
Smarter half tiling in Gnome Shell/Mutter - JoshTriplett
https://feaneron.com/2017/06/13/smarter-half-tiling-in-gnome-shellmutter/
======
ibotty
The news is, that it finally landed!

[https://feaneron.com/2017/10/03/improved-half-tiling-
availab...](https://feaneron.com/2017/10/03/improved-half-tiling-available-in-
mutter-3-26-1/)

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noncoml
Are we reinventing tiling window managers?

Because if we do, that’s awesome! DWM is by far my favorite wm and would give
anything to have similar functionality in other WM and maybe Mac and Windows.

~~~
ConfucianNardin
Windows already has the feature covered in the blog post (in 10 it supports
quarters).

There are also a number of third party tiling window managers.

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elaus
I've been waiting for ages for better tiling in Gnome - at least something
like Windows 7 does would be great (resizing after half-tiling), but this
looks even better! :)

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vesak
I'm so ready to jump from my i3 setup to Gnome if they get the tiling even
half as good as i3's is. Why? Because of Wayland (which gives me proper
(Hi)DPI support for multiple monitors) and integration that I don't have to
tweak myself in order to work.

So quite excited about this.

~~~
ge96
Somewhat related:

Regarding i3-wm is there such a thing as pre-defined resolution tiling for the
sake of UI testing? That would be pretty neat.

Imagine a bunch of windows that were tiled (think mosaic) according to known
device resolutions like 320x680 (or something like that for mobile devices)
then you could have say a browser open in each tile (with local dev url) and
refresh/shows the UI as displayed on every resolution that would be
impressive.

~~~
JetSpiegel
You can poke the i3 API to resize windows, but for arbitrary resolutions you
need floating windows and that defeats the point of i3.

~~~
ge96
What is the point of i3?

I use it because the Ubuntu UI uses so much resources (from my experience) and
my computers are generally trash.

~~~
JetSpiegel
IMHO, the point of i3 is having tiled windows. As a stacking window manager
it's quite bad because it has no compositor.

That's why it's fast, but badly coded applications can be less stable.

~~~
ge96
Interesting, I don't know what Compositor is but agree with the speed.

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safisher
Does anyone else who does even basic half-and-half tiling feel like the
majority of websites, even otherwise well-developed and popular ones, treat
tilers as second-class citizens? I'm looking at you, GitHub, especially the
ZenHub plugin. For a great counterexample of great design, YouTube.

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cl289
Always a little confused by what 'tiling' is. On gnome I use
'untiled'/overlapping windows, and with SYS-right/left/up/down, ALT-tab,
ALT-`, ALT-ESC, etc. shift windows around on gnome. That's it, plus quarter-
tiling and definable keyboard combinations?

What would be really useful is a workspace organizer that given a keyboard
combination automatically opened a number of applications in preset locations
(on a new workspace); i.e. set up a work environment for a specific task. Is
that possible with a tiling manager?

~~~
undersuit
StumpWM definitely has the ability to open a number of applications in preset
locations, they call it 'Groups'. I'm sure it isn't a novel feature and you'll
find the same ability in a more common, less Lispy tiling window manager like
Ratpoison, i3, or Awesome.

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gtirloni
GNOME 3.26 will be in Fedora 27.

The beta is out: [https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-27-beta-
released/](https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-27-beta-released/)

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mikekchar
I love mutter. It's been ages since I looked at it, but at the time it looked
very difficult to pull out of Gnome (which I don't love _). I really should
look at it again.

_ I should clarify that I actually like Gnome Shell, but I don't want a
"desktop environment" \-- I like a minimal system and Gnome is well past what
I would ideally like.

~~~
hedning
It's pretty straightforward to use mutter without gnome-shell, you just have
to implement the MetaPluginClass [1], which is what gnome-shell does too here
[2]. At that point you can basically just run `meta_init()` and `meta_run()`
in main and you're up and going.

[1] Somewhat outdated documentation:
[https://developer.gnome.org/meta/stable/MetaPlugin.html#Meta...](https://developer.gnome.org/meta/stable/MetaPlugin.html#MetaPluginClass)

[2] [https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-
shell/blob/master/src/gnome-s...](https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-
shell/blob/master/src/gnome-shell-plugin.c)

~~~
mikekchar
Thank you! I appreciate it.

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glandium
Finally! Now, if they could allow horizontal splits on rotated screens...
because who wants two 600x1920 windows.

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chriswarbo
The drag and drop resizing reminds me of
[https://bluetile.org](https://bluetile.org) although that seems to be more
powerful (arbitrary layouts, rather than just side by side).

For the record I use Xmonad on Xorg, with no DE and little mouse usage :)

~~~
wallnuss
I am slowly preparing to depart my lovely xmonad setup for gnome due to issues
with HiDPI..., but I still love the multi-screen support in xmonad.

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akavel
Does it work sensibly if I'd like to do a 3-part split too?

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akavel
An interesting related idea which was prototyped and merged into Haiku OS some
years ago:

video:
[https://youtu.be/ccniJHjo_Uw?t=124](https://youtu.be/ccniJHjo_Uw?t=124)

user guide: [https://www.haiku-
os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html](https://www.haiku-
os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html)

------
parshimers
If this piques your interest, you might want to give shellshape a look as
well.
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/294/shellshape/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/294/shellshape/)
. It lets you tile your windows in a more advanced way than simply side by
side.

~~~
suvelx
Has Shellscape fixed the bug with size-hinted windows?

I found that when you had two terminal with size-hinting tiled, and the
'wrong' window resized, shellscape would wig out and pit the size-hints of
both windows against each other, resulting in windows resting in some weird
geometry and position.

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Derbasti
One more feature request: Hitting Win-Right twice on the left monitor should
move the window to the left tile of the right monitor.

~~~
jarvelov
I am using Gnome Shell 3.24.3 but I think this has been available for quite
some time. If you hold Shift+Win and then use the arrow keys to the left/right
you can move the window between the screens.

~~~
Derbasti
Yes, but why do I have to use a different key combination for moving windows
between screens than for moving them within the screen? Besides, this moves
the window to the same position on the other screen, as it currently is on the
current screen.

It would be much more useful, and indeed the default in Windows and the
several macOS implementations, to move the Window to the "next available
tiling position" in the indicated direction. Thus, consecutive Win-Right
should move the window to

\- the right half of the left screen \- the left half of the right screen \-
the right half of the right screen

~~~
mikelward
In Gnome 3, I think the workspaces are arranged vertically by default.
Win+Right makes me think of the workspace to the right, but the next workspace
would be below.

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SwellJoe
I'm still stuck with Shelltile until quarter-tiling arrives (gotta have a
browser, terminal, and editor window for maximal happiness). But, it sounds
like it's coming, so that's awesome!

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aloisdg
Nice feature. If you want more you can use a tiling windows manager in top of
gnome.

~~~
ibotty
Unfortunately that is not that easy anymore. There are extensions that can
tile more sophisticated though.

