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[wmx] feature suggestion: "dock"-like ability

Owen Cameron - Thu Aug 05 07:38:51 1999


Seems every windowmanager and it's dog have docks, clips, wharfs, etc these
days - and it occurs to me that a similar thing for wmx might not go astray,
though of course, implemented in a wmx-ish minimalistic approach. 

My idea runs something like this: define a corner on the screen as the "dock"
corner (configurable in Config.h) and when you move a window such that the
corner of the window meets the dock corner, the apps is docked.

The new docking point is then the corner of the docked-app and the screen
border. (which would in fact either give you 2 docking points - one
horizontally and one vertically, or you could define an direction for it to 
run along). In this way, you can dock multiple apps, with no size restrictions
of the app being docked. (as is the case in a fixed-dock like wmaker has)

A docked app would persist across all channels (but naturally have no effect
on the creation of new channels), and have no window decorations at all. 
(or maybe have mouse-over title-less border on the edge parallel to the
docked wall, so that they can be undocked?)

I think the ability to dock /anything/ would be the best part of a system 
like this. eg, dock the GIMP tool window while you work on multiple images
across multiple channels? or dock xconsole to keep it out of the way. 

Of course, docked apps would sit lower than anything else, and not be part 
of the switch-apps key combination or right-mouse-click. Should docked apps
sit on the windowlist menu? I'd suggest either no, or yes - but with a
distinction from other items in that menu. (italic?)

I'll leave it at that for further discussion. 

/Nemo
-- 
 .---------[ Owen Cameron, Wombat, Paddington, nemo, earth native ]---------.
 |   http://www.goldweb.com.au/~nemo/  <nemo@net.house.cx>     UIN:#5408336 |
 `--------------------------------------------------------------------------'
   |         "Whilst I wasn't looking I saw so much of interest.          |
   |          Yet when I turned to look it all vanished                   |
   |          and now I'm back with the same as I've always had."         |
   |          /-[Paul Battaini, 1996]-/                                   |
   `----------------------------------------------------------------------'


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