xoat/README.md

xoat

X Obstinate Asymmetric Tiler

• Designed for wide screens, including multi-head support.
• Static tiling; you get just three fixed tiles and windows never move automatically.
• Bare minimum EWMH to support panels and simpleswitcher.
• A few keyboard controls for moving, focusing, cycling, closing, and finding windows.
• Transient windows and dialogs are centered on parent, not tiled.
• Splash screens and notification popups are displayed as requested, not tiled.
• config.h for customization of borders and keys.

The Layout

 ---------------------------------     ---------------------
 |                     |         |     |                   |
 |                     |         |     |                   |
 |                     |    2    |     |                   |
 |          1          |         |     |         1         |
 |                     |---------|     |                   |
 |                     |         |     |                   |
 |                     |    3    |     |                   |
 ---------------------------------     |                   |
                                       |-------------------|
                                       |       |           |
                                       |       |           |
                                       |   3   |     2     |
                                       |       |           |
                                       ---------------------

• Layout can be flipped horizontally to place tile 1 on the right.
• Layout rotates along with Xrandr rotated monitors.

Philosophy

• Asymmetric tiling layouts are more useful than symmetric ones.
  • A master/stack layout is fine but only if the stack is itself asymmetric.
• Static tiling is more practical than dynamic tiling or floating.
  • Windows moving and resizing without user input is bad.
  • Having a choice of tiling layouts at run time is distracting.
  • Apps that remember their size can handily be placed back in the correct tile.
• Three tiles suffice because:
  • App windows are always one of four types:
    1. Large work-being-done apps
    2. Medium monitoring-something apps
    3. Small background-chat-music apps
    4. Apps people should not use ;-)
  • Want more tiles? Buy more monitors.
• Keyboard controls generally preferred over the mouse, when practical.
  • Faster. Muscle memory.
• Click-to-focus model preferred over focus-follows-mouse.
  • FfM means mentally keeping track of the mouse or warping the pointer around.
  • CtF is harder to get wrong and makes it easy to forget about the mouse for some tasks.
• 2/3 is a nice fraction.

config.h

All customization happens in config.h. See in-line comments there. It's tracked, so use a local git branch or a merge tool to protect any customization.