WM: grouping applications (TAI)

[Maciej Pilichowski]

On Monday 09 March 2009 23:54:56 Matthew Woehlke wrote:

> There is one active window, determined by following the active
> container chain from root. "Last active" is the window that will
> become active if a container becomes active. Again, same thing with
> windows on virtual desktops, and widgets in windows. When you
> switch from window A to window B and back to window A, window A
> remembers what widget was active.
>
> Apologies for the previously-insufficient explanation. Is the above
> better?

Yes thank you. The term last-active is a misleading one though :-).

> Yes. Btw, what keyboard layout do you have? For me it seems arrows
> would be much better (all in one spot); tab and backspace are
> opposite ends of the keyboard :-). 

They are not better or worse, they are different -- cltr+left would go 
to next left window, while cltr+backspace would go the previous 
window (previous in the sense of focus sequence). And those windows 
can be the same, but they don't have to be.

> >> unless you do something that makes it go to root
> >> instead (or vice-versa), where "something" is e.g. hold ctrl.
> >
> > I think it is not necessary -- if it is possible to just drag the
> > window you can drag as sibling of the top level window.
>
> ...unless the root container is totally obscured? My experience is
> that a "don't dock" key will be needed.

Don't dock would mean detach entirely from the container then -- i.e. 
make a standalone window. But this is not going to root container, is 
it?

Btw. making it standalone with ctrl make sense, because the root 
container could be maximized, so you cannot physically move it 
somewhere else, because "else" is taken by the root container.


I see, that we covered everything I think, so what next -- mockups? Or 
more detailed UI cases -- detach, dock, TAI<->GAI switch, etc? Spec 
is cheaper than code.

Cheers,