GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 116919
toggle-maximize inconsistency
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Description of Problem: Whatever keyboard shortcuts you configure, there is no way to get back at the previous size of a window once you maximize it only vertically or horizontally. "Toggle maximization state" works only for full (both vertical and horizontal) maximizing. "Unmaximize a window" too. This is annoying especially new users with no end and looks like a bug (although with some thinking it is just a misalignment of features from a programmers point of view). A clean solution would be to toss "Maximize window", "Unmaximize a window" alltogether and introduce * "Toggle maximization state" (which affects both dimensions) * "Toggle vertical maximization state" and * "Toggle horizontal maximization state". I'd file this as a feature request in any other WM (altough funny enough most other WMs work like expected), but in a project that aims at what Metacity is aiming at, this a serious usability bug. IMHO.
The vert/horz maximize is just a geek feature added to satisfy people who wanted it, it's intended to be entirely hidden from end users, which is why it isn't in the menus or anything. There's already an open bug discussing making it a real state, I think. Maybe someone can find the dup.
In my Installation of Gnome 2.2 + Metacity 2.4.34 (fresh from the Debian Woody backport) these settings are fully opaque to the user via the Gnome "Keyboard Shortcuts" preferences. Telling apart what these settings do and where the difference between those toggle*/maximize*/unmaximize* is, is not at all straight. Noone needs 5 separate shortcuts for maximizing-x&y, unmaximizing-x&y and toggle-maximize-x&y as well as maximizing-only-x and maximizing-only-y with no way back. Having instead 3 shortcuts for toggle-vertical-maximize, toggle-horizontal-maximize and toggle-full-maximize gives less options with less confusion but still better functionality. Looks like a win-win to me. And do not forget that screen resolutions are not exactly getting smaller these days. People like to maximize their windows just vertically to get more lines without messing up the window's layout horizontally. Even most web pages look better with 800x1024 than with 1280x1024.
OK, looked it up. This was already reported as bug #113601 and the problem seems to be a kinda logical one. "Maximized" has no sub-states, so vertical- or horizontal-maximized is a bit of a ghost. But. What about just keeping a stack of window sizes per window and allow undoing window resizing? That would allow both toggling these "ghost-states" as well as a general resize undo. Undo is a concept familar to any GUI user and not having it in Metacity is, well, actually a bug against the HIG ;-) WRT to sessions: No need to save undo information across sessions, so this is moot. Comments?
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 113601 ***