Designing a window manager and need your input

[Tequila]

Hi gang. I'm looking for your honest feedback in what you like in a window manager. As much as I love Fluxbox it has some things that annoy me like the iconified windows in the tool bar being global, i.e not specific to each virtual desktop and how a restart causes all your iconified windows to be uniconfied and several other small things. I've played around with IceWM and it has the tool bar features that I love, that is each iconified window is only visible in the tool bar when its associated desktop is active. But there are some things that bother me about IceWM also. Another thing I miss is WindowMaker's superior configuration utility. It's built-in and has every conceivable setting and beautiful GUI design. I miss being able to browse a directory of backgrounds and select from there rather than manually adding it to a resource file.

Soooo.... I was thinking about taking the base Blackbox code and making the following changes:

1. Toolbar like IceWm but without the other fluff. Take the look of Fluxbox's and combine with the icon display behavior of IceWm and you have the perfect fit IMHO. Would still maintain a global list of icons like in blackbox/fluxbox in the right-click menu but when displaying them in the toolbar only display those that are owned by the current virtual desktop lke IceWm does.

2. A built-in configuration utility like WindowMaker's. This would be a lot of work so this would be last priority.

3. When restarting, don't uniconify the iconified windows in the tool bar.

4. Support for anti-alised fonts like in Waimea and Enlightenment.

5. No unnecessary fluff. I want this baby lean and mean, not too much bigger than Blackbox itself. I don't care for the Fluxbox tabs for example. I'm even debating leaving out gnome and kde support.

6. Double click on window title acts as shade. I love that feature and can't stand it when other window managers make it maximize/minimize instead like IceWm argh.

IMHO, that would make the perfect window manager but I'm looking for your input as well. What features appeal to you most with your window manager and why? What features would make the perfect window manager in your opinion?

As for programming I'm no newbie but this would be my first foray into open source. I have 10 years experience of unix programing most of that being networking, 2 years of Microsoft MFC (I know, yuck..) and a wee bit of X progamming. I got burnt out on coding and haven't touched a line in 2 years but I've been looking through the fluxbox and blackbox code and suddenly got that itch to code again :)

I hate to write yet another window manager but darnit, I just can't seem to find the perfect one :)

So, feel free to give me your honest opinion.

[Timothy L. Miller]

Have windows remember their size and position onscreen like in windows. This is the main thing that annoys me with fluxbox, every time I start up galeon, I have to move it because it covers gkrellm. No matter what I do, it always starts smack-dab in the middle of the screen (although it does remember it's size). I even have flux set to position windows right to left, but it's no use, galeon still starts in the middle, most annoying thing in the world.
On a side note, you don't like tabs?? They rock!!

[alfalfa]

I'm right handed. I think it'd be much more efficient if all scrollbars, window buttons, gadgets and gizmos were on the right side. Better put, I'd like the option to configure which side all of went on so it could be moved around to taste. Just my 2 cents :D

[Okie]

you are way ahead of me, i wish you all the good luck in your project, when it gets ready for the desktop post a link here at LNO so others can give it a spin :)