Bug 310005 - Cannot tile windows horizontally (to the top or bottom)
Summary: Cannot tile windows horizontally (to the top or bottom)
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: kwin
Classification: Plasma
Component: core (show other bugs)
Version: 4.9.2
Platform: Ubuntu Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: KWin default assignee
URL: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f...
Keywords:
: 321405 329012 331158 343340 343738 346131 350172 358812 365681 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2012-11-13 06:53 UTC by sparhawk
Modified: 2016-07-14 17:03 UTC (History)
11 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


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Description sparhawk 2012-11-13 06:53:02 UTC
There is no way to tile windows to the top and bottom of the screen. In System Settings > Shortcuts and Gestures > Global Keyboard Shortcuts > KDE Component = KWin, there are shortcuts available to "Quick Tile Window to the Left/Right" or Bottom/Top Left/Right. There is no option to tile windows to the top half or the bottom half, while extending across the entire width of the desktop.

Similarly, when dragging windows around the desktop, ghost rectangles appear to allow tiling of windows to these six regions. There is no option to tile windows to the top half or bottom half.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Attempt to tile window to the top or bottom, as analogous to tiling windows to the left or right.

Actual Results:  
Nothing.

Expected Results:  
It should be possible to tile windows to the top or bottom.
Comment 1 sparhawk 2012-11-13 06:55:28 UTC
Note that there is a similar but different bug that relates to automatic tiling of N windows.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165933
Comment 2 Thomas Lübking 2012-11-13 09:46:34 UTC
"actual" tiling has been dropped and will re-occur via scripting

"quick" tiling in this regard obviously conflicts with at least quick maximization on the upper border (and 16:9 screen ratios ;-)

(the other bug is around invoking the taskbar to perform "quick" tiling, thus essentially unrelated. it only mentions vertical quick tiling)
Comment 3 sparhawk 2012-11-19 10:58:52 UTC
Yes, sorry, I meant "quick" tiling.

I agree that drag-and-dropping might be problematic, but the keyboard-shortcut method should be fine (as per Unity). A method to allow drag-and-dropping to the top might be to make the centre third the area for maximising the window, and the outer thirds for tiling the top half. Or vice versa. This would be similar to how dragging to the sides work, with sub-regions.
Comment 4 Thomas Lübking 2013-06-19 19:58:19 UTC
*** Bug 321405 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Mike Schmitz 2013-06-19 20:46:44 UTC
here is a brianstorm link for this please go upvote it.

http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=111620
Comment 6 Martin Flöser 2013-06-19 20:56:54 UTC
Given that it is in brainstorm now I'm going to close this report as WONTFIX. 
The reasons below:

Thank you for your feature suggestion. Unfortunately, bugzilla is not the best 
place to discuss feature requests. We hardly have any users here, so we don't 
get a useful evaluation of whether the feature is needed.

We recommend you use http://brainstorm.forum.kde.org to suggest this idea. 
Users are able to up/down-vote the feature request so we can get an idea of 
whether it's something our users wish to see and whether it is worth investing 
time in. If the feature request is supported on brainstorm it will 
automatically be recreated here in the bug tracker. Given that, I'm marking 
this feature request as WONTFIX for now. Note that this has nothing to do with 
whether we think this is a good or bad feature request.
Comment 7 sparhawk 2013-06-19 21:31:28 UTC
I personally feel like it's more of a bug than a feature request. I think if quick tile didn't exist at all, it'd be a feature request, but given that it works properly with left and right, and corners, etc., I feel that the lack of support for up and down is a bug. However, I'm happy to be contradicted in this, especially if there are certain technical requirements that categorise it as so.
Comment 8 Martin Flöser 2013-06-20 05:53:22 UTC
A feature request is the request for new functionality. Currently horizontal 
tiling is not supported - the functionality does not exist. This means that a 
report about it is of course a feature request as new functionality is 
requested.
Comment 9 sparhawk 2013-07-06 06:34:55 UTC
One could argue semantically: that the functionality to tile windows exists in a general sense, and that the inconsistencies in some usages is a bug. But I won't. ;p

I appreciate that the difference is in how you define the scope of the expected functionality.
Comment 10 Thomas Lübking 2013-12-19 20:19:04 UTC
*** Bug 329012 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Thomas Lübking 2014-02-15 22:35:19 UTC
*** Bug 331158 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Thomas Lübking 2015-01-26 17:53:45 UTC
*** Bug 343340 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Thomas Lübking 2015-01-26 17:55:24 UTC
Adding brainstorm url
Comment 14 Christoph Feck 2015-01-27 02:01:40 UTC
> If the feature request is supported on brainstorm it will automatically be recreated here in the bug tracker.

How does this work? Given that there are multiple duplicate reports, and the forum link has more supporters, I would say this is a needed feature.
Comment 15 Martin Flöser 2015-01-27 06:37:53 UTC
(In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #14)
> > If the feature request is supported on brainstorm it will automatically be recreated here in the bug tracker.
> 
> How does this work? Given that there are multiple duplicate reports, and the
> forum link has more supporters, I would say this is a needed feature.

I'm not convinced. The bug here has four duplicates which is comparable few, the brainstorm has not many people commenting and also a low number of votes. So to me there seems to be no strong demand for it.
Comment 16 Joachim Jacob 2015-01-27 08:15:08 UTC
My 5 cents, since it seems difficult to implement. My work efficiency depends on getting my workplace straight. Not being able to quickly tile windows with the keyboard the way I want it, is a show stopper. To be sure: "with the keyboard". I hate to switch from mouse to keyboard all the time. Hop, to another desktop environment.

