Bug 465937 - Split does not reset to its original value once "adjacent quick-tiled windows" configuration ceases to exist
Summary: Split does not reset to its original value once "adjacent quick-tiled windows...
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: kwin
Classification: Plasma
Component: Quick Tiling (show other bugs)
Version: 5.27.0
Platform: Arch Linux Linux
: HI normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: KWin default assignee
URL:
Keywords: regression
: 464950 466817 476474 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2023-02-17 15:22 UTC by Riku
Modified: 2023-11-11 12:52 UTC (History)
33 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


Attachments
Demonstration of the issue (3.58 MB, video/mp4)
2023-02-17 23:49 UTC, Riku
Details

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Description Riku 2023-02-17 15:22:56 UTC
SUMMARY
Resizing a quick tiled window will change how windows are tiled until kwin is restarted.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Quick tile a window to the left so it takes one half of the screen.
2. Resize it horizontally to a quarter of the screen.
3. Now all windows quick tiled to the left will take one quarter instead of half of the screen. Windows tiled to the right will take 3/4.

EXPECTED RESULT
The "layout" should not preserved. Quick tiled windows used to always take half of the screen (or a quarter in corners).

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.103.0
Qt Version: 5.15.8
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2023-02-17 23:20:55 UTC
Cannot reproduce. Can you write expanded steps to reproduce starting from a clean desktop with no windows open so I can follow it exactly? Alternatively, a screen recording would help.
Comment 2 Riku 2023-02-17 23:49:44 UTC
Created attachment 156405 [details]
Demonstration of the issue

I've added a video where you can see the issue. I tile to the left (super+left), horizontal resize (super+right click), and now I'm stuck with these strange sizes on all subsequent quick tiles to the left and right, including after closing the window and opening a new one.
I forgot to include it in the recording but like I mentioned, regular behavior can be restored by running "kwin_x11 --replace".
Also of note, I temporarily moved my .cache, .config and .local to make sure it's not some broken config issue.
Comment 3 Vlad Zahorodnii 2023-02-20 10:07:30 UTC
This is intentional behavior in 5.27. Resizing a tiled window changes the split between left half of the screen and the right half of the screen so if you have two windows tiled side by side, they cover the entire area of the screen.
Comment 4 Riku 2023-02-20 10:28:55 UTC
Closing the tiled windows and the state persisting just doesn't make any sense. I think on windows 10 for example, you can do something similar where windows snapped to the sides fill the remaining space, but new windows snapped on an empty desktop still take half.

Why would anyone want to preserve the invisible layout that cannot be reset? Wouldn't the people who want persistent tiling layouts be using the new custom tiling thing anyway?
Comment 5 Till Seifert 2023-02-22 08:47:34 UTC
Is there any way to disable this. Like not making the window a 'tiled' window' and retain the ability to position windows to the left and right half of the screen?
Comment 6 Benjamin Xiao 2023-02-22 08:51:10 UTC
Agreed, this bug should be reopened. The 50 / 50 layout is a separate layout from the Win + T layouts, and as such we can't really reset it. I am okay with the state persisting if there was a way to reset, but currently there isn't.
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2023-02-22 20:35:25 UTC
I tend to agree that preserving the split while there aren't tiled windows seems wrong because the behavior is invisible and non-resettable. It seems okay to preserve it as long as there are at least one quick-tiled window on either side of the split, but once that ceases to be the case, the split should reset to its midpoint position.

The name "Quick Tiling"e even communicates that this is a short-term transient thing; if you want a more permanent setup, you should use the new Custom Tiling system.

Re-opening.
Comment 8 Benjamin Xiao 2023-03-03 06:47:48 UTC
@Nate Graham, I think that's a perfect way to do it!
Comment 9 Nate Graham 2023-03-07 20:41:50 UTC
*** Bug 466817 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Dragoon Aethis 2023-03-09 21:30:11 UTC
One more +1 to make this quick tiling behavior optional, it's driving me nuts. I have a setup w/ 1440p screen, an instant messenger open in a 640px wide bar to the left, 1920px wide browser/editor/whatever to the right that I overlay with other windows 50/50, and trying to mix this 50/50 on top of the 640+1920px windows gets weird results (let's say I have a 1920px wide browser and want to overlay 50% wide PDF browser - nope, it'll force it into the 640px bar, you have to first resize any window manually to "undock" the window from the quick tiling state).
Comment 11 Nate Graham 2023-04-02 23:22:13 UTC
Raising priority as this is rather annoying and we're getting a lot of negative feedback about it. If adjacent quick-tiled windows are supposed to resize together now, it doesn't work reliably and predictably enough to seem like a feature; instead it seems like a bug. In my recent experience, it feels like anytime I *want* my adjacent quick-tiled windows to resize together, they don't, and then later windows will resize together or quick-tile to unexpected regions in a way that feels quite random.
Comment 12 Kamil Cukrowski 2023-04-03 20:41:50 UTC
+1 Hi! KDE is amazing, and thanks for making it! Please make this behavior, if it is intentional, optional. I would kindly want every time I click Meta+Right the window should be placed exactly at the right exact half of the screen every time, irrelevant if it was resized, or full screen, or anything. Please kindly add an option to make it possible, it is a really simple behavior. Thank you.
Comment 13 Lewis 2023-04-17 16:30:55 UTC
(In reply to Kamil Cukrowski from comment #12)
> I would kindly want every time I click Meta+Right the window should be placed exactly at the right exact half of
> the screen every time, irrelevant if it was resized, or full screen, or
> anything

