[9fans] GSoC proposal: Alternative window system

[Caleb Malchik <cmalchik@gmail.com>]

Greetings,

I am a student interested in participating in GSoC under Plan 9. My
project would involve writing a new window manager as an alternative to rio:

http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/alternative_window_system/index.html

I thought I'd say a few words informally as my proposal is not yet ready
for upload, and it would be good to get some feedback in the remaining
days before the deadline.

I have experience with C and Linux, but plan9port is the extent of my
first-hand experience with Plan 9. I've read some of the papers and
other resources and I am intrigued by the ideas behind Plan 9 and the
clean implementation of those ideas. I intend to start using Plan 9
natively or in a VM soon, and I am confident I could get comfortable
with the environment before the start of the summer.

For my project, I would build a tiling window manager similar to dwm
(what I use on Linux). I think a dwm-style interface that could be
controlled from the keyboard would provide a nice contrast to what we
already have with rio, and as we see from dwm the implementation of such
an interface needn't be complex. Development would involve modifying the
rio source code to implement the basic functions of a
tiling/keyboard-controlled window manager one by one.

Let me know if this sounds like a good summer-sized project for someone
who is not yet well acquainted with Plan 9.

Regards,
Caleb Malchik