[openbox] Using Next/PreviousWindow with client-list-combined-menu

[Tore Anderson]

* Dana Jansens

> Have you tried the directional focus actions?  They'll let you move
> around a cluttered desktop with a different perspective.

   I use those all the time, that's why I wrote them.  ;-)  But they're
  not always optimal.  I tend to often end up with a stack of Xterms
  exactly on top of each other - the directional focus actions will only
  be able to focus one of them (and I never know which one - often enough
  it's not the one on top of the stack, which is surprising every time).

   Also I find myself wanting to go to a window that I can't currently
  spot.  In that case I usually start out NextWindow-stepping, and if it
  takes me too long I abort, and open client-list-combined-menu instead
  and use up/down to get where I want.

   It would be nice if that could be done in one step.  Start NextWindow-
  stepping, and at the same time look for the window I'm looking for.  If
  it's a long way until I get there, start stepping faster (or keep Tab
  pressed).  If it was one of those rare occasions where I have my arm
  resting on the mouse, I could just use that instead.  I could quickly
  fly past the non-interesting windows in the list because I've already
  identified my target.  With the current NextWindow dialog I can't,
  because I don't know what my target is until I've reached it.

   I also sometimes want to go to windows I can't see, and I don't know
  which desktop it is on.  I've developed a habit to start NextWindow-
  stepping to find it (especially if I've got a hunch it's on the current
  desktop - I'm not using allDesktops=yes), which often enough ends up
  being futile.  With a NextWindow-dialog like client-list-combined-menu
  this will always work, since it's all desktops but sorted by desktop
  first (which is natural to me), if my hunch was right and the quickest
  way to get to my target was to just NextWindow-step a few times that's
  exactly what I'd end up doing, or if my hunch was wrong and that I had
  to scroll through a menu to get where I wanted the most quickly, that
  would also be exactly what I'd end up doing.  It would be optimal in
  both cases, no need to abandon one strategy in favour of another since
  they'd be the same!  :-)

   I'm really messy.  At the end of the day it's not unlikely that I have
  an average of 15-20 open windows on each of my 10 desktops.  With
  multiple monitors and Xinerama I've got lots of space for my mess, too.
  Sometimes that's rather unfortunate.  :-P  Usually it's all Xterms,
  save a web browser and a MUA.  So when I'm on a desktop with 20 Xterms
  and I want to use NextWindow to get where I want (directional focus is
  out of the question since I can't see it).  With the current list of
  identical icons I might just end up stepping through every one of them
  before finding it - should've used PreviousWindow instead, but there's
  no way to know that until it's too late...

   Whoa, that became a long post.  Sorry about that.  Hope some of the
  arguments made sense to you though.

Regards
-- 
Tore Anderson