Hi Kamil - me too! A bit of experimenting has shown that if you open the tiling interface (Meta+T) and delete all the tiles, all of the quick-snapping features behave like they used to in pre-5.27.

I'm sure this feature will help a lot of people, but it is confusing that our existing bindings' behaviour changed without any explanation. Hopefully the KDE team can find a way to allow the two features to coexist, or at least make the onboarding experience less jarring.
Comment 14 Till Seifert 2023-05-15 09:50:55 UTC
> if you open the
> tiling interface (Meta+T) and delete all the tiles, all of the
> quick-snapping features behave like they used to in pre-5.27.

Not for me ( kwin 5.27.5 ). There were actuyll no tiles in the Meta-T view in the first place after updating to 5.27.
Comment 15 WiseLord 2023-06-01 13:42:20 UTC
One more related issue:

1. Quick tile a window to the left or write, it doesn't matter.
2. Swtich to another desktop (e.g., from 1 to 2)
3. Quick tile one more window.
4. Resize 2nd window
5. Get back to desktop 1.

You'll see that 1st window also was suddenly resizes.

I don't think it's an expected behaviour. Resizing windows belonging to one desktop should not impact on windows on other desktops.
Comment 16 Nate Graham 2023-06-20 19:21:01 UTC
*** Bug 464950 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 17 Hector SB 2023-06-21 12:09:40 UTC
If this is intentional behavior, please add a way to disable it. It's driving me nuts.
Comment 18 JohnMessy 2023-06-26 08:46:10 UTC
This issue is really driving me nuts, up the wall wanting to pickup my laptop and throw out of the window nuts.

sorry for the previous line. But when using meta+shortcuts for all default old posisionts icm the the "new" tiling system is really broken.

Please remove or make it configurable that there is no persistent configuration for the quick tile posistions. If you want persistant, make it available through the editor, every other change (99.99999% times it's an unintentional change in my case).  and the whole setup becomes unusable again. 

1. when temporary resizing a window, it should not snap a random  window  in the background to the window an resize that to the window. 
2 resizing the window to 3 quarter of the screen, also results that when I use Meta End to the bottem right quarter screen, results in a window with the left top placed on 3/4 of the screen, but the window isn't resized the rest of the window is off screen.

Please restore the old method, of make it configurable that the only persistant window arrangement is the one done through the editor. The current system is unworkable.
Comment 19 Zeb Figura 2023-07-18 17:00:28 UTC
I would also like to see this be reverted or configurable. I understand the desire here and it makes sense to me—to effectively "set up" a custom layout. However, I'm used to the old behaviour; I used it very frequently, and I want a quick way to just make a window take up half of the screen, no matter how I subsequently resized windows afterward.
Comment 20 Josh 2023-07-19 20:28:09 UTC
I agree that this should be optional. It feels unintuitive and more like a bug than a feature.
Comment 21 jake gaisser 2023-09-16 07:01:01 UTC
+1 been driving my crazy for months. Today I tried some workaround. This kinda works (https://github.com/acristoffers/kwin-rectangle) but it is also not as good as the previous behavior. I just want to snap windows to half my screen.... even if I previously manually resized a window. I am going nuts here. I am to the point that I really need to train myself to NEVER resize a window, which is sad because occasionally you do want a window larger than half. I miss the old functionality so very much.
Comment 22 Josh 2023-09-16 08:28:21 UTC
I also dread accidentally triggering this feature. 

If I trigger it I have to close all windows, open four Konsole windows in each corner of the screen and use the row/column indicator in each Konsole window to ensure they're all 50% screen height and 50% screen width.

I once found the configuration file where the dynamic tiling is stored, deleting that file and rebooting reverted the split back to 50/50. I can't remember which file it was though.

Every time it happens I think about dumping KDE, not because this is a bad idea just that it has been so badly implemented. 

