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Bug 85523 - Tile horizontally/vertically
Tile horizontally/vertically
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: metacity
Classification: Other
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Low enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: Metacity maintainers list
Metacity maintainers list
: 98069 165453 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 155460
 
 
Reported: 2002-06-17 00:06 UTC by Richard Eckart
Modified: 2020-11-07 12:37 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: Unversioned Enhancement



Description Richard Eckart 2002-06-17 00:06:10 UTC
It would be nice to have a "tile horizontally" and a "tile vertically"
option in the window popup which arranges the windows. (It should be possible
to make some windows ignore this "stacking request" (like xmms and gkrellm 
and the panels).
Comment 1 Havoc Pennington 2002-06-17 01:23:08 UTC
That menu is already a bit too full.

Maybe a keybinding would be OK.
Comment 2 Rodney Dawes 2002-09-22 14:04:25 UTC
The menu is too full because of all the Move to Workspace N items. I
can imagine this filling up very very quickly for some users. These
should probably be hidden, or made a submenu "Move to" which has a
list of the workspaces by name (which as a feature, the naming is broken
right now). Along with Tile V/H, there should be a "Cascade Windows"
option as well, and these should all show up on the pager/tasklist
applet menus somewhere probably also.
Comment 3 Havoc Pennington 2002-09-22 14:54:59 UTC
Aside from menu size, I don't believe the window menu should contain
things which are not operations on a specific window (I don't think it
should contain things that are really operations on the entire desktop
or on all menus - those kinds of menu items should be on the panel or
the like).
Comment 4 Havoc Pennington 2002-09-24 19:12:15 UTC
Having something like this on the panel or the desktop menu would make
sense I think.
Comment 5 Calum Benson 2002-10-01 18:15:57 UTC
Yep, this is the sort of thing we could use a nicely-integrated
nautilus-plus-WM right-click menu on the desktop for :)
Comment 6 Heath Harrelson 2002-10-30 15:45:44 UTC
Batch adding GNOME2 keyword to Metacity bugs.  Sorry for the spam.
Comment 7 Heath Harrelson 2002-11-01 14:06:40 UTC
Reducing priority since this feature is a "pure" enhancement and still
under debate.
Comment 8 Heath Harrelson 2002-11-15 21:15:37 UTC
*** Bug 98069 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Havoc Pennington 2002-11-30 22:02:52 UTC
note this is the same as http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62721

(the feature involves both panel/libwnck and metacity features, 
if implemented the way I think it should be)
Comment 10 Seth Nickell 2003-02-27 03:59:03 UTC
We might consider some sort of "Window Organization" submenu. Not sure
how important tiling is... Conceptually its very useful for being able
to automatically have the computer let you see two documents at once.
Is there a better way to enable this sort of use case?
Comment 11 Calum Benson 2003-03-24 19:15:58 UTC
Other places that Tile/Cascade options might make sense to live could
be the as-yet-non-existent foobar Desktop menu (where all our Desktop
Preferences might one day move to), and/or the right-click menu in the
workspace switcher.
Comment 12 gnome.org 2004-09-02 20:54:52 UTC
I'll just add a +1 to asking for this.  It probably shouldn't be only available
from the desktop because a common use case would involve the desktop being
buried behind a lot of windows.  Right click on the title bar or window list
applet seems very appropriate in addition to yet another obscure keybinding.
Comment 13 Elijah Newren 2006-05-03 23:13:28 UTC
*** Bug 165453 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 14 Reed Hedges 2006-05-04 13:38:27 UTC
I would find this feature useful if it could also only tile windows belonging to one application (using wnck probably?).   

For example, say I have several Nautilus windows open, and several Gimp windows open. I want to tile all the Nautilus windows and move them all to the top.  Then I want to switch to the Gimp and do the same thing, so that all Gimp windows are moved on top of the Nautilus windows and are tiled.  Then I can switch between the two applications using "Unminimize All" on the Gimp or Nautilus group in the Window List applet.

I'm considering making a hack of metacity that does this while also defaulting to showing new windows maximized.  (This would my preferred way of working with windows, which currently requires some manual micromanagement on my part.)

Thanks

Reed
Comment 15 Shawn O'Garro 2007-03-05 07:40:28 UTC
Is this request being considered yet (as it seems to be marked as future)
Comment 16 Patrick Schönfeld 2007-03-08 11:20:42 UTC
I'm really wondering why this bug hasn't been resolved (nor does it seem like someone has worked on it) yet. It would be a definitive useful feature. So why not just implement it instead of just ignoring the people who would like to have such a feature? That is something I've now noticed several times on this bug tracker and is really a shame. Cause handling feature requests like this (and lack of features like this) makes gnome a DE which is far from the quality which KDE reaches. (And i say that as a man who really does *not* like KDE, because of its style and *doesn't use* it either) Why do you keep such requests open for 5 (!!) damn years?

Just my 2 cents

Patrick
Comment 17 Reed Hedges 2007-03-08 15:05:54 UTC
Hi Patrick. To post a patch, you can use the "Create a New Attachment" link at the bottom of the bug report. Click the "Browse" button, and find your diff output. Check the "patch" checkbox. Fill out the other information, then click Submit. You can then also post a mail to the mailing lists to inform other people as well.

