On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 04:45:44AM -0400, Dave Eckhardt wrote: > In response, a serious, non-flame, question: what's the realistic > alternative? It would be possible, if arduous, to replace rio with > a clone of, say, fvwm. But what about fluxbox and icewm and sawfish > and windowmaker and enlightenment? Is "the problem" really rio per > se, or is the problem that for each person rio isn't the thing they > already use? > > I guess my question translates into "Is there *one* X window manager > which, if cloned for Plan 9, would solve the 'rio problem'?".
I doubt that. I think that what is missing is the freedom in choosing your workflow. Even if it's training wheels until you get used to the system and can drop the cruft and stick to plain rio. OTOH I think that the reason more gui's and wm's keep popping up is that they're all broken. People switch when something that seems to be a better iteration comes along or when they have no choice or energy to make it. I think that there's two kinds of software: The clear-cut cases, where you can work on the flawless small sharp tool to do the exact one thing and the vague messy stuff where you can't see what perfection is and instead just make a little less incomplete or broken thing and see how that works. UI is stuck in the latter. I won't repeat the argument that frames should be managed by a program with a policy and not by the user with a pointing device[0]. Others have their own demands. Rio isn't an unsurpassable wall for me, so maybe I'm not the one to give an answer. It's just tedious and I don't believe in it. I'll need some time and energy to adjust. Thanks to tip9ug and Inferno, I should have the means to start. I'm also happy with the small sharp tool -type documentation, but there should be some good book or introductory material for the system (there's at least that one book, url posted to 9fans earlier). That's the way you can find out what tools you can use and what you can (typically) do with them. That or rummaging around a lot (lookman, ls...). Still; AHS, ASS. [0] Oops.
