13 ms·

The i3-gaps project has been merged with i3

454 points by harporoeder 4y ago

input_sh 4y ago
About time! Does anyone know why i3 was so opposed to gaps to warrant a fork to begin with?
- europeanguy 4y ago
  Why is gaps something that matters is what I would ask first. Seems to me increased complexity for no benefit.
  - spoiler 4y ago
    I like having a small gap. It pleases me to use a Desktop environment that looks like it at least belongs in this decade. Edit: I realise some people are okay with the brutalist design due to it being the most efficient use of screen space possible, but my brain needs a "pleasing" environment, otherwise it affects my... Mood? I'm not quite sure what it is, but to not muddle the point, having a nice environment makes me more productive
    - tekla 4y ago
      I have no idea what this means. What WM adds completely useless gaps between windows? Both Windows and MacOs do not such thing. How do gaps make a WM look like it belongs to this decade?
      - mo_42 4y ago
        If there are people who like gaps, it's not useless. It has value for them.
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        I’m not sure how we determine what looks like it belongs to this decade, but surely these legacy desktop environments don’t push the envelope or tell us much, really. I mean if we use Windows as a standard, the way to tell which decade we’re in is by counting the number of totally different UI styles we have, right?
      - mgaunard 4y ago
        Windows XP has round borders, there is no way it can tile without gaps.
      - spoiler 4y ago
        I'm not a designer, so I can't really tell you why the little bit of extra negative space helps. Maybe just the fact that a little bit of the background can bleed through makes it seem more modern, and its easier to distinguish focused windows. Default i3 just gives me like... 90iea vibes, but not in a nostalgic way but a regressive way. Maybe it's just a matter of different tastes.
  - gosukiwi 4y ago
    OSS in a nutshell
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      Indeed, some folks found the feature unnecessary at first, but somebody found an OK way to implement it, and eventually it became popular enough that they decided to merge it back into mainline. Little drama and everyone is happy in the end. Actually I think this is more like the OSS ideal.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    Other than aesthetics, In a standard window manager titlebars and task bars often pad the top and bottom of the screen, I run without either so having borders still feels more natural in some respects.
  - angio 4y ago
    With a good background contrast, it's easier to have windows stand out from each other. The default config with 0 gap and thin borders make it very hard to see which window is focused.
    - jez 4y ago
      What about the gaps makes it more obvious which window is focused? I would have guessed that the gaps are the same for focused and non-focused windows.
      - britneybitch 4y ago
        If you're looking along a vertical split and you see: <window> <active-border-color> <window> it's not clear whether the border is "pointing" left or right. However if you see: <window> <active-border-color> <gap> <inactive-border-color> <window> It is clear the active border belongs to the left window.
    - dfc 4y ago
      I use plain i3, with a border color for the focused window and a good contrasting indicator color. I always know what window is focused and where the next window will open. I have always assumed i3-gaps was just an aesthetic thing. How does the gap let you know what window is focused?
      - boomskats 4y ago
        Aesthetics matter in all-day ux. Gaps make content more legible and less fatiguing imho. It looks amazing against a #000 background on oled screens, for example. I've spent at least the last 6 years removing i3 and installing i3-gaps on all my new machines (and having to comment out gaps in my dotfiles/i3config while I do it). I didn't think I'd ever see this merge. This is awesome!
      - angio 4y ago
        if the colored gap is left/right of the gap i know the window left/right of the gap is the current one. without gap i would need to look for the other borders to understand which one is focused. i'm sure on a small (<20") screen this problem doesn't exist.