The experience is inconsistent if this is not resolved. It feels messy. Feels like a supercar with 3 wheels. If this is a show stopper for people, they won't stick around of course and vote for this. I tried.
Comment 17 Christoph Feck 2015-01-27 22:39:39 UTC
> The bug here has four duplicates which is comparable few

Martin, from the 1702 wishes reported for KWin, only 28 have more than four duplicates (I consider duplicates more important than number of votes, because it much easier to read a feature request and click "me too", instead of writing a feature proposal.)

But the number of people using portrait displays is already a minority, so counting absolute numbers is not fair.
Comment 18 Thomas Lübking 2015-01-28 02:17:38 UTC
Ok, let's do the brainstorm here ;-)



I could imagine three levels of feature here

a) 2 shortcuts to toggle the active window into predefined positions (upper and lower half), pretty much unrelated to the present QT stuff.

b) "en par" feature extension
      moving a window to the upper edge moves it to the upper half and for the lower edge to the lower half. This somehow clashes with "Quick Maximization", thus likely requires a mutually exclusive toggle.

c) dynamic quick tiling (I think I saw that on Windows 8)
    Moving a window to the upper edge would maximize it. A subsequent attempt would move the present window to the opposite (ie. lower) half and the new one to the upper. Likewise the horizontal tiling would impact the quick maximized window and quarter tiling both types.
Attempting to move a window to a slot (eg. the upper left corner) that is already taken, would move the present window to the next free slot, only resize (shrink) it if necessary and untile it if nothing of that is possible.

(c) would somehow be feature complete and consistent, but also a fundamentally different approach to the status quo.

Since I firmly believe that maximizing (and also half or quarter maximizing because your screen is large and of extreme aspect ratio) is a bug in the users brain, I'm out of position to argue what makes most sense here.
Comment 19 sparhawk 2015-01-28 03:55:55 UTC
To add to Thomas's point (b), and alternative would be to utilise different regions of the upper edge. When dragging to the sides, we already see different functionality if the window is dragged to the top or bottom quarter. This obviously correlates with positioning the window to the corners.

Similarly, users could drag windows to the left or right regions of the upper edge. The analogy fails a little here, as both maximisation and tiling to the top half of the screen both result in a window placement that is horizontally "centred", so perhaps a user option could be provided, to determine what the effect of each region would be. (Also, perhaps quarters would be the wrong ratio here.)

Personally, (a) is the most important for me, while (b) is probably required for consistency with
Comment 20 sparhawk 2015-01-28 04:01:51 UTC
To add to Thomas's point (b), an alternative would be to utilise different regions of the upper edge. When dragging to the sides, if the window is dragged to the top or bottom quarter, we already see different functions. This obviously correlates with positioning the window to the corners.

Similarly, users could drag windows to the left or right regions of the upper edge. The analogy fails a little here, as both maximisation and tiling to the top half of the screen both result in a window placement that is horizontally "centred"; perhaps a user option could be provided, to determine what the effect of each region would be. (Also, perhaps quarters would be the wrong ratio here.)
Comment 21 Thomas Lübking 2015-02-03 19:41:26 UTC
*** Bug 343738 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 22 Martin Flöser 2015-03-31 09:22:00 UTC
Git commit 2217c1038fcff0b349de13d2d3c19cf49c8eba50 by Martin Gräßlin, on behalf of Mika Allan Rauhala.
Committed on 31/03/2015 at 09:10.
Pushed by graesslin into branch 'master'.

Add Quick Tile Window to the Top and Bottom shortcuts

This adds "Quick Tile Window to the Top" and "Quick Title Window to the Bottom" shortcuts. These are
useful for those using displays that are in portrait orientation.
REVIEW: 123153

M  +4    -0    kwinbindings.cpp
M  +16   -0    placement.cpp
M  +2    -0    scripting/workspace_wrapper.cpp
M  +2    -0    scripting/workspace_wrapper.h
M  +2    -0    workspace.h

http://commits.kde.org/kwin/2217c1038fcff0b349de13d2d3c19cf49c8eba50
Comment 23 Thomas Lübking 2015-04-13 08:59:38 UTC
*** Bug 346131 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 24 Martin Flöser 2015-07-13 13:57:38 UTC
*** Bug 350172 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 25 Thomas Lübking 2016-02-01 12:03:31 UTC
*** Bug 358812 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 26 Thomas Lübking 2016-07-14 16:36:21 UTC
*** Bug 365681 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 27 Simone Gaiarin 2016-07-14 16:55:29 UTC
Another idea regarding the placement by touching the edge would be to make the window expand to the upper half  of the screen when  the upper edge is touched only when the screen is in portrait mode. And possibly use the right or left edge to maximize the window.

I guess that tile to top and bottom would be not so common in landscape mode and the same for left/right in portrait.
Comment 28 Kevin Cox 2016-07-14 16:58:45 UTC
@Simone you might be right about the common case but I often want to tile horizontally on a landscape display. One common use case for me is two terminals that have long lines but I only need to monitor the last couple.
Comment 29 Simone Gaiarin 2016-07-14 17:02:46 UTC
Yes that's a good point. Still the behavior proposed for the portrait mode will not affect this use case in landscape, and I doubt someone wants to tile left/right in portrait, having the window be two long stripes (I may be wrong).
Comment 30 Kevin Cox 2016-07-14 17:03:58 UTC
That would seem less common especially for horizontal languages but I imagine there may be some use cases for vertical languages.