[xmonad] Announcement: Bluetile

[Jan Vornberger]

Hello list!

Here we go now, the 'official' announcement of Bluetile: A modern tiling
window manager with a gentle learning curve. As noted before, it is the
result of my school project I presented a while ago
(http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.xmonad/7458/). Here is
a brief description of Bluetile:

  Bluetile is a tiling window manager for X based on xmonad. Windows are
  arranged automatically to tile the screen without gaps or overlap,
  maximising screen use. Bluetile's focus lies on making the tiling
  paradigm easily accessible for users coming from traditional window
  managers by drawing on known conventions and making all features
  available using the mouse. It also tries to be usable 'out of the
  box', making configuration unnecessary. 

  Features include:
    * Hybrid approach: Stacking window layout & tiling layouts available
    * Maximizing & minimizing windows in all layouts
    * All features accessible from mouse, as well as keyboard
    * Good multihead support
    * Designed to integrate with the GNOME desktop environment

  Website at http://projects.haskell.org/bluetile/

The website has some information about installing Bluetile, but it
basically boils down to 'cabal install bluetile'. (Note: The package
bluetileutils is no longer necessary, I merged it in with bluetile.)
Keyboard shortcuts are also documented on the website.

It should be no problem to have xmonad and Bluetile installed at the
same time. I made the modified versions of xmonad and xmonad-contrib
that Bluetile depends on (called xmonad-bluetilebranch and
xmonad-contrib-bluetilebranch) hidden, so they should not conflict with
recompiling xmonad.hs for example. Still, I might have missed something.
Let me know if you run into any problems.

Also, let me mention at this point, that the readers of this list are
probably not at all in my target audience. :-) Since you all pretty much
write your own window manager (by modifying xmonad.hs), Bluetile will
seem more like a watered-down version of xmonad. Keep in mind though,
that it just wants to give an easy glimpse into the possiblities of
tiling window managers for a newcomer with little time on their hands.
Once hooked, they can later upgrade to the 'real deal' if they want to
tinker. :-)

The website also contains links to the repositories. As I said before, I
will try to look into merging changes back to the xmonad code base.

In retrospect I feel like it was a very good choice to pick xmonad as a
basis for my project. Thx for a great window manager and a great code
base! :-) I hope Bluetile can be useful in some way as well. I
appreciate any feedback!

Cheers!

Jan