  - williamscales 4y ago
    well, dwm includes them[0] as a patch so i’m guessing even the most hardcore of folks occasionally want them. these days with high resolution monitors it can be nice to have a background and some gaps / transparency. [0] https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/gaps/ https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/gaps/
  - cosban 4y ago
    I wonder why you phrased your thoughts this way. The benefits are the additional options which were implemented in the fork. If there were no benefits then 1. no one would use this, which clearly isn't the case and 2. this merge wouldn't have occurred
  - rvz 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - _dain_ 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - rvz 4y ago
        [flagged]
        _dain_ 4y ago
        I already refuted it
        rvz 4y ago
        > refuted it Refuted what? Pretending to refute something isn't a refutation, especially when you're being very emotional and upset about it. Try again.
        ohazi 4y ago
        This is not how "to each their own" works. I don't care about the shovels that you sell to developers, and you shouldn't care that some people want to have a little fun with their desktop. You don't do that, and don't think it's a "real" use-case. Fine, we get it. You made that extremely clear several times. There is nothing to refute. We don't agree with you, we don't care about your opinion, and we're tired of hearing it.
        rvz 4y ago
        > This is not how "to each their own" works. Yes it is. > I don't care about the shovels that you sell to developers, and you shouldn't care that some people want to have a little fun with their desktop. You don't do that, and don't think it's a "real" use-case. Fine, we get it. You made that extremely clear several times. Clearly stating the reason why Desktop Linux support is eternally ill defined due to the moving parts of the desktop stack is the whole point of this, and no serious person would accept or cater support to a tiny minority of complaining Linux users to fix their highly tweaked non-standard desktop because they messed around with their dotfiles. > There is nothing to refute. We don't agree with you, we don't care about your opinion, and we're tired of hearing it. Who exactly is we? You don't speak for the one pretending to 'refute' my claims about the Linux Desktop ecosystem. They can explain why for themselves. My claims about the Linux Desktop in my comments remain irrefutable, an evergreen fact and still no rebuttal to it exists because it is the truth.
  - ohazi 4y ago
    The benefit is that it looks cool and a lot of people seem to like it. e.g. see: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ This is not an invalid use-case. Not everybody wants to be 100% focused on productivity to the exclusion of absolutely everything else. If you want to have something as simple as a background image, the only way you're going to be able to see it when using a tiling window manager is with gaps or transparency. Small gaps is arguably less intrusive than transparency.
    - rvz 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - ohazi 4y ago
        > To each to their own then, whilst I continue to sell shovels to developers and turn over another ten to twenty thousand dollars a month for only that. Okay?
      - _dain_ 4y ago
        [flagged]
        rvz 4y ago
        There is no need to be so angry over the truth. Assuming you read the comment chain, it's quite simple, the use-cases for this are almost invisible, adds no benefit other than complexity and henceforth, explains why Linux desktop support is ill defined. So explaining the truth of not supporting complicated prehistoric contraptions is somehow upsetting to folks emotionally attached to their desktops? EDIT: Also with your own edits it really does show that the truth indeed hurts those that can't handle it when you are all over the place: >> What the fuck are you talking about? Getting very upset and angry. Causing one to sway into irrationality and reduced reading comprehension such as: >> But saying there's no use-case is crazy .. can you not read? There is 'little to no use-case' and it is almost invisible even if there is a use-case. Surely you can read that and know that it isn't absolute. Yet, I'm the one that can't read? Your reading comprehension is quite low when you're angry over a windowing manager. >> Look at your unhinged, boorish tone, uncouth bragging about how much money you make, your passionate and irrelevant denunciation of the Linux desktop, the deep personal offense you're taking to other people's UI preferences ... it's sheer projection. I gave the reason why Linux Desktop support is ill defined. It is the truth and clearly it is upsetting you. >> Do you have bipolar disorder or something? You really don't seem psychologically healthy. Yet it is not me that is swearing, showing anger and giving short abrasive responses without explanation? Those who don't have a refutation often try to divert the subject to attacking the claimant and to make it all about them. Oh dear.
  - Airblader 4y ago
    Back when I used i3-gaps myself (yes, that time is behind me, sorry), I liked the visual clarity gaps provide. And from years of interacting with the community I know many people feel the same way. It just makes things feel less cluttered.
    - jchw 4y ago
      Out of sheer curiosity, what kind of setup do you use today? I did briefly try i3-gaps myself but ultimately never daily drove it. (nowadays I run Sway, but with no gaps.)
