From: Michael Stapelberg Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:55:48 +0000 (+0000) Subject: hacking-howto: talk about the tree data structure X-Git-Tag: 4.2~204 X-Git-Url: https://git.sur5r.net/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=b1b139df1efbcf260c3dd0173eae8cd72ebcac8b;p=i3%2Fi3 hacking-howto: talk about the tree data structure --- diff --git a/docs/hacking-howto b/docs/hacking-howto index 1377d87c..d0f5ac3a 100644 --- a/docs/hacking-howto +++ b/docs/hacking-howto @@ -63,57 +63,22 @@ 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 +=== The layout tree -********************************************************************************* -This section has not been updated for v4.0 yet, sorry! We wanted to release on -time, but we will update this soon. Please talk to us on IRC if you need to -know stuff *NOW* :). -********************************************************************************* - -///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// -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). +The data structure which i3 uses to keep track of your windows is a tree. Every +node in the tree is a container (type +Con+). Some containers represent actual +windows (every container with a +window != NULL+), some represent split +containers and a few have special purposes: they represent workspaces, outputs +(like VGA1, LVDS1, …) or the X11 root window. 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 -|======== +the same split container, which uses the default layout. In case of an empty +workspace, the split container we are talking about is the workspace. -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 similarly. 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. -///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// +To get an impression of how different layouts are represented, just play around +and look at the data structures -- they are exposed as a JSON hash. See +http://i3wm.org/docs/ipc.html#_get_tree_reply for documentation on that and an +example. == Files