Re: Thoughts on window sizing

[Ross Smith <myxiplx googlemail com>]

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Greg K Nicholson <greg gkn me uk> wrote:
> On the subject of resizing: what is the use-case for it?—why do we
> need to be able to resize windows to arbitrary sizes?

I would say that there are quite a few reasons to keep it around:

1. Familiarity - everybody is used to this, anything else would feel alien.

2. Freedom - My personal feeling is that enforced sizing would feel
restrictive.  People like to feel that they are in control.  Yes, the
UI could do with helping them tile windows more easily, but I think
this needs to be in a relatively subtle way.

3. Unknown reasons - There may be a myriad of other reasons why
somebody wants a window 'just so'.  Flexibility for the user to do
what they want is important.

To give an example of an 'unknown' reason, if somebody has a fixed
size window open for some program, they may be resizing the other
windows around it.


> Obviously, sometimes you want to see multiple windows side-by-side,
> which is a good argument for tiling (instead of maximisation all the
> time), but doesn't require arbitrary sizing.
>
> Idea 1: As a compromise between free-resizing and enforced tiling, we
> could allow windows sized (only) to twelfths of the screen width or
> height. So when resizing (using the familiar UI), the window edges
> always snap to the nearest twelfth. I propose twelfths in particular
> because this allows having two, three or four equally-sized windows
> side-by-side.
>
> Idea 2: Imagine if window-list buttons had tick-boxes: all of the
> ticked windows show tiled (in some sensible arrangement). Different
> sets of windows can be ticked on different workspaces. Clicking the
> main part of a button ticks that window and unticks all others,
> leaving just that window occupying the whole screen—much like how a
> tab bar works. (I'm not sure, however, how this would apply to
> whatever gnome-shell replaces the window list with.)

Hmm, I quite like that idea.  I'm just not sure how it could be made
to work.  What happens if the UI picks a layout I don't like?

There are many ways to tile even three windows:

1. three windows tiled horizontally
2. three windows tiled vertically
3. Two on the left, one to the right
4. Two on the right, one on the left
5. Two above, one below
6. One above, two below

And in all six of those, each of the three windows can be in any position.

So that's 36 possible arrangements.  How can a window manager guess
which one of those I want to use?  It's almost impossible for it to
guess correctly, and if it guesses wrong 35 times out of 36 it's more
of a hindrance than a help.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the idea of automatically tiled windows,
I've just no idea how it could work without cluttering up the UI.


> _______________________________________________
> gnome-shell-list mailing list
> gnome-shell-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-shell-list
>