 3,4+ programs per monitor

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#45

Post by Rampoina »

I really love vim keybindings and I use them wherever I can (firefox with vimperator, the shell etc), however I'm not sure that modes make sense on a window manager. In my opininon it doesn't have that many operations, and they don't differ that much from each other, I think that having to think which mode you're on and which one you need to use would only introduce friction and slow you down (in this case the normal mode is not that normal, i switch windows as often or more than I create new ones or switch layouts).

Another thing is that the operators, motions, and objects each need its modifier keys; in my opinion that just misses the point of having modes and one of the strong points of the vim keybindings. Because of that it was really hard for me to understand how to use Howm: the first time around I skipped the configuration part and went directly to the examples, and you don't mention anywhere there that q4c (for example) is really Alt_L+q, Alt_L+4, Alt_L+c. When I read the configuration part and the configuration file, to see each keybinding I got it, but still it took some googling to figure out that I needed to use xmodmap to know which keys are the MODXMASK.

EDIT: It seems you do mention that the operators, motions and objects need a modifier key, I missed it. Still, I think that it would be clearer if the keys to press were explicitly indicated (like Alt_L+q, Alt_L+4, Alt_L+c)

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#46

Post by hunt »

Rampoina wrote: post #45

I really love vim keybindings and I use them wherever I can (firefox with vimperator, the shell etc), however I'm not sure that modes make sense on a window manager. In my opininon it doesn't have that many operations, and they don't differ that much from each other, I think that having to think which mode you're on and which one you need to use would only introduce friction and slow you down (in this case the normal…

I have some more ideas for operations to add, this is the first release I have done and so it is lacking some features. I agree that some people might not find certain commands to be in the correct mode. You can change that from the configuration file though. I certainly take your point on board about moving being in normal mode and will have a think about whether or not this should be the default.

That's really great feedback about the documentation, I'll make it more obvious which modifiers keys need to be held down. Again, you can change the modifier key used for operators, counts and motions so that howm only uses one modifier key. This is how I had it for most of howm's development. I changed to using two modifier keys as I felt that it was nicer to have a logical separation between the commands and the operators, motions and counts. It also meant that some keys could be reused but with different modifiers.

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#47

Post by Rampoina »

hunt wrote: post #46
Rampoina wrote: post #45

I really love vim keybindings and I use them wherever I can (firefox with vimperator, the shell etc), however I'm not sure that modes make sense on a window manager. In my opininon it doesn't have that many operations, and they don't differ that much from each other, I think that having to think which mode you're on and which one you need to use would only introduce friction and slow you down (in this case the normal…

I have some more ideas for operations to add, this is the first release I have done and so it is lacking some features. I agree that some people might not find certain commands to be in the correct mode. You can change that from the configuration file though. I certainly take your point on board about moving being in normal mode and will have a think about whether or not this should be the default. That's really grea…

I think they shouldn't use modifiers at all, ideally you would enter the mode with MODIFIER+modekey and then press the normal keys: q2c. I don't know if that's possible with your current program but that's what I meant.

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#48

Post by hunt »

Rampoina wrote: post #47
hunt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some more ideas for operations to add, this is the first release I have done and so it is lacking some features. I agree that some people might not find certain commands to be in the correct mode. You can change that from the configuration file though. I certainly take your point on board about moving being in normal mode and will have a think about whether or not this should be the default. That's really grea…

I think they shouldn't use modifiers at all, ideally you would enter the mode with MODIFIER+modekey and then press the normal keys: q2c. I don't know if that's possible with your current program but that's what I meant.

That is an idea I was considering, I just wasn't sure if people would find it to get in the way of normal program usage.

It would require more data to be sent backwards and forwards to the X11 server, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#49

Post by Rampoina »

hunt wrote: post #48
Rampoina wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they shouldn't use modifiers at all, ideally you would enter the mode with MODIFIER+modekey and then press the normal keys: q2c. I don't know if that's possible with your current program but that's what I meant.

That is an idea I was considering, I just wasn't sure if people would find it to get in the way of normal program usage. It would require more data to be sent backwards and forwards to the X11 server, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

It's a cool project but again I'm not sure what I would gain from the modes, counts and motions. Right now I use Awesome WM which is really similar to howm without changing modes, and without using the motions and counts (but I don't really find myself wanting to use counts to move windows).

Re: Show HN: Howm – A Vim-like tiling X11 window manager

#50

Post by rsync »

mcginleyr1 wrote: post #14
rakoo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum... Are we talking about the same Windows ? Have you tried other tiling window managers ? i3 [0] comes to mind, but XMonad [1] and Awesome WM [2] are 2 other popular choices in this domain. There are plenty of others to pick from, too [3]. [0] http://i3wm.org/ [1] http://xmonad.org/ [2] http://awesome.naquadah.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager

I always liked Ion3 a lot despite the conflicts the author had with distros. http://notion.sourceforge.net/ is a fork of it that is maintained.

It's really too bad that I never archived:

http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/

which was his blog, and there are not archive.org copies from 2009 and before. He had a lot of very thought provoking and iconoclastic things to say about OSS and the OSS movement that I found very interesting.

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