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Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

github.com

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#61
Looks interesting, I'll probably use it if I'm forced to use a KDE or Gnome or something. Counterintuitively, the reason I use tiling managers is not tiling, it's the virtual desktop handling. Last time I tried both gnome and KDE are weird about it. KDE doesn't want you to use mod+é as a shortcut. Gnome allows you to either move both virtual desktops at one or have one fixed and one that moves, but I want both virtual desktops (one on each screen) to move independently.

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#62
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is that the tiling functionality is subpar when added as a second thought. Of course a traditional WM/DM is going to have a lot more bells and whistles.

Right. I mean, this gets at my whole issue with WM/DEs, why can't they ALL be more modular? At the end of the day, they're just a collection of programs.

Oh yeah, 100%. This domain should also follow the unix philosophy of a composition of single purpose utilities. It's why I prefer tiling WMs like i3, Sway, and Hyprland. They do very little other than managing window tiling and key bindings. Everything else is roll-your-own. My config for Hyprland uses a couple dozen different programs to get things setup to my liking, e.g. Waybar for the system bar, rofi for launching programs, wlsunset for nighttime color management, swayidle and swaylock for the idle locking and lock screen, sway notification center for notifications, grim and slurp for screen capture, etc...

I share a lot of my config between Sway and Hyprland because of this modularity. They are flexible enough that you could configure them to look and run just like KDE and no one would be the wiser.

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be if one wants to. For example river has its own protocol for letting clients arbitrarily position windows. There's a builtin one that does tiling, and then a bunch of user-created ones at https://codeberg.org/river/wiki/src/branch/master/pages/Comm... But yes, it requires such extensibility support from the compositor, unlike this project that works with any X11 compositor because it just relies on EWMH.

It seems like it's reinventing (an partial, incomplete, non-standard) Xorg protocol on top of Wayland, while we can simply use X11

For now... but it is mostly unmaintained at this point and it is only a matter of time before it starts breaking if no one takes over. Which looks doubtful.

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#64
post #52
post #5

Kudos for this, what's your pitch for i3 users?

There is papersway for sway/i3 folks: https://spwhitton.name/tech/code/papersway/

Thank you for posting this link, because I am a happy sway user and didn’t realize this existed. I plan to try it out. Have you used it?

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#65
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the toxicity articles?

https://drewdevault.com/2024/04/09/2024-04-09-FDO-conduct-en... This is a pretty good overview. There have been several HN discussions on this matter.

Drew has been seen commenting (very unnecessarily) on Hyprland's code quality or lack thereof.

I see a wm's main developer attacking a developer of another wm, and it's not pretty.

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#66

It’s sad that this type of projects will not be possible with Wayland, because apparently pluggable wm is not a thing in Wayland

You can implement hot corners on Wayland using layer-shell and creating a 1px transparent surface on each monitor corner.

Can you? I grant that you can probably trigger like that, but does Wayland have a generic way to move+resize windows?

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the recommendation. Just installed karousel on Plasma 6 and it works wonderfully part for really weird default keyboard shortcuts. Nothing a few minutes in the settings panel couldn't fix. I'm not exactly sold on the window scrolling idea yet but switching between Karousel and Polonium[1] which is a traditional twm for Kwin is very easy so I'll be experiment with both. 1 - https://github.com/zeroxoneafo…

While scripts can provide a similar experience, without Niri or PaperWM the experience will be sub-par. Scrolling WMs amazing with a touchpad and now that Niri supports mouse, I believe it'll be a great experience.

Could you clarify what's missing with this kwin script? The only thing I see is that window stacking doesn't work on wayland.

Personally, I've given up of controlling all pieces of my DE like setting up busses and keyboard shortcuts. KDE already does all of this brilliantly and kwin scripts get the rest so I can have my cake and eat it too.

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While scripts can provide a similar experience, without Niri or PaperWM the experience will be sub-par. Scrolling WMs amazing with a touchpad and now that Niri supports mouse, I believe it'll be a great experience.

Could you clarify what's missing with this kwin script? The only thing I see is that window stacking doesn't work on wayland. Personally, I've given up of controlling all pieces of my DE like setting up busses and keyboard shortcuts. KDE already does all of this brilliantly and kwin scripts get the rest so I can have my cake and eat it too.

Touchpad gestures don't work, it would be really nice if I could scroll with my touchpad, although there may be a way using some type of evdev capturer that mimics a shortcut

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#69

Great project but I truly believe that these single screen window managers are going to be a thing of the past if Scrollable WMs manage to find some more marketting. Niri[1] and PaperWM[2] for example, these Scrolling WMs provide a way to tile your apps in a way that feels natural. It's like having multiple monitors without having multiple monitors. When I first used PaperWM on Gnome, I just couldn't think of a reaso…

Multiple workspaces satisfy this need for me a lot better. In fact, I'm pretty sure that they were invented with the idea of "having multiple monitors without having multiple monitors". A key detail is that I can organise windows on-screen however I want with ease, while also having windows on another workspace organised with a completely different layout. And I usually have 10 workspaces available. Scrolling WMs are…

I confess I am the author of one of these PaperWM-like scrollers for Hyprland, hyprcroller (https://github.com/dawsers/hyprscroller).

I used almost every DE and tiling window manager before I arrived to PaperWM, and when I moved to Hyprland because of its simplicity and the control it gave me, I had to write a scrolling layout because of how much I missed PaperWM.

- Having a scrolling layout doesn't prevent you from using workspaces, you have both. I use workspaces, some of which are scrolling with rows and columns depending on the task associated to them.

- Jumping to arbitrary locations also takes just one keystroke (and no mouse). For example, hyprscroller supports marks. Set a mark to a window, and you can jump (and get immediate focus) to that window with a key combination. You can move to your editor, e-mail program etc, with one key press, even if they are in different workspaces and not seen on the screen (kind of like in vim)

- You don't need to browse through stacks of hidden windows, they can all be at their preferred size and "seen" at the same time. Once you accept the paradigm, it is very fast, and there is support for overview modes where you can see all your windows scaled to fit the monitor.

- You can automatically resize a set of windows to fit your monitor with a key stroke, allowing you to have all your currently needed windows (editor, docs, browser) visible at the same time, while you don't "lose" the rest, they are simply outside of the monitor area, a keystroke away, and keeping their original size.

It changed the way I work so much I had to write my own plugin as soon as I moved to Hyprland. You basically forget about the mouse and resizing/moving windows.

Re: Cortile – Linux auto tiling manager with hot corner support

#70
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I disagree. The point behind tiling WMs and why a lot of people use lightweight IDEs (meaning multi-window IDEs) is that the idea of virtual desktops is used as a state management and state chronic restoration tool. A lot of i3/sway users I've seen (including me) are using virtual desktops to not forget what they were working on before the current task. Each dependency that created a sub task in their workflo…

Precisely this. It feels like scrolling WMs and tiling WMs are entirely different paradigms. I see no way to transfer my workflow with tiling to a scrolling WM.

You can also use workspaces with a scrolling layout, you keep the advantages of both, and you don't need to keep on resizing/moving windows because they are too small.

When I moved to Hyprland after having tried almost every DE and tiling WM, I had to write my own layout plugin (hyprscroller) because of how much I missed PaperWM.

If you moved from classic DEs with floating windows and lots of mouse to a tiling WM, scrolling adds another advantage. You can even ignore it and use it as a classic tiling WM, but you also have all the advantages of scrolling once you find a use for them.

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