Ok so I have a LOT of work ahead of me – I know this! I am also trying to do this whilst juggling a full-time job, a band, and time with my family, so it isn’t going to get done over-night (let’s hope my short attention span doesn’t get the better of me!)
The goals I wish to accomplish with my Windows/Desktop manager are:
- A beautiful, simple, and FREE environment
- Extremely lightweight
- Customizable through BSD-style .rc & .conf files
- A Tiling Window Manager with a few layout algorithms (with little or no window decorators)
- Optional Composite layout (allows for transparency and shadows)
- Easy to install (initially targeted for ArchLinux, but will eventually run on Ubuntu and may be others?)
- Have an integrated version of WebKit (possible via WebKitGtk?)
- Integrate Social features into the Manager such as Gmail, Twitter and IM (via Pidgin‘s libpurple?)
Here are what I believe my first steps are:
- Create a Design document and stick to it!
- Finish reading my X11/XLib book
- Read the relevant info from the FreeDesktop.org site
- Look though DWM (and possibly other Window Managers) source code
- Decide whether to make it OpenGL based or Cairo (or multi/others?)
Any suggestions from anyone out there would be mostly appreciated!
I intend to release all the code via either a GPL or MIT/BSD licence on GitHub.
Here we go….