See also http://developer.gnome.org/doc/guides/programming-guidelines/book1.html
Comment 18 Elijah Newren 2007-03-08 19:21:15 UTC
The future milestone is meaningless, IMO.  Should be removed and bugs with that milestone should instead have no milestone.

Patrick: I'm sorry you're frustrated.  "just implement it" is easier said than done.  Further, I have hundreds of "just implement it" requests which all need to take a back seat to crashers and other nasty problems (which I can't get to all of either).  metacity isn't my only responsibility in GNOME either.  And I have lots of responsibilities outside of GNOME -- a dissertation, moving, a job, family, etc., all of which cut out from my free time to do stuff like this.  It would be helpful if you could be more understanding and polite in your Bugzilla comments.  Thanks.
Comment 19 Philip Ganchev 2007-03-19 02:40:36 UTC
One way the user interface could work is to tile the top two windows in the desired orientation.  To tile two specific windows, the user switches to one, then switch to the other, then invokes the tile action.

Comment 20 Ritesh Khadgaray ( irc:ritz) 2007-04-23 09:19:35 UTC
i believe this feature belongs to window list, and not as a part of window manager. This will keep the window menu clutter 

Right clicking on window in window list should bring this feature up.

Comment 21 Patrick Schönfeld 2007-04-23 10:44:31 UTC
Elijah,

sorry for the maybe bad sounding of my previous post. It is just a result of the feeling, that such wishes are being ignored.

But to come to your arguments: Yes, i believe that there are different more important problems, but as far as I am concerned I cannot see this, cause I am _not_ concerned. That is why I criticized to ignore the people: It is not obvious  that anybody of matter even noted these wishlist feature.

Then, you argue, that you do have responsibilities outside of GNOME. Yes, i understand this. But: I did not expect, that you are the only one in the GNOME team, developing on metacity. That seems a bit odd to me, cause it is merely one of the most important parts in a desktop environment. And if it is like that, maybe some other developers should dig into it.

Last one: I'm doing a hard job trying to believe that this feature takes 5 long years to implement, as it is IMHO a mini-mini-feature, which has btw. already been implemented on the dark side of might (Windows 3.11).

Okay, now a comment @ #20

IMO the window list is not the adequate place for a feature like this. Cause the window list is very single-window-orientated, but this feature would/should affect all windows on a particular workspace (otherwise it does not make sense).
So, maybe this is a feature for a new, separate menu or in the workspace switcher, like right clicking on the appropriate workspace.

Best Regards

Patrick

Comment 22 Philip Ganchev 2007-04-23 17:51:17 UTC
Ritesh (post #20), perhaps you are right that it seems to make more sense.  But not every desktop has a window list, or even a panel.  The window manager should be able to work without those.  

And can I tile using only the keyboard, as the Gnome Human Interface Guide requires ( http://tinyurl.com/2pcp84 )?  The window menu is invoked using Alt+Space by default.

It can be done with a separate shortcut, like Control+Alt+T, configured as a system preference.  But that is not very discoverable, and is an additional shortcut to remember.  A window menu entry is easier to discover and requires less memorization.  Lastly, using a menu entry leaves the shortcut available to be used for something else that cannot be put into a menu.

Ideally, I want all menus and shortcuts to be replaced by a command interface with text search.  You type "win" and see a list of all commands whose descriptions include "win", including "Tile window" and "Move window to workspace 1".  If you type "win ty", only "tile window" matches, and pressing Enter executes it. All system and application menus and actions can be replaced.  Thus commands are easy to explore and discover, do not require memorization, are simple and consistent, and are modeless (by contrast, pressing a key in one menu has a different effect than in another).  The last three qualities foster habituation, so users get very fast at executing commands they use often.
Comment 23 Jan Niklas Hasse (Account disabled) 2007-09-22 12:44:16 UTC
Hi everyone,

I just found this bug report, imo a very useful feature.
Has someone already seen how windows aero solved this? I just saw it a couple of weeks ago at my friends notebook:
When you move the mouse left to the minimize button a new "button" appears which shows a square with 3x3 windows where you can click at. Then the window will move for example to the left and the width will be half of the screen.
It's hard to describe, because i'm not English and i don't have any screen shot. If someone's got vista maybe he can attach one.

IMHO this is a good solution, because you wouldn't have a big window menu or another button (just one that is invisible).
Comment 24 Federico Foschini 2008-03-09 13:28:46 UTC
In my opinion this features is very useful
Comment 25 Paul Wise 2008-11-02 06:55:04 UTC
http://www.grillbar.org/wordpress/?p=306
Comment 26 Marcus Carlson 2009-08-12 18:42:50 UTC
Update; small progress have been made in [1] - a similar bug.

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62721
Comment 27 André Klapper 2020-11-07 12:37:20 UTC
bugzilla.gnome.org is being replaced by gitlab.gnome.org. We are closing all
old feature requests in Bugzilla which have not seen updates for many years.

If you still use metacity and if you are still requesting this feature in a currently supported version of GNOME (currently that would be 3.38), then please feel free to report it at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/metacity/-/issues/

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry it could not be implemented.