I am using the ratpoison window manager, now. This window manager uses no windows; it works rather like Emacs’ internal window management (which predates windowing systems such as X) and GNU screen: By default, windows are maximized and you switch between them using a key combo. You can split the display horizontally and vertically in smaller areas, which can show their own windows. This completely breaks down with applications using many small windows such as the Gimp. But it plays nicely with web browsers, Emacs, terminals. Yay!
I wonder whether I will miss my windowmaker dock applications such as the phase of the moon, system load, etc. Guess not.
The XML::RSS stuff for my rich site summary (RSS) has given me endless trouble with the webhosting of emacswiki.org, because their XML library does not play nicely with the version of Perl they have installed. So I wrote a patch, and complained, and due to my complaint, they switched the installed versions a few times, resulting in various down times of my entire wiki, or of the RSS feed (when I learnt that `require’ works at run-time, while `use’ works at compile-time). Oh well.
I like the UTF-8 patches on UseModWiki – but I would have to get a working terminal, first, that can handle UTF-8! Hm. At the moment I think I am still using wterm, the terminal emulator that comes with windowmaker, the window manager I used before switching to ratpoison. Notice the elegance with which this diary entry goes full circle.