      - Airblader 4y ago
        This will make some people sad, but I'm on Mac these days. I was using i3 until the very end though, and I do dearly miss proper window management. My shortcut setup now is an absolute mess. I technically did run i3-gaps because of some features, but not gaps. This was mostly because I actually mostly used a one window per workspace approach, and if more, then a tabbed layout, so no need for gaps there.
        jchw 4y ago
        I'm not sad per-se. I mean I have a strong distaste for modern macOS, but it's not like it matters to me personally what anyone else runs. I'd just prefer to not run it myself. I will say though that I run Linux more than ever these days. I'd say the reason has more to do with Windows and macOS feeling like worse prospects than Linux actually improving as a desktop OS... That said, I'd like to take this moment to tangent. I really, really despise the rise of SOC2 theater. It has largely killed Linux workstations at startups, and I am pretty close to quitting out of the industry due to the amount of stress this has cost me.
        _V_ 4y ago
        Honestly I ran Mac for 3 years or so and i3 was one of the reasons I went back to the Linux. That and the "war on hackers" that Apple seem to wage last few years also did not help (breaking uBlock in Safari, inability to permanently disable some system services without having to disable SIP and thus losing ApplePay+disk encryption to name a few)
  - _dain_ 4y ago
    why do books and websites have margins between the text and the edge of the page? because a judicious amount of blank space between elements just looks nice and makes it easier to read. typographers and graphic designers think very hard about this stuff, it isn't useless. the same thing goes for desktop windows. a bit of space between them makes the interface less cramped. if you're staring at it for 12 hours a day it's nice not to have things so cramped and pushed up against one another. I'm kind of amazed at the sheer vehemence of the anti-gaps people. they always have to say "it's useless, I don't know why anyone would want it --" [proceeds to ignore all explanation for why it isn't useless and why people do want it] "-- therefore it shouldn't exist and the people who want it are decadent". I've never seen bizarre attitude to any other (optional!) UI feature. it reminds me of those 20th century modernists who denounced serifs on letters, or ornament on buildings. or idk puritans and icon-smashers or something. miserable tube-brained people.
  - Blikkentrekker 4y ago
    IT makes windows stand out more from each other. They are in effect very thick borders that stand out. Do you believe there is no merit to being able to set border size for windows?
  - linsomniac 4y ago
    At work I have a 43" "cheap" monitor that is more of a TV than a monitor. Meaning, at the very edges the backlight isn't behind the pixels at a desk viewing distance. i3+gaps allowed me to put a gap around the left, right, and bottom few pixels, so my text right at the edge wasn't unreadable.
  - weberer 4y ago
    Remember old fashioned paper newspapers? Now imagine reading one that didn't have margins between blocks of paragraphs.
  - _V_ 4y ago
    I look at that thing most of the day. I don't think it is that unbelievable that I'd like to look at something a little bit nicer than default i3. :shrug:
- ohazi 4y ago
  Both the author of i3 and the author of i3-gaps (who is also a maintainer of i3) originally opposed merging the i3-gaps code because the code was a bit hacky and had certain edge cases where it would break things (e.g. you couldn't enable both gaps and titlebars simultaneously). This was done deliberately so that the two codebases could be easily kept in sync. They weren't necessarily opposed to introducing a gaps-like feature if an implementation was deemed acceptable. Unfortunately this state persisted for years, and it turns out gaps is a popular feature, so they both eventually decided to bite the bullet, merge it, and then work on cleaning things up rather than waiting indefinitely for a unicorn implementation that was likely never going to appear.
  - secure 4y ago
    That’s right. We waited for a volunteer to help with the merge (as we both didn’t have enough time to spend on working on gaps), but nobody ever showed up. Eventually, because life circumstances permitted it, I was able to spend a few weeks, first getting gaps merged as-is (as discussed and communicated) and then even cleaned up, addressing all known limitations.
    - MaxMatti 4y ago
      So there's no further cleanup needed? Or are you still looking, just in a different repo?
