@Alan Stone, ruffwooff thanks.
In these show your desktop threads, we see lots of pretty wallpapers but get no idea about workflow and what makes it better for the user. Usually it comes down to a fight between the terminal/desktop, tiling/stacking, keyboard/cursor or just plain bling.
Lots of youtube clips look choreographed and quite spectacular but when you see a tiling WM with big gaps between the tiles over use of the golden ratio it's failed already. Even a master with 2 or 3 smaller slaves takes up more screen than a well configured panel but offers little on a single workspace.
How many of these windows/tiles are you actually looking at and any one time? I could use a well configure notion with tabs and multiple workspaces but as someone once said around here "There's no hacker in my Granny". It fails on the intuitive front. Like wise stacking window managers with icons on the desktop, iconifing, and dragging windows around the screen to find what it's hidden are all failing at a base level.
re: my setup
I think this is the most up to date ramblings, though over a year old so not current
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/dr ... 00000.html
First off the naming: tbdtitw was a wee bit of a joke and drove everyone mad trying to say it and type it. Hence it was renamed microde (micro-DE). It boots to the desktop on my laptop with ps_mem showing 56MB, but I discovered the name was in use so tbditw just got shortened to TBD. At some point it was going to get a separate control panel but now it will have a separate config like LXDE so as to not bork a bog standard openbox.
I've tried many wm's, more than 20 in an effort to get a lighter but still feature full desktop. A desktop that anyone can learn in a few days but they never quite get the sweet spot of my current setup. The first thing I do when trying another setup is run fittstool. If it handles it OK then all my already learnt actions still work, A massive help when trying new environments.
All essential information should be available without touching the keyboard or mouse. For me that's:
date & time
CPU. So you know if something is still starting like a full blown browser on first start or if an application has hung
what's running on all workspace/desktops and what workspace is focused and which window is active on that workspace. Even if there are several windows open, and they're the same application. e.g. 3 leafpad windows.
This means I don't auto hide tint2. It also means tint2 is themed to have 1 pixel gaps and no padding or curved corners as this looses space. Basically it's as small as can be but showing as much info as possible. The font is likewise a Sans 8. As small as I can comfortably read and everything that's not a workspace doubles as a multiple launcher with up to 5 items. LMB, MMB, RMB, Wheel-UP, Wheel-down. That with fittstool means I get up to 102 launchers with tool-tips using the same action. Move mouse, read tip, click/scroll. Once you've got the location/muscle memory move+click/scroll. You can of course have 102 keybinds as well.
I also get the root menu from any blank space either in tint2 or blank spaces in between the fittstool compass points. It's a lot of bang for your buck, all this using less than a 217x217 window. Even on my netbook screen 1024x768 a window that size is and issue but a panel is not as it doesn't create dead space with my maximized windows.
The only time I run an application full screen is MPV when I watch a film.
It's very rare to need more than two of the TYPE "normal" (see xprop) windows open on the same workspace/desktop. Things like dia, Sodipodi and the old versions of the gimp get configured in openbox.rc as do other not normal TYPE windows. In fact nearly all the applications I use have a setting in rc.xml. Hence it's well over 2000 lines with comments.
The things I'd do to improve my setup:
Steal some of the better ideas from tiling wms for the rare occasions I'd use them.
window splitting only splits the last 2 active windows so if the last 2 active windows were leafpad on workspace 3 and geany on workspace 4 that's what it splits! Having to select and sometimes move the windows to be split. It only takes a second but is ungraceful. I like how Icewm tiles more than 2 windows well across the active workspace. I have wumwum it works, is light but a bit clunky with dual monitors so I never really got into it.
Be able to select the area between split windows and resize both at the same times. Dragging the edge of each widow irks me. I could set this up in openbox rc with the keyboard but not good for granny and I'm to lazy to spend the time
Other setups:
Honourable mentions to window lab, flwm and notion for at least trying to think ootb. If you want a light conventional desktop icewm has a very large feature set and can look good to but gets overlooked for shiny new heavy and usually less feature full alternatives.
When I installed flwm. I use flwm_topside because English text flows left to right, not up and down. The same reason I never put a panel on the side of the screen.
I also seem to recall installing v-desks on one of them to give multiple desktops on wm's that don't support them ootb.
Happy Hogmanay