Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful keyboard controls

Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by emilsedgh on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @07:54PM (#14510824)

I have a workflow that I believe is far superior to all these window managers.

Quake-style terminals have always been popular. I used to use Yakuake on KDE which was very convenient.

The convenience its not that those terminals open up with an animation (which is quite annoying). It was because there was a dedicated keyboard shortcut for them. You memorized that and you never ever think about managing the window of that application again.

So for years I have keyboard shortcuts assigned to my applications.

F1 opens Browser

F2 opens File manager

F3 opens Text Editor

F4 opens Chat App (Telegram)

F6 opens Email client

F7 opens ICR Client

F9 opens Terminal

F10 opens Music Player (Although Spotify on Linux has a bug that doesn't allow this to work)

Ever since I adopted this scheme I simply have a better quality of life during the time I'm using my computer. If there was a CPU usage for my brain, I'm sure its dropped. I strongly suggest you to try it out.

Because the shortcuts become muscle memory and you don't even think about them anymore. You know what you want and your fingers just know how to open it up.

I'm not quite sure which window managers allow this, but I'm using KWin and it allows me to arrange these shortcuts.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by lostmsu on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @10:09PM (#14511370)

Wait a second. That's exactly how Windows taskbar binding works.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by okbake on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @11:03PM (#14511573)

I pipe a list of installed programs into dmenu and have it run whichever one I select. I have this bound to Mod+p. dmenu has fuzzy search, so if I want to open firefox I can just type `Mod+p fox <cr>`. Not quite as fast as having dedicated hotkeys, but it also covers all installed programs on the system (or some small subset if I want).

Having programs available from anywhere with just a few keystrokes makes everything feel very accessible. Whenever I want to run something I just need to type a few characters of the binaries name to launch it.

I use a similiar set up for ssh, where I pipe the Hosts from my ~/.ssh/config into dmenu and only need to type part of the hostname to connect.

[dmenu] http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by fiatjaf on Thursday June 08, 2017 @09:05AM (#14513868)

dmenu takes 2 seconds to open on my computer. It's horrible. But I use it too little to worry about changing it.

My question is: how do you open ssh from dmenu? I can't open terminal applications from dmenu, it should open a terminal automatically, I guess, but it doesn't do anything. Is that controlled by some other Linux configuration? I'm on Ubuntu with i3.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by tmearnest on Thursday June 08, 2017 @02:35PM (#14516104)

You'd need either write a special dmenu script to run it in an xterm, or add a simple script to your path:

#!/bin/sh

exec xterm -e ssh user@hostname

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by mmozeiko on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @08:10PM (#14510914)

So this is pretty much like Windows Win+Number shortcut, when you have apps pinned to taskbar.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by pmoriarty on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @08:48PM (#14511059)

And this is pretty much the same as the i3 window manager's Mod1+Number to switch workspaces, when you have one app per workspace.

This is of course customizable to use other keystrokes if you prefer.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by aji on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @09:17PM (#14511173)

I lucked into this pattern when I used ratpoison. Window 0 was always my terminal emulator (running tmux), window 1 was always Firefox. Additionally, tmux window 0 was always my IRC client. Getting between those apps quickly became muscle memory. I use a more conventional window manager now and it's noticeably clumsier.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by dbranes on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @08:12PM (#14510923)

Not seeing how this is relevant. The tool linked here just helps you manage how much space different windows take up on your screen, it doesn't really care about how you open these windows.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by emilsedgh on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @08:25PM (#14510975)

Not really relevant. It just makes my life easier and people in this topic are interested in window managers so I thought I'd share maybe someone finds it useful :)

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by michaelmrose on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @09:10PM (#14511158)

You can bind keys to operations including more complex operations than 1key -> command in any window manager or de. If your environment of choice doesn't allow this you can use xbindkeys or sxhkd.

Wayland excluded because in wayland this feature is either provided/enabled by the environment or impossible to implement for securities sake.

If you haven't already got it may I suggest you implement some sort of raise or run functionality so that say F6 could open your email client or focus it if its already open.

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Re:Show HN: Grid-based window tiling for X11 with powerful k... by saagarjha on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @10:56PM (#14511532)

Have Hammerspoon do this for me on macOS, except the shortcuts are more like Caps Lock+T is Terminal, etc.

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