      - secure 4y ago
        No further cleanup needed
  - Blikkentrekker 4y ago
    Cynically speaking I'm somewhat scared of the way i3 is programmed that adding gaps would have to be hacky. My instincts tell me that if that be the case, the code probably isn't very clean and itself full of hacks.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  EDIT: Comments from the maintainers have painted a completely different picture while I wrote this so none of this applies here but I'm leaving it up as a general view on maintainership. Very strange, makes me want to avoid i3 altogether. It's not like it requires a lot of code to support configurable, optional gaps. Probably the rationale is something asinine like "I don't like gaps, gaps are dumb" or "buhu I don't like the completely negligible overhead" I actively avoid projects whose maintainers are MDFLs rather than BDFLs.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I think it is generally best to not assume people have asinine motivations.
  - the-grump 4y ago
    The beauty of free software is that nobody will coerce you to use it, and nobody cares if you use it. I'm incredibly thankful to the maintainers for doing the thankless job of keeping i3 stable and for doing it so well.
  - Airblader 4y ago
    I see your point (in general terms). But I think people tend to overlook the hidden costs of optional features in terms of maintenance and complexity (in code, documentation, and for users). In i3 we have always tried to weigh benefit against cost. We also really care about compatibility. It's easy to add a feature, difficult to maintain it, and impossible to remove it.
    - secure 4y ago
      Yup! We even have an FAQ entry on the reasons for not merging features without careful consideration: https://faq.i3wm.org/question/778/why-is-patch-not-merged-and-made-optional/index.html%3Fanswer=779.html https://faq.i3wm.org/question/778/why-is-patch-not-merged-an... Also, saying “it’s not that many lines of code” comparing the before and after state is too simplistic: it doesn’t include the cost of changing the existing code into the desired state, which can be a significant effort, even if the number of lines doesn’t differ much before and after. See https://github.com/i3/i3/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Astapelberg+gaps https://github.com/i3/i3/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Astapelberg... to get an impression of how much work it was to merge gaps.
amalgamated_inc 4y ago
sway has had gaps built in for a long time :) I don't use them though, why waste screen space?
- nextos 4y ago
  I use gaps in XMonad and I find they help to make screen borders (or shading in case I use a compositor) more visible to quickly move my eye to the active window.
- abhinavk 4y ago
  If I have a 27 or 34-inch monitor, I can spare 4-5 pixels for elegance.
  - LeonM 4y ago
    i3 user here with 42" monitor: I still wouldn't waste the space for gaps/elegance/eyecandy. But, as with anything, this is a matter of personal taste.
  - amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    I have a 27" monitor, and I use a 3px border for the active window border, so I suppose I'm wasting some space.
    - doug713705 4y ago
      I have two 27" 4k monitors and don't want to waste a single pixel. I did not looked how the gap feature can be enabled/disabled and I really hope the default is disable contrary to the new "drag window" feature that can not be disabled and that regularly disrupt my workflow. (I know that an upgrade add the ability to disable the drag window feature, it's just not available in FreeBSD yet).
- jesusofnazarath 4y ago
  [dead]
- autophagian 4y ago
secure 4y ago
i3-gaps is included in i3 v4.22, which is available in many Linux distributions already. You can find the release notes at https://i3wm.org/downloads/RELEASE-NOTES-4.22.txt https://i3wm.org/downloads/RELEASE-NOTES-4.22.txt Documentation for the gaps feature is at https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#gaps https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#gaps
Airblader 4y ago
Hi. I'm the maintainer of i3-gaps and also a maintainer for i3. The story of this merge is not only several years long, but a true success story in OSS in my eyes. I took on i3-gaps by taking an existing patch and rebasing it to the latest i3 HEAD. From there it became popular and I took on the maintainership, eventually contributing to i3 itself and finally becoming a maintainer there as well. Whilst originally gaps were considered an "anti feature" for i3, years ago we already decided that we'd accept adding gaps into i3. Clearly the fork was popular, and as someone else pointed out here as well, the Wayland "port" of i3, sway, added gaps from the beginning on with great success. However, the original gaps patch was focused on being small and easy to maintain. It caused a few issues and had some drawbacks. We made it a condition that porting gaps into i3 would have to resolve these issues. Alas, this could've meant a lot of work that no one took on for the years to follow. Recently, however, the maintainers of i3 got together (a chance to meet arose randomly). During that meeting we decided that it'd be better to just merge the fork and improve it later. And as it happened, Michael, the author and main maintainer of i3, did all that work during the port as well. What resulted is the end of almost a decade of i3-gaps, and a much better implementation thereof. I'm incredibly happy to see this happen after all this time, and a big shoutout to Michael here for all that work. Edit: Hadn't realized Michael was commenting here already. I guess leaving the background and story from my side of things doesn't hurt regardless.
