From: Michael Stapelberg Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 16:02:17 +0000 (+0100) Subject: More work on hacking-howto X-Git-Tag: 3.a~66 X-Git-Url: https://git.sur5r.net/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=4dd1a7e181eacd32239cc0326ba2b99c3370ec93;p=i3%2Fi3 More work on hacking-howto --- diff --git a/docs/Makefile b/docs/Makefile new file mode 100644 index 00000000..276cc7ca --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/Makefile @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +hacking-howto.html: hacking-howto + asciidoc -n $< + +all: hacking-howto.html diff --git a/docs/hacking-howto b/docs/hacking-howto index 24d36d2c..74715bcb 100644 --- a/docs/hacking-howto +++ b/docs/hacking-howto @@ -38,6 +38,65 @@ Restart the window manager In the following chapters, each of these tasks and their implementation details will be discussed. +=== Tiling window managers + +Traditionally, there are two approaches to managing windows: The most common one nowadays is +floating, which means the user can freely move/resize the windows. The other approach is called +tiling, which means that your window manager distributing windows to use as much space as +possible while not overlapping. + +The idea behind tiling is that you should not need to waste your time moving/resizing windows +while you usually want to get some work done. After all, most users sooner or later tend to +lay out their windows in a way which corresponds to tiling or stacking mode in i3. Therefore, +why not let i3 do this for you? Certainly, it’s faster than you could ever do it. + +The problem with most tiling window managers is that they are too unflexible. In my opinion, a +window manager is just another tool, and similar to vim which can edit all kinds of text files +(like source code, HTML, …) and is not limited to a specific file type, a window manager should +not limit itself to a certain layout (like dwm, awesome, …) but provide mechanisms for you to +easily create the layout you need at the moment. + +=== The layout table + +To accomplish flexible layouts, we decided to simply use a table. The table grows and shrinks +as you need it. Each cell holds a container which then holds windows (see picture below). You +can use different layouts for each container (default layout and stacking layout). + +So, when you open a terminal and immediately open another one, they reside in the same container, +in default layout. The layout table has exactly one column, one row and therefore one cell. +When you move one of the terminals to the right, the table needs to grow. It will be expanded +to two columns and one row. This enables you to have different layouts for each container. +The table then looks like this: + +[width="15%",cols="^,^"] +|======== +| T1 | T2 +|======== + +When moving terminal 2 to the bottom, the table will be expanded again. + +[width="15%",cols="^,^"] +|======== +| T1 | +| | T2 +|======== + +You can really think of the layout table like a traditional HTML table, if you’ve ever +designed one. Especially col- and rowspan work equally. Below you see an example of +colspan=2 for the first container (which has T1 as window). + +[width="15%",cols="^asciidoc"] +|======== +| T1 +| +[cols="^,^",frame="none"] +!======== +! T2 ! T3 +!======== +|======== + +Furthermore, you can freely resize table cells. + == Files include/data.h::