SUMMARY The Keyboard shortcuts for window management lack some functionality. Unfortunately I think that cannot simply be achieved by introducing better defaults, but actually requires some more refactoring. Currently the META + Arrow keys are used for that. Unfortunately, I cannot maximize a Window with META + Up like on other desktop environments or operating systems. I just found out that one can use META + Page Up for that (and META + Page Down to minimize; this is not really well documented anywhere, though). Regardless, I hope that the capabilities of managing windows with META + Arrow keys can be improved. Like when pressing META + UP one time it shifts the Window to the upper half of the screen and pressing it a second time maximizes it. Also that way one could put a Window in the upper left corner for example by pressing META + Up followed by META + Left. This is as far as I know the behavior on Windows.
I like Meta+Up twice to maximize but would rather go with Meta+Up+Left upper left corner and Meta+Left always left tile. What would you do with minimize? Meta+Down twice for minimizing is difficult because you can't press again Meta+Up to get it unminimized.
I just saw https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/50 This is improving the situation for moving Windows into corners. I think it is also better than the implementation of that on Windows. Regarding minimizing: This is how it works on Windows. I never use it, though, since I don't like the Window getting unmaximized first before minimizing. Regarding that you can't get it back again with META + Up: Same for the current shortcut with META + Page Down. META + Up does not bring the Window back.
So now that that KWin change has been merged, is there anything left to do here? Maybe make Meta+up+up perform a maximize (and presumably Meta+down+down minimize?)
I guess those are the only outstanding things. Corner placement has a good solution now. I was only thinking about making Meta + Up maximize right away (Windows and GNOME handle it that way), but came to the conclusion that the current way of moving to top first is probably more consistent (plus there is the Meta + Page Up shortcut) For intuitiveness, Meta + Up + Up and Meta + Down + Down would be nice (I'd still leave the Page Up / Down combinations). If possible I guess it would also make sense to not have this time based, but to always maximize a window with Meta + Up that has been tiled to the top with Meta + Up before. Might be harder to implement, though.
Seems doable to add up+up and down+down to the existing timer infrastructure.
Would you like to give that a shot, Claudius? You can see how I implemented it originally here: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/commit/87578bfc15c281279eec8261c3c7969c2b2163b4 The actual code changes to placement.cpp are not very complex and wouldn't be too hard to extend. The hardest part would be figuring out how to minimize and maximize. Wanna give it a try?
The difference between that and the other quick tiling is in the quick tiling meta+left+top can be easily undone by pressing a direction again. Minimise cannot.
Isn't that already the case for the existing Meta+PgDn shortcut?
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #6) > Would you like to give that a shot, Claudius? You can see how I implemented > it originally here: > https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/commit/ > 87578bfc15c281279eec8261c3c7969c2b2163b4 > > The actual code changes to placement.cpp are not very complex and wouldn't > be too hard to extend. The hardest part would be figuring out how to > minimize and maximize. > > Wanna give it a try? I had a short look at your implementation before and I guess when investing some more time I could adapt your solution to also work with the outstanding shortcuts. Unfortunately I currently don't have that much time anymore, especially as this might need compilation of the whole Plasma desktop for testing. Maybe when I have more time again, but if somebody else wants to implement it that would also be nice.
Working on this. So far it's easier than I thought it was going to be.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/81
Unfortunately we won't be able to do this it was pointed out that Meta+up+up already has an action: on a multi-screen setup, it switches the screen that the window is maximized to. Having Meta+up+up do different things on a single-screen vs multi-screen setup is inconsistent and would probably irritate people.
Alright. I did not think of this case myself. I wonder how Windows (or I think GNOME) handles it, since they both have this shortcut. Maybe it maximizes first and then moves the window up when pressed again? But the way back is more tricky or unexpected as the window might get minimized first. I guess there really is no fine solution, as even disabling the feature the special multiscreen setups with this problem might confuse people.