RFC: Use Grid as default for KWin's Presnt windows effect

[Martin Gräßlin]

On Monday 12 January 2015 12:12:07 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Martin Gräßlin <mgraesslin at kde.org> wrote:
> > > Also what exactly does suck about it?
> > 
> > The problems with the non natural layouts are various, e.g.:
> > * windows might get too small as all windows have same size
> 
> I believe that's not really a problem, see the screenshot I posted above
> with 16 windows.
> I have no data for this claim, but I don't think that many people actually
> have more than 10
> windows opened at once? And there's the label.

at the moment I have 21 open windows. As I'm writing now this mail it 
increased to 22. I don't think that it's that uncommon to have many open 
windows - from bug reports I can be sure that it can be > 30.

Please also consider that this is also used in DesktopGrid. So the thumbs get 
smaller there.

> 
> I actually find the windows in Natural to be sometimes even smaller.
> 
> > * windows might move to a bad position, e.g. a window from the top left
> > goes
> > to bottom right
> 
> Hmm...that might be an issue for some, yes. Personally I've never associated
> the window position on screen with the position of the window in the
> effect. Perhaps because I never really got to see the zoom out animation
> (all my systems
> were always with binary nvidia and there the animation is just 0.5s freeze)
> and so the visual clue was broken. Dunno.
> 
> > The natural layout tries to optimize that by using an algorithm using size
> > and
> > position as reference. The downside is that the layout might appear to be
> > random. But so would a movement all across the screen look random.
> 
> I do dare to say that I don't understand this algorithm at all and I
> believe so do
> other people.

The algorithm is not as complex as it looks :-) I'm quite confident that you 
would understand it.

Also another better suited algorithm could be implemented. I had been dreaming 
of using a max-flow/min-cut based algorithm for years. Or an algorithm which 
tries to keep windows as large as possible but still orders them in a grid.

> The advantage of the grid would be that the all windows are
> presented in a uniform and consistent form, even if the sorting is
> random/not ideal.
> 
> In this case, imo the looks outweight the negative of the grid as you get
> the same
> (moreless) negatives in the Natural look.

I personally doubt that the existing options are better suited than the 
natural layout. I'm not doubting that there could be a better algorithm, 
though.

> 
> Do you have a link to the VDG thread btw?

sure: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=123481

Cheers
Martin
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