A person on screen-devel, who shall respectfully remain nameless since he didn’t post to the list proper, sent me this in response to my proposed patch:

I would never use this feature because I would rather that window #n always remain window #n, but I can see the usefulness of the feature if you used to have more than 10 windows and now have fewer than 10 but some windows still bear numbers greater than 9, so you can go back to using Ctrl-A <n> to switch to them quickly.

My recommendation is that you call it compacting, not renumbering. “renumber” doesn’t make it clear enough HOW they get new numbers.

To which I replied:

Thanks for the mail. Your comments are fair enough and definitely anticipated. I often can peak way above 10 windows, begrudgingly, and often want to migrate down to as few as possible so that the next window allocated is the highest available number. And, I’m an active user of the hardstatus line, including labeling windows. I implemented this because I know several people who use screen like I do, though knowing many people do not.

I do like your suggestion that the patch feature be called “compacting.” I was in fact struggling with how do best describe the action, and that does, in a single word. I will create a new patch sometime in the next week reflecting this, even just for my purposes.

I’m curious, though, for my own usage: how do you remember which window is which? What is your typical screen workflow?

Thanks, Eric