[HN Gopher] Zv/9Problems: A Tiling Window Manager for Plan9
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Zv/9Problems: A Tiling Window Manager for Plan9
Author : rcarmo
Score : 33 points
Date : 2023-09-05 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| moody__ wrote:
| As others have pointed out this is entirely obsolete for modern
| 9front and people should instead use sigrids riow(1)
| http://man.9front.org/1/riow
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| sigrid has a more modern take on this as well, its on the
| fragrant git host, shithub.us
| [deleted]
| PappGaborSandor wrote:
| What's wrong with riow(1)?
| accoil wrote:
| Easier to search for if not anything else.
| http://man.9front.org/1/riow does not say much apart from that
| it has tiling window manager keybindings, and not whether it
| has tiling. Does it tile?
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I wish I had this when I was still using OpenWindows on x86
| Solaris 10... all the way up to 2012/2013. I would fake a tiled
| UI by setting up xterm to load four instances at specific pixel
| positions.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Didn't Solaris 10 ship with GNOME that supported snapping
| windows to the sides of the screen?
| codedokode wrote:
| Windows and tiles mostly make sense for giant screens. As a
| laptop user, I notice that most of the time I want fullscreen
| windows. And sometimes it would be nice to split screen
| vertically into two parts. But being able to move and resize
| windows seems like an unnecessary complication. Benefits are not
| worth the time spent arranging windows.
|
| It seems like developers do not want to make window sizes
| reasonable out of the box and instead want user to do it
| manually. For example, Gnome terminal opens in a tiny windows by
| default and you need to change settings to make its size
| adequate. Even worse, Gnome terminal doesn't remember the size
| when closed and started again.
|
| A good windowing system is a system where you don't need to move
| or resize windows. It is an unpleasant chore.
|
| Also, moving/resizing windows requires dragging across a large
| distance which is inconvenient on a touchpad because you need to
| keep our finger touching the surface and there is no key you
| could use to keep virtual mouse button pressed.
|
| So it surprises me, why Apple's OS didn't have a maximize button
| before and had a large dock that overlaps with windows. Was Apple
| OS intended to be used only with large monitors?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| > A good windowing system is a system where you don't need to
| move or resize windows.
|
| That isn't necessarily true for everyone; the Lisa and Mac
| designers definitely did not feel that way.
|
| > why Apple's OS didn't have a maximize button
|
| Why would it? Early multitasking required being able to
| interact with multiple windows. It was always weird to me that
| Windows would have these giant windows preventing you from
| interacting with stuff in other windows. You bought an OS
| capable of running more than one app at once and you don't want
| to take advantage of it?
| codedokode wrote:
| > Early multitasking required being able to interact with
| multiple windows.
|
| If you have a laptop screen (especially low resolution screen
| from 2000s) you cannot have multiple windows visible at the
| same time and be useful. Imagine if you have a browser, a
| graphic editor, an IDE and spreadsheet. You simply cannot fit
| them onto 15" screen.
| codedokode wrote:
| > the Lisa and Mac designers definitely did not feel that
| way.
|
| This is weird, because at that time the screen resolution was
| something like 600x400 and you could not fit lot of
| information (like a text document or a folder with icons)
| even in fullscreen mode, let alone windowed mode. The smaller
| the window, the more you will have to scroll and scrolling
| then was slow and blocky.
| rollcat wrote:
| I actually love this approach: floating by default, tiling when
| you say so.
|
| I'm yet to see a tiling WM that handles very large (>27") screens
| sensibly, without wasting screen real estate. Having two
| terminals, each 200+ columns wide, side by side, is about as
| useful as having a 10m long mouse cable. Hybrid floating/tiling
| should get more love.
| tmtvl wrote:
| For very large screens I'd imagine ZUIs (like Pipeworld*) would
| work really well.
|
| * <https://arcan-fe.com/2021/04/12/introducing-pipeworld/>
| jstanley wrote:
| You're allowed more than two columns! How about three
| terminals, each 133+ columns wide, side by side?
| rollcat wrote:
| That's still not a great use of a 43" screen ;) When windows
| are automatically forced into a grid, they usually end up not
| the "right" size. A calendar or a chat app is usually fine
| taking a third of the screen (both vertically and
| horizontally), but a browser window is usually better taking
| roughly half of it. And just because from now on I have one
| less window on my screen, doesn't mean I want all its
| neighbors to suddenly get larger.
|
| I have a bunch of hacked-together scripts that do this sort
| of "manual tiling" for me: I can tell a window to grow or
| shrink to take 1/3rd, half, or 2/3rds of the screen, and to
| push it around (center, edge, etc). It has some bugs and edge
| cases but works ok in practice.
|
| https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/master/.hammerspoon.
| ..
| floren wrote:
| I used Wingo (https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo) for a while
| and it did the floating/tiling mix pretty well.
|
| I also used StumpWM (https://stumpwm.github.io/) for _years_ ,
| primarily in purely-tiling mode. The killer feature for me was
| that you (the user) define frames on the desktop, and then
| windows are placed into frames rather than resizing and re-
| jiggering everything whenever a new window opens.
| rollcat wrote:
| Wingo is great, and I even used BurntSushi's XGB to build my
| own WM a long while ago... but I'm hesitant to switch back to
| X11. Unfortunately writing a Wayland compositor is much less
| of a simple task.
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(page generated 2023-09-05 23:01 UTC)