KDE used to be famous for configuration and customisation then we get this invisible feature (I don't even know what it's called!).
Comment 23 jake gaisser 2023-09-19 00:01:40 UTC
This  may not be a solution for everyone, but just having a setting that always forces 50% for tiling would make me happy, then it would behave like it did previously.
Comment 24 Bob Borges 2023-09-19 08:12:27 UTC
+1 for the general complaints. Please implement possibility to:

- disable automatic resize of two adjacent quick-tiled windows
- disable automatic resize of quick tiled windows on all virtual desktops

I'm a recent KDE user, and generally love it, but this behavior alone has me considering changing DE/WM again after just a couple months.
Comment 25 Duncan Calvert 2023-09-19 12:35:28 UTC
(In reply to jake gaisser from comment #23)
> This  may not be a solution for everyone, but just having a setting that
> always forces 50% for tiling would make me happy, then it would behave like
> it did previously.

+1 This would be great. I snap windows around constantly and always want them to snap 50%. I often adjust the width afterwards and am usually okay with windows overlapping some. It's a nice way to keep track of what's there while getting the full view when focusing it.

Changes like this subvert the utility of so many of the concepts of a normal windowing system. We shouldn't be forced into tiling.
Comment 26 alberto.rinaudo 2023-09-28 23:04:46 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #7)
> I tend to agree that preserving the split while there aren't tiled windows
> seems wrong because the behavior is invisible and non-resettable. It seems
> okay to preserve it as long as there are at least one quick-tiled window on
> either side of the split, but once that ceases to be the case, the split
> should reset to its midpoint position.
> 
> The name "Quick Tiling"e even communicates that this is a short-term
> transient thing; if you want a more permanent setup, you should use the new
> Custom Tiling system.
> 
> Re-opening.

100% agree with Nate, I don't think this needs new configurable settings. The split position should reset to 50% once all windows have been closed or "un-splitted".
Comment 27 Till Seifert 2023-09-29 05:52:23 UTC
(In reply to alberto.rinaudo from comment #26)
> (In reply to Nate Graham from comment #7)
> 100% agree with Nate, I don't think this needs new configurable settings.
> The split position should reset to 50% once all windows have been closed or
> "un-splitted".

That would be intuitive for one desktop. If you use many it will still be very annoying. So it should then be a state per desktop, or there should be a way to turn it off.
Comment 28 Samantaz Fox 2023-10-17 21:08:01 UTC
I'd be really grateful to have a setting to disable this feature.

Maybe related: even after moving all windows around, I can't get the tiling back to 50/50. And Meta+T does nothing.
Ftr, I'm on Fedora 38. I'll probably update to F39 during the week.
Comment 29 Dragoon Aethis 2023-10-17 21:35:09 UTC
@Samantaz Fox, you can try to undock windows by holding a keyboard shortcut to resize a window, then resizing a window by two sides. If you do it on both sides, it should reset back to 50/50 - if it doesn't, I just log out and back in :( It's really annoying.
Comment 30 umbrello 2023-10-19 14:17:56 UTC
We used it as a torture tool at work to get suspects to talk and it worked well beyond our expectations !
Thank you very much, however if it is possible to be able to reattribute the old behavior which works just magnificently for the innocent people who didn't ask for anything, it would be really appreciated.

I honestly don't understand how it could have seemed like a good idea to you to deploy this as is by completely removing a functionality that was otherwise useful and fonctional.
Comment 31 Mauricio 2023-10-23 13:20:14 UTC
+1 For this to be reverted or configurable.

I downgraded KDE when this first appeared and I'm disheartened to discover that months later there is still not a solution. Please allow the old quick-tile behavior; I really have so much muscle-memory built around it. (https://github.com/acristoffers/kwin-rectangle is a serviceable workaround but resizing after using it is currently buggy for me.)
Comment 32 Nate Graham 2023-11-03 21:21:41 UTC
*** Bug 476474 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 33 Norbert 2023-11-11 12:46:22 UTC
To me there should be a config option for this 2 things (probably separately):
  - quick tiling forced to 50% width
  - disable of any width change to other windows

I used to use it as follows:
  - quick tile both windows to 50%
  - resize them to ~75% to still allow quick switching (click on the backgrounded window) and having reasonable work space.

Now this workflow is broken (seems not only for me). Please add config options for these. We don't want to be forced to do anything.
Comment 34 Norbert 2023-11-11 12:52:41 UTC
(In reply to WiseLord from comment #15)
> One more related issue:
> 
> 1. Quick tile a window to the left or write, it doesn't matter.
> 2. Swtich to another desktop (e.g., from 1 to 2)
> 3. Quick tile one more window.
> 4. Resize 2nd window
> 5. Get back to desktop 1.
> 
> You'll see that 1st window also was suddenly resizes.
> 
> I don't think it's an expected behaviour. Resizing windows belonging to one
> desktop should not impact on windows on other desktops.

Also experiencing this one. Most definetly a bug