- digitalsin 4y ago
  Thank you and the team for all the hard work! i3/gaps has always been my favorite twm.
  - ews 4y ago
    Adding to that, I didn't fully move to wayland until sway was mature enough for my day to day work. i3 (I think I found the project through a twit from somebody at Google) is completely burned into my mind and my current workflow and I just could not living without it.
- secure 4y ago
  Thanks for providing the background here, and thanks for maintaining i3-gaps over all the years! :) I’m also happy we could complete this merge now!
deleted 4y ago
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britneybitch 4y ago
I recently installed arch and when you select i3 it makes you choose between i3-wm and i3-gaps. This led me down a bit of a rabbit hole, but in the end I was happy to find I didn't have to choose between forks after all!
- cod1r 4y ago
  [dead]
  - _neil 4y ago
    britney innit
  - britneybitch 4y ago
    It's britneybitch.
danuker 4y ago
I just realized I've been using this magnificent piece of software for 7 years. Stealing some tray icons (volume, clipboard, KTeaTime, network), I built the setup I'll probably use for another 7! Thanks to everyone involved! Tiling WMs rule!
- jadbox 4y ago
  I just wish that i3 came with a gnome-like settings app for casual desktop users!
  - codethief 4y ago
    The key (on Ubuntu at least) is to simply go with the standard Ubuntu installation and then switch to a custom .xinitrc-based X session that starts i3. That way, you can still fire up the usual Gnome dialogs (e.g. for printers) when you need to. (Obviously, some settings related to configuring your desktop – e.g. key bindings – will no longer work.)
    - UtahDave 4y ago
      Or use Regolith Linux. They've done a fantastic job integrating i3 with Ubuntu, including settings, etc
      - grimgrin 4y ago
        in case this thread becomes informational for interested folks: fedora lists a page of images with alternative desktop environments baked in and i3 is one https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/ https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/
    - savingsPossible 4y ago
      Fully agree! I have mint, using the xfce-based version. I can open xfce-panel whenever I dont know what to call on the cli (and then promply close it :P)
  - KMnO4 4y ago
ArcMex 4y ago
Both i3 and i3-gaps introduced me to TWMs and I remain grateful for the role they played in my productivity. Thanks, team. Congratulations on the merge. Take care.
deagle50 4y ago
Happy i3 + Plasma user here, great combo. Thanks for all your efforts!
- Zamicol 4y ago
  I tried installing Plasma and it crashed my machine. Had to go back to gnome. What distro are you using?
  - deagle50 4y ago
    Arch with i3 instead of Kwin.
- zem 4y ago
  +1 for plasma, it has excellent support for swapping out the window manager
Zamicol 4y ago
i3 is my daily driver. Thanks i3 devs for what you do!
sohrob 4y ago
What a great project. For those who are wanting something similar for macOS, the Amethyst project is pretty great https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst (meant to be more like Xmonad actually but still a tiling wm).
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Has the performance improved over the past few years? Last I tried it (2017 or so?) It was so much slower than i3 that I couldn't stand it and went with hand-rolling something with hammerspoon. [Edit for context] I used Linux at home but was forced into a MacBook at work.
  - _neil 4y ago
    Can’t say for certain, but I think the speed has improved over the past several years. Definitely more stable (for me anyways). I haven’t used i3 so I can’t compare the two.
