I will tile your face
Par jd le lundi, juin 15 2009, 20:35 - awesome - Lien permanent
Whoever defines awesome as a tiling window manager should think twice before saying such a thing.
In that case, I'll change some software description also:
- Firefox: FTP browser based on Mozilla
- Thunderbird: Software to send mails
- OpenOffice.org: Text editor
- GNOME: GTK based game collections
- Python: Zope language
A software being able to do something do not mean that the software is meant to be something. You can browse FTP servers with Firefox, but it's not mainly a FTP browser. You can send mails with Thunderbird, but it's not mainly what it does. You can edit text with OOo, but also do some spreadsheets stuff. You can play games with GNOME, but you can also do plenty of others stuff. You can write Zope and its applications with Python, but that does not mean Python is Zope.
So you can definitively do tiling window management with awesome, but you can do a lot more. It's not its primary feature. So it's not a tiling window manager.
Commentaires
So what is the best term to define what is awesome? A lightweight desktop environment?
I'd rather describe it as an custom window manager construction kit. Desktop environment would not really fit, as this is usually expected to have some applications that come together with the window manager, which is not true for awesome (awesome-client won't really count).
Nevertheless I have to admit I usually think of awesome as a tiling WM, as I use it that way most of the time, and I would bet 95% of its users do that, too. Most of the shipped layouts are tiled layouts, or somehow related (magnifier, max, etc.)
All the tiling code is 400 SLOC. awesome is aroudn 20 K SLOC.
So even if you use the tiling mode heavily...
I don't get it. What is wrong in describing a soft by telling what we main use it for ? Even if the soft allows to do a lot more powerful funny things.
For example, I would reverse your example about firefox. I claim firefox is a html browser. The fact is it is much more powerful and I can use it as a document viewer, download manager and so on. So clearly, it is restrictive to describe him as a html browser. Anyway, I prefer it this way
A "tiling window manager" means something to me contrary to "a custom window manager construction kit" (despite it's more accurate).
By the way, awesome is mainly "awesome" and that's the best description ever :D
I'm just curious about what you use Thunderbird for :-p