I do something similar with i3's built in horizontal tabs. A few terminals and a browser look like this:
https://i.imgur.com/8vVNYno.png
You can add or remove columns by moving a window past an edge:
Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
11–20 of 42 posts
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#12Window management has been stagnant so long. I have mixed feelings about the Paper paradigm, but it's heartening to see some work in the space experimenting with the bedrock UX for operating systems, and hope we can eventually move past the floating windows approach on desktop and clumsy swipe-between-apps approach on mobile.
Agreed. All I want is to manage OS windows the same way I manage Vim windows where the content and the container are decoupled. Surprised nobody has made this yet.
Not that you likely want to hear this as a Vim user, but I believe this is how EXWM works. Windows are displayed inside Emacs buffers, which are pretty decoupled from the windows they happen to be in.
(But heck, with evil-mode maybe it'd feel pretty familiar?)
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. All I want is to manage OS windows the same way I manage Vim windows where the content and the container are decoupled. Surprised nobody has made this yet.
Not that you likely want to hear this as a Vim user, but I believe this is how EXWM works. Windows are displayed inside Emacs buffers, which are pretty decoupled from the windows they happen to be in. (But heck, with evil-mode maybe it'd feel pretty familiar?)
No worries - I drove Doom for ~6 months and got fed up with the lag, and with Lisp. I have a wrapper for Yabai that places new windows into a predetermined number of containers and allows me to move them quickly. It works ok.
I think Hyperland or i3/Sway could also be scripted to behave this way.
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#14Window management has been stagnant so long. I have mixed feelings about the Paper paradigm, but it's heartening to see some work in the space experimenting with the bedrock UX for operating systems, and hope we can eventually move past the floating windows approach on desktop and clumsy swipe-between-apps approach on mobile.
Agreed. All I want is to manage OS windows the same way I manage Vim windows where the content and the container are decoupled. Surprised nobody has made this yet.
Ratpoison does this if I'm understanding correctly.
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#15I settled on a very simple approach to window management: workspaces.
My sway setup has 20 workspaces on the main monitor and 10 for each other monitor.
Most workspaces are dedicated to just a single window, some have more as is their purpose.
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#16Paperwm is so good! Been daily driving it over a year. Cool to see it coming to sway.
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. All I want is to manage OS windows the same way I manage Vim windows where the content and the container are decoupled. Surprised nobody has made this yet.
Not that you likely want to hear this as a Vim user, but I believe this is how EXWM works. Windows are displayed inside Emacs buffers, which are pretty decoupled from the windows they happen to be in. (But heck, with evil-mode maybe it'd feel pretty familiar?)
I tried exwm a couple times and the thing that got me everytime was that it was... ok... as a window manager... but actually made working with emacs as a text editor really uncomfortable. I'm talking keybindings overlap (or not), and buffer management generally. It got really confusing. (That and the single-threaded behaviour of emacs generally, freezing up etc)
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#18Window management has been stagnant so long. I have mixed feelings about the Paper paradigm, but it's heartening to see some work in the space experimenting with the bedrock UX for operating systems, and hope we can eventually move past the floating windows approach on desktop and clumsy swipe-between-apps approach on mobile.
Agreed. All I want is to manage OS windows the same way I manage Vim windows where the content and the container are decoupled. Surprised nobody has made this yet.
musca is an X window manager that does something like this, where the tiling layout and windows are decoupled.
github.com/enticeing/musca
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#19Related projects (from niri’s README): PaperWM (Gnome) https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM karousel (KDE) https://github.com/peterfajdiga/karousel niri (wayland) https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri hyprscroller (hyprland plugin) https://github.com/dawsers/hyprscroller hyprslidr (hyprland plugin) https://gitlab.com/magus/hyprslidr PaperWM.spoon (MacOS) https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon
I've become a really big fan of this model of window management after using Karousel on KDE for the last 3 months. This is especially useful if you're using a widescreen monitor.
I never understood the appeal of tiling as 99% of the time I am focused on a single window at a time and I want it to take the full height of my display, so scrolling with the focused window centered is my ideal workflow.
I only wish I had the ability to quickly toggle the side-by-side mode that is default with these for the occasional time I need to have a code editor next to my browser.
If anyone knows if any of these supports that toggle, while also supporting the other key features I use in karousel (being able to shrink/expand the focused window with a hotkey), then I'd be willing to leave KDE to get that perfect workflow.
Re: Papersway – a scrollable window management for Sway/i3wm
#20Window management has been stagnant so long. I have mixed feelings about the Paper paradigm, but it's heartening to see some work in the space experimenting with the bedrock UX for operating systems, and hope we can eventually move past the floating windows approach on desktop and clumsy swipe-between-apps approach on mobile.
Agreed. All I want is to manage OS windows the same way I manage Vim windows where the content and the container are decoupled. Surprised nobody has made this yet.
One thing I do want to mention as a vim limitation, even with neovim & it's headless+client modes, there is still only a single screen. I'd love a neovim where I can have multiple separate clients connected to the same session, but each as a separate viewpoint (but shared list of buffers, shared registers, shared so much).
Doesnt seem super applicable to window managers at the moment, but there being a singular screen does seem like a severe UI limitation.