xfwm4

[David Mohr]

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 8:33 PM, Diego Jacobi <jacobidiego at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Probably because of better integration, and probably because metacity
>> is using "gnome design philosophy".
>
> Right.
>
>>
>> >> If you feel insulted by me because of comparing xfwm and metacity then
>> >> you're wrong. It's not that. It's questioning things in the wrong way.
>> >> The basic message of your initial mails was to be interpreted as: "I
>> >> thought this was a lightweight desktop - now I prefer openbox - what's
>> >> your point in developing Xfce anyway?!"
>> >
>> > "I'am using openbox now"
>>
>> So why don't you keep using it? I don't see any issues with that,
>> except that maybe in the settings manager the WM configuration doesn't
>> show up... I myself used to use xfce with sawfish, and it worked just
>> fine (as would using another WM work in gnome).
>
> Maybe, but i like xfce and i want it to evolve in the features a like,
> obviusly as everybody, and i dont know what are the goals to evolve and if
> they include working with xfwm4.

You see, the issue with "evolving xfce" is not a lack of ideas. It's a
lack of man-power. I obviously don't speak for all of the xfce
developers, but my guess would be that noone would mind adding a
feature to xfwm4, like your hiding animations, if it is reasonably
coded and optional.
But unless you know how to code, discussion emails like yours
unfortunately don't get xfce much ahead.

> Maybe if i like a cool gnome theme or some simple but useful animations i
> can use metacity with xfce. And because they both seems to take the same
> resources, would it be wrong (in the sense of lightweight) to do that? use
> metacity with xfce? I couldnt know without technical details.
> OpenBox is nice but isnt written with gtk, so isnt as much pretty, and adds
> more libs to the shared memory, if i am not wrong.

If metacity with xfce works for you, you should use it, period. And
you can decide yourself, by whatever means you have, to decide if that
is lightweight enough for you or not.
And yes, you are probably right that openbox might add a bit more of
memory usage because it is using other libraries. Nonetheless it might
be more lightweight (I honestly have no clue). Again, just use what
works for you.

If I understand you correctly, then you would like the xfce project as
a whole to move ahead, and that's why you're interested in the
features of the stock components, like xfwm4. That's a nice intention,
but as I wrote above, xfce needs advocacy maybe, and mainly people
that can contribute code, not discussions about features or being
lightweight or not :-).

>>
>> > Because i want a very lightweight WM and a simple minimizing animation,
>> > which xfwm4 seems to not fit in. xfce is better than gnome respecting to
>> > programming philosophy, but is not lightweight to me.
>> > But i was comparing xfwm4 with metacity because the last is the WM of a
>> > heavy desktop and the first the WM of a light desktop and but are very
>> > similar. So why doesnt the heavy desktop use the lighter alternative if
>> > it
>> > is equal or better?
>>
>> Hm, so given the arguments in this email, why are you asking this
>> question to the xfce group, and not to the gnome people? They are free
>> to choose whatever WM they want, and they have switched in the past
>> (at some point sawfish was their default WM).
>
> Because i didnt know that xfwm4 is better than metacity, for me at the
> moment of writing they are both equal, with xfwm4 having less resources for
> animations, but maybe the problems that i am having can be bugs.

Yes, you could file the issues you are having with xfwm4 as bugs /
feature requests. That would help that they don't get forgotten. But
xfce has a lot of work that needs to be done, and you should not
expect someone to work on it soon.

>>
>> >> And if that's what arrives at the other end then you've definitely hit
>> >> the wrong tone, don't you think?
>> >
>> > Of course, but this is a reason to leverage the tone?
>> > Not answering would be a better answer.
>>
>> By the same note, people can respond to you "better not to ask, than
>> to ask in the wrong tone". Keep in mind that most people develop these
>> programs in their spare time, for fun and nothing else.
>
> Yep but at my side and at that moment, i have asked right. So why shouldnt i
> ask a right question?
> Badly or aggressively answering a wrong question is different.
> You can easily see that my english is not perfect, not even correct, so dont
> you have in mind that i can possible be saying something incorrectly but
> with good intentions?
> After all, how many people spend time in subscribe to a list to blame it for
> fun? That would be insane. And for me is the less possible side of
> interpretation.

Hehe, blaming can be fun :-). If your English is not that good, then
be more careful about what you say. Most people on this list are not
native speakers. Looking at the amount of text that you have written,
I think it's very reasonable to say that you could have spent more
time thinking about how you are translating your thoughts into
English, while maybe writing a bit less if you are pressed for time.

~David