Re: [Usability] Spatial Improvement: Default windows placement

[Zakaria <zakaria suarametro com>]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 09:04:11AM -0700, Rob Adams wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 18:40 +0700, Zakaria wrote:

> > As you may know the window placement in metacity is:
> > 1. Put the window in the center of screen
> > 2. Put the next window in the top left corner
> > 3. Put the next window slightly lower and right
> >    from the window in top left corner
> > 4. Repeat step 3

> Actually that's not true.  The way it works is as follows:
> 1. Construct a "natural xinerama order" which is a breadth-first
> traversal of the xineramas wherein we first try left, then right, then
> up, then down, thus constructing a list of the "closest" xineramas.
> 2. Search each xinerama in the list in turn and try to find a position
> for the new window either below or to the right of another window such
> that it will not overlap another window.
> 3. Attempt "center tiling" on each xinerama in turn.  This involves
> calculating the required position the window such that we an fit as many
> on the screen as will fit, and the resulting set of windows will be
> "visually centered", meaning that there is twice as much space below the
> window as above it.  For large windows, the single window will be
> visually centered.
> 4. If there's nowhere on any xinerama that the window fits without
> overlapping another window, fall back to cascading the window from the
> upper left corner.

You're probably right. But I'm not reading the code, just observing the
behaviour on my 800x600 ubuntu desktop.

To prove your point I try the same experiment with a higher resolution
(1024x800) and clean-up my home dir. The result is just the same
http://zakaria.is-a-geek.org/demo/gnome-cascade-nautilus-big.png

Anyway my point is by placing the window in cascading way either as
first option or last, metacity has decrease the spatial experience.

> -Rob

Wassallam,


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