[nzlug] ANN: PyWMII window manager

[David McNab]

Hi all,

As part of the work towards a 'slimbuntu', I've put quite a bit of time
into checking out the zillions of window managers out there, looking for
something that on one hand is usable and not hard to customise, but on
the other hand doesn't load hundreds of megs of subsystems and
abstraction layers, leaving folks with <=1GB RAM spending half their
time in swap.

What has come up as the ideal candidate is WMII -
http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii - a resident of the 'minimalist'
school, and which tries to come up with the best of tiled WMs like ion,
keyboard-friendly WMs like Ratpoison, and simple/light WMs like EvilWM.

WMII has some really great concepts in the mix, not the least of which
is its plan9 (virtual filesystem) interface. 

However, the default package of WMII puts me off somewhat with its
shell-centric configuration. As programming languages go, shell script
feels like a bike which has been turned into a truck, one dodgy #8-wire
back-shed hack at a time.

So I've come up with PyWMII, which:
 - is a packaging of WMII which uses python for its configuration
   and upper-level logic
 - allows easy implementation of event handlers - eg handlers for
   clicks on title bars, clicks on status bar, window open/close,
   desktop change etc
 - offers a rich suite of action methods for keyboard and mouse
   bindings
 - will feel especially comfortable to those who know a little python
 - supports custom popup menus, text prompts etc
 - allows almost unlimited intelligence to be built into the WM, via
   subclassing of the main WMII class

Adventurous *nix hackers will likely enjoy it. Python hackers will
likely love it.

I'd be interested in people's feedback and experiences with it, for
those who would like to download it and give it a run, because I'm
looking to use it as the default WM for slimbuntu.

It's mid-alpha code - pretty well working but needing some refinements
and probably 2^n bug fixes - but it shouldn't get the cat pregnant or
spill the pizza onto the carpet.

http://www.freenet.org.nz/pywmii

Cheers
David