If people are hacking on the taskbar/iconbar stuff, I'll resend my
fervent wish for the "perfect taskbar feature"... and I don't even think
it should be that hard, at least not the basic idea... but I'm not an X
hacker.
----------------------------------------
From: "Paul D. Smith" <psmith_at_baynetworks.com>
Reply-To: psmith_at_baynetworks.com
To: Fvwm Workers List <fvwm-workers_at_hpc.uh.edu>
Subject: Fvwm Icon Manager enhancement
Date: Wed Jul 23 11:56:00 -0400 1997
OK, I've been playing with various icon managers, from fvwm2's builtin
iconbox and windowlist, to FvwmIconMan, to the task bar that fvwm95
uses, to tkgoodstuff's windowlist tool.
All of them are cool, but none do quite what I want. I think what I
want would be most excellent (just saw Bill & Ted's again on Fox last
week :) so I'm asking if anyone can point me to something that can do
it, or is interested in modifying their particular manager to do it.
First, I have _tons_ of icons. Most of them are of two basic types:
Emacs frames and rxvt windows. There are some others thrown in for good
measure (ical, tkman, maybe a WWW browser, occasionally Frame, etc.)
The rxvt windows are also of a few discrete flavors: for example, we use
ClearCase at work and I have a specific ClearCase class of rxvt windows
that are set to ClearCase views.
I have so many icons they can't all be shown at once. And I really hate
scrollbars in an icon manager; too cumbersome.
Here's what I'd like:
* An interface like the 95 button bar where you get a button per task,
then you click on it to raise/focus it, etc.
* BUT! It should be possible to define a _set_ of windows that would
appear under one button. Then I'd define one set for Emacs frames,
one for ClearCase view rxvt's, etc. And I'd get just one button no
matter how many Emacs frames I had. The set would be based on X
resource class/instance names, of course.
When you picked a button that represented multiple windows, you'd
get a popup listing each of the windows with its title (like the
fvwm2 builtin windowlist). Then you'd pick the one you wanted from
that list.
* The button bar should have an option for hiding itself, like win95
and the new tkgoodstuff can, where it becomes a thin line against
the edge of the screeen when the mouse moves off of it, then
reappears when you move back over it.
* In an ideal world, you could also define actions for each set; the
actions would appear on the popup above the list of windows,
separated by a line. The actions could of course be commands, fvwm
modules, or whatever.
Right now I have an FvwmForm configured to start ClearCase views; it
asks for a view name and invokes rxvt with a command to set to that
view.
So, for my rxvt ClearCase "set", I'd want my popup menu to be
something like:
.________________________.
| New View |
`------------------------'
' psmith_view1 _at_ lemming `
| psmith_view2 _at_ bronto |
| psmith_view3 _at_ whaler |
`------------------------'
Then when "new view" was picked, my FvwmForm module is kicked off.
Anyway, you get the idea.
I _dream_ about this interface now that I've imagined it. Can someone
help? :)
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul D. Smith <psmith_at_baynetworks.com> Network Management Development
"Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are my opinions--Bay Networks takes no responsibility for them.
--
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Received on Wed May 13 1998 - 15:27:49 BST