Comment by c7b

Comment by c7b 3 days ago

I don't get the hype for scrolling WMs. It feels like the app switcher view on phones. Never thought I needed that on desktop, normally it just freaks me out with how much stuff is open.

If you like this, check out stacked tiling. It comes natively in COSMIC and I believe it can be configured in i3, Sway and Hyprland as well. It's basically tabs across windows, but thanks to tiling you have different regions of the screen with their own tab sets. I usually just split the screen vertically once, so I have a left and right region. Turns out so many workflows can be described as 'ingest information somewhere and apply it somewhere else', and this is just such a useful layout for this. Whenever I have something that requires sole attention, I just maximize that window.

WorldMaker 2 days ago

If you are looking for some reasoning behind the "hype": one piece of it is that humans have relatively good contextual spatial memory and using one very large "space" that has a sort of "physicality" to it (you can scroll it; things generally stay where you put them; etc) can feel really good. It goes back to some of the early ideals of "spatial navigation" of the original "desktop metaphor". (Many of which have been somewhat lost to time, with a lot less emphasis on things like windows opening in the same appearance as when they were last closed.)

I think where scrolling WMs starts to feel like it scratches peculiar itches the most is when you have a complex multi-workspace config in a more traditional tiling WM. Each workspace is a different place. In some of the best cases the WM may give a metaphor that each workspace is on a cube or other polygon that you are switching faces on. Scrolling WMs simplify needing to do 3D compositing if you want to visualize that "space" at a distance or have nice flips between workspaces that provide spatial cues to your brain, because scrolling is a thing we do a lot. We have many apps with "infinite scrolling" today; applying that to one large workspace can feel like a nice space to have to arrange your windows in, and other common computer gestures like zoom out and then back in to a different part of it feel "natural". Navigating your "desktop" becomes just like navigating a large Excel file or a large code file.

Reply View 3 replies

c7b 2 days ago

I guess it's the 'large' part that turns me off. If it's actually far away so that you need to scroll a lot to get there, it just feels like it's more work to me. Sort of replicating one of the less appealing features of a physical desk, the mess that it quickly becomes if you manipulate a lot of documents. I don't even use workspaces that much for the same reason, and having tabs takes away a lot of the need I feel. You even retain some sense of physical distance because of the tab positions.
To stay with the physical analogy, the layout I've described is like always keeping all your documents in two neat stacks before you. Except that it's much easier and quicker to flip pages to the top than it would be with physical documents, so you're rarely tempted to start spreading them out.

Reply View | 0 replies
Biganon a day ago

I feel like my biggest gripe with every single WM I've tried is the Idea that if I reboot, I lose everything. Sure I can add complex rules in sway like "always open Firefox on workspace 2, slack on workspace 1", but i still have to launch them on boot (unless I automate this as well), and it becomes complex when I say I always want 3 terminals on workspace 3, etc.
I wish I could fine tune once, and snapshot whatever it is I'm using, and have it appear automatically when I reboot.

Reply View | 1 reply
- WorldMaker a day ago
  
  Yeah, I remember at one point I had some rather complex auto-workspace layouts in my xmonad config. I don't remember if I tried to automate the launching of apps as well, that most customized config was several computers ago.
  Relatedly I know that Windows PowerToys has a tool called "Workspaces" that also automates the launching as well as the placement, but it doesn't seem to integrate enough with FancyZones for me to find it that useful. Which is weird because they are "neighbors" in PowerToys. Still it's a good idea and interesting to see an experiment in that direction.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies