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List:       kwin
Subject:    The future of tiling? [WAS: remove Tiling specific "switch focus" shortcuts]
From:       Martin =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gr=E4=DFlin?= <mgraesslin () kde ! org>
Date:       2012-03-11 20:10:49
Message-ID: 1761997.RZVL383TFm () martin-desktop
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On Saturday 10 March 2012 12:01:17 Thomas Lübking wrote:
> Am 10.03.2012, 07:29 Uhr, schrieb Martin Gräßlin <mgraesslin@kde.org>:
> > I wanted to send out a different RFC soon: What to do with tiling?
cc-ed Nikhil
> 
> I know that you want to do it using JS ;-)
more to that underneath
> 
> Mind that there's iirc somewhere a bug or wish to allow dynamic ratio
> changes (ie, resizing a client is permitted and causes all other clients
> to resize as well) - i doubt this would be in cards if tiling is
> implemented in JS.
> 
> A major problem of tiling is probably the nearly non-existent integration
> with quick tiling/maximization (legacy maximization floats the window, but
> there's no reasonable way back, you got an entry in the alt+f3 menu) and
> tabbing (completely ignored)
> 
> Assuming none of the readers of this list can make much sense out of
> tiling, we should also probably call for a brainstorm on tiling first, ie.
> get some discussion and input from ppl. who really use tiling (and
> possibly have used other tiling WMs, i tried dwm - broke my entire desktop
> ;-) so we can figure what's actually important.
I think you summarized the issues with the current tiling implementation quite 
nicely:
* nobody of the core development team uses tiling
* as a result nobody knows how tiling should behave
* current tiling implementation has some showstopper bugs to be really useful, 
like missing multi screen support
* tiling is currently unmaintained

None of these issues I see to be resolved soon which makes me question the 
complete implementation. If it is not able to work with multiple screens and 
does not feel integrated who would use it? Furthermore are the users who use 
tiling at all in the targeted user group of KDE? I know quite a lot of people 
using tiling window managers - none of them uses KDE. Most would be suited 
best by an xterm multiplexer :-)

So in the current state I only see two possible long term solutions, either 
making it really good or drop it. Given problem number one I don't see how we 
should make it good.

Now what has it to do with scripting? Well scripting could be a nice solution 
to keep the current state of a tech demo. It would be more clear that it is 
only an addition and that KWin does not want to be a tiling window manager (no 
competition to awesome). Furthermore it would be the proof of concept for the 
JavaScript bindings. But still: who's going to implement it?

So I am very uncertain about the future of tiling and would like to get some 
feedback.

Cheers
Martin
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