[XWEM]: Re: first impressions

[lg]

Sorry for delayed reply, but i still can't access my mailbox.  So i'm 
using strange way to write mail.  Sitting here nearly in forest, copying 
from web archive parts of Jens's mail and pasting them to web interface 
of my mailbox, without access to xwem, drinking beer and trying to 
compose reply.

NOTE: If you're not that one Jens Petersen who knows about xwem, just 
skip rest of message.

> Hi,
> I finally got xwem to work yesterday (second time lucky? ;).

Yes, actually it is pretty complicated thing to start xwem, but since you 
 finally got it started shows that you are interested in it :)
 
> Well actually I finally heeded the advice of actually running
> it from ".xinitrc".  Is it known why it can't be started from
> a lonely xterm say instead after X has started up?

Not yet known, but i think for same reason Steve can't run applications 
just after xwem started.  However i can't reproduce such behaivour :(

> Overall I am very impressed, and it reminded me a little
> of the old days with gwm, scwm, and maybe less so sawfish.
> Lisp wm's are nice if a little brittle sometimes. ;-)

Hehe, yeah, using lisp for such thing as managing and organizing 
something gives advantage over others, because of great flexebility of 
language itself

> I have problems with the latest pre-release xwem pkg though
> (xwem-1.14 with xlib-1.12). Particularly it seems to hang for
> me pretty reproducibly with say H-x b or H-x 4 b say, as does
> H-x r say when all the frames are hidden.

Yes, it is possible to hang not more than 5 seconds, because of some 
strange places in Xt library and maybe XEmacs itself.  If you've got hang
 and than xlib error such as 'X timeout' it is most possible that there 
bug in xlib.

> I like the concept of windows and frames like in Emacs
> and being able to move between windows with the cursor
> keys is cool (however I fail to understand why in the default
> keybindings H-left moves one right and H-up down, etc:
> I found it unintuitive enough that I interchanged the
> left/right and up/down H- bindings in my xwemrc.el file.

haha, great!  It is a bug!  Point calculation is one-pixel incorrect .. 
is is already fixed in my local xwem copy.

> I was hoping to actually move to xwem as my window manager
> but it is not quite stable enough for me yet I guess: or
> I haven't gotten used enough to its perculiarities yet? :)
> Anyway I'm sure I'll be playing with it sometimes because
> it is so much fun...

Actually, telling you by secret :), i dont think xwem is good choice for 
default wm, because it is buggyfull, eats many many cpus and memory, 
performing things slower than others.  Seriously i think xwem can be used
 on desktop as default wm after some overfixes, which i'm working on now .. 
they includes:

  o X Events mechansm reimplementation using `enqueue-event' technique.

  o Drawing queues, which increases wigdgets outdrawing speed.

  o Rewriting manda(manage database) stuff, to make it more easy and
    transparent.

This fixes will increase stability and speed of both, xlib and xwem.

> Anyone found a good way to run gnome-panel in it?
> Do systray apps work with it?  I guess some configuration
> is needed for that?

Hmm, don't know, maybe you are looking for xwem-rooter.el?  BTW: xwem 
implements XEMBED protocol to collect dock applications, so if you has 
some application which interact with pannel(system tray) using xembed 
protocol, xwem will be able to hold them.

> Also noticed that sometimes when closing windows (actually
> how to do that directly with xwem?) focus didn't seem to get
> passed over to the window underneath.

Hmm, `H-x 7 0' is soft client killing, i.e. client notified that he must 
die, and it(client) performes things to closedown everything associated 
with it.  Clients with soft-killing support marked with '#' in its tab.

Also there is hard killing - `H-u H-x 7 0', will ''just kill'' client.

> Also a small feature request: command completion for launching
> apps would be really nice - I mean tab in H-x r etc.

Hmm, it should i think .. show value of `xwem-launcher-shell-completion-table'

> Perhaps there were some other things I wanted to mention.
> I'll write again when they come to mind.

Yes yes, but sorry that i can't full-help because of inaccessaty to my 
workplace (i'm on vacation currently), but Steve is already xwem hacker 
and he can advice in any situation :)

> Keep up the great work!  And thank you for xwem and xlib!  :-)

Hehe, of course, keep your eyes on xwem, it will move forward with time. 
 And also great thank for your interest and effort you've provided to 
start xwem!

And sorry for my especially ugly english, after disk drive crash i've 
lost my english vocabulary that i was composing last two years :(

--
lg