On 2022-03-12 at 07:38, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 07:22:11AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
>
>> On 2022-03-12 at 01:29, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
>>> There seems to be some basis to it. And some solution. But then,
>>> you're perhaps bound to a specific toolkit [1] [2] or perhaps
>>> compositor.
>>
>>> [1] https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/wayland-display-server/1074550-kde-now-has-virtual-desktop-support-on-wayland
>>> and the links therein.
>>
>> It's more complicated than that, unfortunately.
>>
>> There's a reason I didn't use the phrase "virtual desktops" in my
>> description of this feature; the X spec defines *two* things which
>> are sometimes called by that name.
>>
>> One of them has a single large "desktop" with multiple viewports
>> into it; on that one the parts of one window that stick off the
>> edge of one viewport overflow into, and can be seen through, an
>> adjacent viewport.
>
> Ah, I see. I dimly remember that one (I'm that old ;-)
>> The other defines multiple separate "desktops", which are
>> logically arranged into a grid for purposes of indexing and access,
>> but which are individually independent; anything sticking off the
>> edge of any one of them is not visible anywhere. That, as I
>> understand matters, is the feature commonly called "virtual
>> desktops". It's my understanding that this feature *is* possible
>> via, and maybe even directly supported by, Wayland.
>
> And then, there are window managers (Fvwm) which offer "big"
> desktops (where the visible screen is a window into, which can be
> moved around seamlessly) and then several of that "virtual
> desktops".
>
> Best of two worlds :-)
I believe e16 also does this, and if I understand matters correctly,
that's just the intersection of these two features.
If you cut the number of viewports per desktop down to 1 and the size of
the desktop to the size of the viewport, you get traditional virtual
desktops.
If you cut the number of virtual desktops down to 1, and increase the
number of viewports per desktop and (correspondingly) the size of each
desktop, you get that other virtual-desktop-like feature whose proper
other name I don't recall (but which I use routinely).
(Now that I think about it, one of these two might be properly called
"multiple desktops", and the other "virtual desktops" - but I'm no
longer positive which one is which.)
I haven't tried, because I don't want to spend the screen real estate on
the necessary pager for switching among virtual desktops, or expend
potential keybindings to be able to switch among virtual desktops
without a pager - but I'm fairly sure I could trivially configure e16 to
have a 2x2 or 3x3 or 4x4 grid of virtual desktops, each of which
consists of a 4x8 grid of viewports, each of which provides access to an
area the size of my screen resolution.
>> It's difficult or impossible to tell for certain from the limited
>> discussion in the links provided, but it looks to me (having dug
>> through as far as the Phabricator discussion) as if what KDE added
>> support for is the latter.
>>
>> (FWIW, e16 apparently supports *both* of these features, although
>> the major rewrite that was e17 and later dropped support for the
>> first one; that's one of the reasons I haven't moved forward to
>> newer versions of Enlightenment.)
>
> I have the hunch Fvwm is for you. I'm using it with one virtual
> desktop which is 3x3 the size of my screen ("pages" in Fvwm
> parlance). Of course it's segmented as nine pages, but windows
> sticking out of my current page end up sticking into the
> corresponding neighbour. And I can get my screen (aka viewport) to
> straddle page boundaries (which I don't do usually, but hey).
There are other features of e16 which I like (and I can try to run
through the list in detail if desired, although it might take me a while
to dredge everything up, since I only think about most of them when
setting up a new machine or when having to live without them for a
while), but I've heard positive-sounding things about fvwm before,
certainly.
--
The Wanderer
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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