GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 542283
Window tiling without mimicking MS Windows (aka tile) -- for efficient screen space use by default
Last modified: 2020-11-06 20:06:02 UTC
There exists a very handy feature in Win* where you can select windows while holding CTRL on the taskbar, then from the context menu, tile them. There appears to be no interest in this approach for GNOME (see bug #62721 and bug #85523 -- for whiches this bug is not a duplicate). I propose an alternate approach, and that of dwm, a dynamic tiling WM by Anselm Garbe, also used by awesome WM and others. Have a simple panel button to switch between traditional and tiling modes (possible others, then it's a mini-menü). Default to traditional. Switching to tiling automatically tiles all non-minimized windows, layout up for debate but I prefer the golden-section based algorithm. New windows also are tiled, unless they are "immune" to tiling -- use the same heuristics as awesome WM (transients etc). Upon minimizing or closing a window the remaining ones are rearranged to fill the screen, too. Maximizing a window could push it at the top of the stack making it the biggest (probably maximize icon/tooltip needs to change based on WM mode). Switching back to floating aka traditional/normal mode should leave windows as-is but new ones are not auto-tiled. Other possible additional modes: * Maximize all windows * ...anything else? MS Windows also supports "cascading" but I find it useless. Other information:
Okay, so it'd mainly be a wm (and therefore metacity) feature => moving to metacity. (note that you can use awesome WM in GNOME, I guess)
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