Re: minimize-frame ?

[Arthur Miller]

Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor
<help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

> Arthur Miller wrote:
>
>> It is pretty similar to how Emacs deals with its windows;
>> but I can't tell much, I just tried it once long time ago.
>> I am not so fun of tiling managers either. I used to use dwm
>> for quite a while, and even had my own fork and some custom
>> layouts, but eventually I don't like it. I come up to
>> conclusion that I still manage my windows, just doing
>> different managing operations than with floating wm.
>
> In Debian as the dwm package,
>
>   $ aptitude show dwm
>   dynamic window manager dwm is a minimalistic window manager.
>   It manages windows in tiling and floating modes. Either mode
>   can be applied dynamically, depending on the application in
>   use and the task performed.
>  
>   In tiling mode windows are managed in a master and stacking
>   column. The master column contains the window which needs
>   most attention at a time, whereas the stacking column
>   contains all other windows in a stack. Dialog windows are
>   managed floating, however.
>  
>   In floating mode windows can be resized and moved freely.
>   Windows are grouped by tags. All windows with a specific tag
>   can be viewed at a time. But each window may contain more
>   than one tag, which makes it visible in several views.
>  
>   Please notice that dwm is currently customized through
>   editing its source code, so you probably want to build your
>   own dwm packages. This package is compiled with the default
>   configuration and should just give you an idea about what
>   dwm brings to your desktop.
>
> No doubt, an exciting new brand of dynamic configuration!
>
> Jesus, is it this complicated? Stacked, tiled, and floating
> modes? Yeah, if you have tons of windows. How many do you guys
> have? I have 2, one xterm/tmux/zsh and one mpv :)
I have mostly three. But really two. Half of the screen is Emacs,
changing from fullscreen to 50% screen width and other 50% of screen
width is Firefox. I have st below since it is the app that "owns" my X
session. I use Compiz, actually just "grid" plugin so I can switch
windows on one key priss to left/right half, or a quadrant. Sometimes
happens that I have another window, like Gimp or Okular, or something
else. I will usually stack it on top of Emacs, and then send window
behind with a key press so I can cycle between Emacs and other app. It
is quite fast, just a key too. That is provided by Compiz and grid
plugin, but I would like to actually do this with something else, maybe
Emacs itself. I use Rofi if I have to switch to other screen half. I was
looking to make a helm app to do this from Emacs with either wmctrl or
xdotool, but I haven't got time.

> I remember I used Openbox (not recommended, big and slow,
> visually unappealing) and feh (retro-futuristic, should be
> robust, looked like something out of the 80s tho, and that not
> in a good way; I had that not on Linux but on a SunOS -
> Openbox I had on Linux tho - they claim to be "very fast" in
> the Debian package description ('aptitude show dwm') but this
> killer 1-2 of
>
>   picom &
>   openbsd-cwm &
>   ...
>
> is _much_ faster, and better/easier to config, also.
> Complete control or sufficient control for me anyway of the
> windows and the possibility to fire off shell commands by just
> storing them first, typing them in the WM config file -
> awesome :) Actually I haven't been this happy with anything
> computer-ish since I switched from mplayer to mpv!
> <https://dataswamp.org/~incal/conf/.cwmrc>
> <https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#mpv>
> <https://dataswamp.org/~incal/SOFTWARE>
>
> But while mpv is huge, cwm is small...
>
> I think feh kicked in on the SunOS system when the previous
> WM or something else failed, as a fallback system...
I hae used lot's of different wms through time. Olwm (wm from Open
Windows from Solaris) was really, really fast, I used it back in 1999 or
so, but it was pain to get to work in X11 on Linux. Some guy patched it,
I have no idea if it still would work. Mwm was also realy fast, and
probably still is if you can live with giant decorations. But fast were
also blackbox, fluxbox, fwwm2 and lots of other stuff, enlightement and
afterstep were also fast back then, and there was some other clone of
next similar to afterstep that I used for a while, WindowMaker or
something that actually let me turn off decorations. That was always a
big thing for me, another reason why i run Compiz nowadays.