Vertical maximize (was: Re: Thinking about the tasklist)

[Carl Worth <cworth redhat com>]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:15:12 +0200, Jan Nieuwenhuizen wrote:
> For example, how would you translate these elementary custom sawfish
> window nav commands to Metacity
> 
>   (bind-keys window-keymap "KP_Add" 'maximize-window-vertically-toggle)

I don't know if the window manager actually needs to be as configurable
as having an interpreter like this available at run-time, but I would
like to say something about vertical maximization.

I've been happily running ion for quite some time now. I really like the
freedom-from-the-mouse I get with it since I don't have to fiddle
resizing windows or shifting their positions.

But, then again, with no overlapping windows I miss out on cute effects
from things such as the Composite extension that rely on overlapping
windows.

Getting back to the subject, I've found that with ion, almost every
workspace I have ends up in one of two modes:

	* One fully maximized window

	* 2 or 3 vertically maximized windows with no horizontal
          overlap.

Whether I'm using 2 or 3 vertical windows depends on the number of
pixels available.

I recently conducted a glance-around-the-room poll at a technical
conference and noticed many people had manually adjusted windows in
their conventional window manager to fit the same mode of two tall
xterms side-by-side and nearly filling the screen.

I've recently considered giving metacity a try and I decided if I were
to do so, the first thing I would have to do would be to implement a
vertical maximize button (and more importantly the corresponding
keybinding). I don't really care if that button is configurable at
runtime or not, but it would be nice to have it as a standard feature.

Especially as displays get larger, it seems that the full-maximize
button gets less useful, and things like vertical maximize make more
sense.

-Carl