  - philsnow 4y ago
    Out of curiosity, is your hammerspoon substitute fit for showing off ? I'm a tiling window manager refugee and I love hammerspoon but every time I try to dive into making something like my old xmonad setup, I run into macos-specific issues about the concept of apps and windows and workspaces and such and them not mapping to my prejudiced mental model of how things should be.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      I didn't do a whole lot of tiling with it, mostly just added keyboard shortcuts to open or bring to the front specific applications as (at the time) I was on a Mac without an external monitor. I found I could switch between windows quickly enough that I never needed multiple visible on the screen at the same time. https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.application.html#launchOrFocus https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.application.html#launchO... was the primary method, though sometimes (such as teams) I had to get more creative. That said, I believe https://github.com/szymonkaliski/hhtwm https://github.com/szymonkaliski/hhtwm is quite popular, might be worth a shot if you want tiling.
stoppingin 4y ago
I've been a long time i3wm user, and I couldn't be happier with my workflow. What network managers are people using together with i3? I've been using wicd for a while, however with Debian deprecating Python2 this won't be viable for long. I haven't found another lightweight GUI network manager which works well with i3. This might not be the perfect place to ask, however I don't use Reddit.
- Galanwe 4y ago
  Network manager, with nmtui and nm-applet.
  - memorable 4y ago
    Same here. NM worked flawlessly on my Sway setup, which is not i3, but Sway is very similar to i3 anyways.
  - savingsPossible 4y ago
    nm-applet also, works fine
- fold3 4y ago
  Maybe iwctl would work for you?
- 8b16380d 4y ago
  Network-manager is the easiest transition
- lgunsch 4y ago
  I use iwd and systemd-networkd. I don't use may applet or gui control. With my setup I just and up ignoring network configuration the majority of the time. Edit: I've found iwd such a huge improvement over past wireless networking solutions. It's a big improvement.
pentagrama 4y ago
> All i3-gaps features will become available with i3 4.22 (not released yet at the time of writing this). When was the time this was written? I don't see a published date on the announcement.
- lionkor 4y ago
  As I understand, v4.22 is released now and available in some distros already :)
lexx 4y ago
Installed i3 8 years ago. Still can't use anything else. I enjoy it so much. Thank you guys
BryanA 4y ago
Whew! I've always spent too much time deciding which way to go.
zem 4y ago
if i3 just had persistent workspaces I would love to give it a good try, but they seem astonishingly resistant to the feature. xmonad has its own issues but at least it has all the features I need.
- jonas-w 4y ago
  What do you mean with persistent workspaces?
  - zem 4y ago
    hm, probably not the right term for it, but the workspace display in the pager does not show empty workspaces. so if I have windows open in workspaces 1, 3 and 7 e.g. they would be indistinguishable from windows open in workspaces 1, 2 and 3. xmonad does this right, it has all available workspaces displayed in the pager at all times.
    - Airblader 4y ago
      There's an open PR that will make this possible.
      - zem 4y ago
        that's awesome! do you reckon the pr is going to get accepted? I definitely remember reading discussions of this issue in the past and seeing a firm "we don't want this feature in i3" response.
        Airblader 4y ago
        The PR is coming from one of the core maintainers, so yes, it will be accepted. It doesn't just implement this specific feature, though. It provides a more general approach for i3bar that enables this and many other use cases. This struck us as a good and flexible solution we can get behind.
- Zircom 4y ago
thealchemistdev 4y ago
11 uninterrupted years. Once I discovered tiling window managers, I never looked back and never switched from i3wm. Thank you.
virtualwhys 4y ago
I guess it's been 12 years on i3, time flies :) Thanks to the maintainers -- a stripped down Linux distro + i3 is an incredibly powerful combination.
- metta2uall 4y ago
  Yep, I'm also grateful to have discovered i3, only several years ago for me. Thanks to its low memory usage it's helped me save a decent amount of money as I'm able to easily develop on a Linux VM running on an 8GB M1 and don't need to upgrade to 16GB.
voytec 4y ago
Thank you i3(-gaps) devs for your work on this productivity booster!
jeromenerf 4y ago
Maybe 15 years ago or so, I wrote the original “useless gaps” patch for dwm, because it felt packed, especially between different window styles (terminal, web browser, file manager for instance). The concept was new to tiling managers but quite common anywhere in photography, typography or web design. At the time, I spent a minute or two on the patch (the code is simple, and the patch is a hack), ten minutes on documentation Ascii art and zero minute on choosing a name for it. “Useless” made it sound like a casus forki, and “gap” could probably been just “margin” as in css. “Mal nommer un objet, c’est ajouter aux malheurs du monde” — Albert Camus ~”misnaming an object is adding to the world misery” Happy merging anyway!
