Le 09.04.2013 07:24, Joel Roth a écrit :
Sounds like you've got a Big Picture(tm) vision to create!
Yes, I know, but modern softwares globally tends to integrate features they should not, and if no-one does a software with clear objectives to restrict this problem, it will never change. Some people does, for few softwares, like i3's and uzbl's authors, but there are, in my opinion, still various tools to write. If we had each tools to do each tasks, it would still lacks, for me, one to synchronize the common configuration part: by example, vim, aptitude and uzbl uses hjkl to move the cursor, while i3 uses jklm (for my azerty keyboard, on a qwerty it is jkl; iirc). Since I prefer the i3 way (easier to place fingers) it means I have to configure those 4 keys for vim, aptitude, and uzbl. And for every other softwares, in fact, and this could probably be avoided, which all have their own configuration file syntax (which is not always easy to understand, and are sometimes *obscure* languages that people not necessarily want to learn: don't they have their own job to do first? Are they the tool, or are they using a tool?) and files located in various places (~/.config/ is not so widely as I would like)...
Since the tools we use often use text files as configuration, it is not hard to just merge/concatenate some (the common and the specific parts) into a valid and complete configuration file for each software.
For me, the takeaway is i3. It looks like an improvement over twm, fvwm and stumpwm (which I have used) and others that I tried and rejected for various reasons. (I was never attracted to the top-heavy DEs). The screencast[1] explains the rationale for the design decisions, and development is active. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnYN2CTb1hM
Well, I know that i3 is very active (as I said, I really like this software, and it is, in my opinion, one of the best I have used in all categories: easiness of config, lightweight, features only related to its job...), and the community around it explains nicely what are their goals: having a software which does only it's job, easy to hack (no stupid restriction to 2000 lines of code by example... can't remember the name of the twm which have such limitation), easy to configure (no programming skills needed: config is not a script, and does not needs to compile i3 to be modified) without fancy "features" (like rounded corners or transparency in decorations).
PS: your video is not available for me :)