mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (Real Amigas have keyboard garages) Meyer) (08/16/90)
Well, Solbourne is no longer (or never was, depending on who you ask) claiming any intellectual ownership of virtual screens. So I've got (and am happily using) vtwm. It's not really very much like what 2.0 provides. However, it does provide some features that would be nice to have in 2.0. 1) The "virtual desktop". This is a window that shows the entire virtual space. It shows all open windows (well, most), and a representation of the screen. The nice feature is that you can move windows by grabbing them in that window and moving them. Ditto for moving the physical screen around in the virtual screen. 2) Utilities you can tie to function keys or menus: pan (by a user-specified amount) in each of four directions, or go back to 0,0. I recall seeing at least one of these mentioned here. 3) The ability to "nail" a window to the physical screen. A simple example would be a menu-bar clock, which would be nice to always have in that portion of the screen. Then again, maybe not. I keep several things nailed in vtwm (icon list, biff, and the virtual desktop window). If there's a facility in 2.0 that allows a user program to change what portion of the virtual screen you're looking at, then the first two should be straightforward (if not simple): 1) When started, lock intuition, traverse the WB window list to get current windows geometries, SetFunction OpenWindow to get the geometry of newly opened windows. Ditto for things that change the window geometry (hmm - how long is that list?). Use the placewindow-like technics to move windows. 2) An commodities utility to catch Amiga-Arrow keys to do panning, to add to the existing (?) home function. 3) This looks much harder. Anyone want to comment? Now, could some sharp programmer have all this implemented before I get my 3000, so I don't have to bother writing it (1/2 :-)? Thanx, <mike -- Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven Mike Meyer Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; mwm@relay.pa.dec.com Und aller-mumsige Burggoven decwrl!mwm Die mohmem Rath' ausgraben.