- Airblader 4y ago
  Just now saw this comment. That's really neat, pleasure to "meet" you. :-) That naming certainly gave me some headache over the years because it always stuck, and seems to be the cause of all the heated discussions. Anyway, I also wouldn't have it any other way now!
tlhunter 4y ago
If i3 is still in an upstreaming mood I'd love to donate my web based theme/config generator: https://thomashunter.name/i3-configurator/ https://thomashunter.name/i3-configurator/
tomxor 4y ago
I went back and forth on gaps. I like the idea of maximising screen space utility (original reason for gaps feature rejection), but disliked the visual "feel" of i3wm window borders. Eventually I realised this was due to the visual asymmetry in the tile borders, which are drawn independently even though they share geometric edges - this causes inner edges to be twice the width of outer edges which looks kind of clunky. If you look at most people's gaps setup, most people either equalize the space between the outer and inner edges, or have gaps so large that it doesn't feel like it's part of the tiles any more. I also noticed that you don't get this feeling in tmux, where outer edges just don't exist... And that you can achieve the same in i3 by hiding outer edges and using 1 pixel borders, you end up with minimal 2 pixel "dividers" rather than borders: new_window pixel 1 new_float pixel 1 hide_edge_borders both Will be nice to have gaps available to play with in binary packages though.
_V_ 4y ago
Thank you for your work on i3-gaps, Airblader. I've been using it for years now. Started with plain i3 but quickly wanted something a bit more elegant and nicer to look at. I had 2 hi-res monitors so I was willing to sacrifice few pixels for an eye-candy. I spend most of my day looking at the thing after all :-) Honestly it baffled me for a long time that i3 did not have such a "simple" thing as gaps. I could understand the anti-pattern theory in the good ol' era of 1024x768 but nowdays? Anyway it is good to hear that it is merged. Thank you and Michael for the i3 experience, it is truly addictive. I was on MacOS for ~3 years and I missed it every single day there.

454 points by harporoeder 4y ago

input_sh 4y ago

About time! Does anyone know why i3 was so opposed to gaps to warrant a fork to begin with?

europeanguy 4y ago
Why is gaps something that matters is what I would ask first. Seems to me increased complexity for no benefit.
- spoiler 4y ago
  I like having a small gap. It pleases me to use a Desktop environment that looks like it at least belongs in this decade. Edit: I realise some people are okay with the brutalist design due to it being the most efficient use of screen space possible, but my brain needs a "pleasing" environment, otherwise it affects my... Mood? I'm not quite sure what it is, but to not muddle the point, having a nice environment makes me more productive
  - tekla 4y ago
    I have no idea what this means. What WM adds completely useless gaps between windows? Both Windows and MacOs do not such thing. How do gaps make a WM look like it belongs to this decade?
    - mo_42 4y ago
      If there are people who like gaps, it's not useless. It has value for them.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      I’m not sure how we determine what looks like it belongs to this decade, but surely these legacy desktop environments don’t push the envelope or tell us much, really. I mean if we use Windows as a standard, the way to tell which decade we’re in is by counting the number of totally different UI styles we have, right?
    - mgaunard 4y ago
      Windows XP has round borders, there is no way it can tile without gaps.
    - spoiler 4y ago
      I'm not a designer, so I can't really tell you why the little bit of extra negative space helps. Maybe just the fact that a little bit of the background can bleed through makes it seem more modern, and its easier to distinguish focused windows. Default i3 just gives me like... 90iea vibes, but not in a nostalgic way but a regressive way. Maybe it's just a matter of different tastes.
- gosukiwi 4y ago
  OSS in a nutshell
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Indeed, some folks found the feature unnecessary at first, but somebody found an OK way to implement it, and eventually it became popular enough that they decided to merge it back into mainline. Little drama and everyone is happy in the end. Actually I think this is more like the OSS ideal.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  Other than aesthetics, In a standard window manager titlebars and task bars often pad the top and bottom of the screen, I run without either so having borders still feels more natural in some respects.
