Re: [i3] i3wm buttons

  • From: Michael Stapelberg <michael@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: Головин Андрей <ag-3d@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2014 21:06:09 +0100

Hi Головин,

Thanks for your suggestion. I have CC'ed i3-discuss, where this should
have been sent to in the first place.

Головин Андрей <ag-3d@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

-----------
i3 buttons.
-----------

idea: add buttons to i3wm
Why:
i3wm`s problem: it is aims only on geeks, not on usual users:
This is not a problem. i3 is a niche window manager and we are very
aware of that. Most usual users have no interest in using a tiling
window manager, and we have no interest in accomodating novice users.

- user cant see, how to mnipulate i3wm, he need to learn i3 hotkeys.
Which is good, because then she knows the hotkeys, and they are very
useful :).

- i3wm need keybord for even simple things, like closing window, what
is not always userful.
Agreed. There is ticket #558 though, which is actively being worked on,
to improve mouse usage of i3.

- it can slow down users (launch applications is not so simple, and if
program have a lot of hotkeys, like blender, user need to switch his mind
form program to i3wm)
What about users, already familiar to i3wm?:
- Of course, user can remove all buutons, he can easily #comment it in
config.
- add to i3wm first launch(where is win-alt choise) "show buttons",
default answer sloud be yes(! becase new user usualy just click
default, familiar have more attention and he easily choose)
We don’t want to make i3-config-wizard a configuration tool. The only
reason it exists in the first place is because configs that are tailored
to your keyboard layout _have to_ be generated at runtime. The reason it
also offers you a choice between the alt and the windows key as a
modifier is that we strongly prefer the windows key (due to less clashes
with other applications), but not all laptops have it. Perhaps we can
drop it in a couple of years.

just adding buttons to i3 can make avalibe this awesome tiling manager
for every user, you can get more donates!
I don’t need more donations.

I hope I have explained well enough why I don’t think adding buttons is
a good idea, especially if it’s for catering to a group of users which
we explicitly don’t want to have at all. By focusing on power users, we
can make much better software for them, and the market for novice/light
users is already saturated with programs like GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE and
others.

I’ll leave the rest of the proposal in the mail for transparency:

Window buttons:
add buttons to title of window(left of right corner):
image:
(it can be just xbm for begining, but png would be better)
(for example, xbm color is color of title text)
click this image: this call command for current window:
for example 'kill'
image is in ~/.i3
example: ~/.i3/close.xbm or ~/.i3/close.png
In config:

#button place image command
button left close.png kill

(First button on left side is first button with "left" in config, second is
second...)
examples:

#here .png can be .xbm if you now want to make only .xbm
#close button on right
button right close.png kill
#full scree on the left
button left full.png fullscreen
#floating mode (simular to maximaze button)
button left floating toggle
#split in horizontal orientation
button left splith.png split h


Buttons for i3bar (panel of i3):
you can do it, because you did system tray
launch buttons - reson, why i use gnome-panel, not i3bar
add buttons to i3bar:
- left (from the left of workspace butons)
- right (from the right of tray)
- ?at center?
In config it is in "bar":

bar {
status_comand i3status
button right tabbed.png layout tabbed
button right splite.png layout toggle split
button left /usr/pixmaps/firefox.png exec firefox
}


--
Best regards,
Michael

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. i3-discuss
  3. Archive
  4. 01-2014