- angio 4y ago
  With a good background contrast, it's easier to have windows stand out from each other. The default config with 0 gap and thin borders make it very hard to see which window is focused.
  - jez 4y ago
    What about the gaps makes it more obvious which window is focused? I would have guessed that the gaps are the same for focused and non-focused windows.
    - britneybitch 4y ago
      If you're looking along a vertical split and you see: <window> <active-border-color> <window> it's not clear whether the border is "pointing" left or right. However if you see: <window> <active-border-color> <gap> <inactive-border-color> <window> It is clear the active border belongs to the left window.
  - dfc 4y ago
    I use plain i3, with a border color for the focused window and a good contrasting indicator color. I always know what window is focused and where the next window will open. I have always assumed i3-gaps was just an aesthetic thing. How does the gap let you know what window is focused?
    - boomskats 4y ago
      Aesthetics matter in all-day ux. Gaps make content more legible and less fatiguing imho. It looks amazing against a #000 background on oled screens, for example. I've spent at least the last 6 years removing i3 and installing i3-gaps on all my new machines (and having to comment out gaps in my dotfiles/i3config while I do it). I didn't think I'd ever see this merge. This is awesome!
    - angio 4y ago
      if the colored gap is left/right of the gap i know the window left/right of the gap is the current one. without gap i would need to look for the other borders to understand which one is focused. i'm sure on a small (<20") screen this problem doesn't exist.
- williamscales 4y ago
  well, dwm includes them[0] as a patch so i’m guessing even the most hardcore of folks occasionally want them. these days with high resolution monitors it can be nice to have a background and some gaps / transparency. [0] https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/gaps/ https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/gaps/
- cosban 4y ago
  I wonder why you phrased your thoughts this way. The benefits are the additional options which were implemented in the fork. If there were no benefits then 1. no one would use this, which clearly isn't the case and 2. this merge wouldn't have occurred
- rvz 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - _dain_ 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - rvz 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - _dain_ 4y ago
        I already refuted it
        rvz 4y ago
        > refuted it Refuted what? Pretending to refute something isn't a refutation, especially when you're being very emotional and upset about it. Try again.
        ohazi 4y ago
        This is not how "to each their own" works. I don't care about the shovels that you sell to developers, and you shouldn't care that some people want to have a little fun with their desktop. You don't do that, and don't think it's a "real" use-case. Fine, we get it. You made that extremely clear several times. There is nothing to refute. We don't agree with you, we don't care about your opinion, and we're tired of hearing it.
        rvz 4y ago
        > This is not how "to each their own" works. Yes it is. > I don't care about the shovels that you sell to developers, and you shouldn't care that some people want to have a little fun with their desktop. You don't do that, and don't think it's a "real" use-case. Fine, we get it. You made that extremely clear several times. Clearly stating the reason why Desktop Linux support is eternally ill defined due to the moving parts of the desktop stack is the whole point of this, and no serious person would accept or cater support to a tiny minority of complaining Linux users to fix their highly tweaked non-standard desktop because they messed around with their dotfiles. > There is nothing to refute. We don't agree with you, we don't care about your opinion, and we're tired of hearing it. Who exactly is we? You don't speak for the one pretending to 'refute' my claims about the Linux Desktop ecosystem. They can explain why for themselves. My claims about the Linux Desktop in my comments remain irrefutable, an evergreen fact and still no rebuttal to it exists because it is the truth.
- ohazi 4y ago
  The benefit is that it looks cool and a lot of people seem to like it. e.g. see: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ This is not an invalid use-case. Not everybody wants to be 100% focused on productivity to the exclusion of absolutely everything else. If you want to have something as simple as a background image, the only way you're going to be able to see it when using a tiling window manager is with gaps or transparency. Small gaps is arguably less intrusive than transparency.
  - rvz 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - ohazi 4y ago
      > To each to their own then, whilst I continue to sell shovels to developers and turn over another ten to twenty thousand dollars a month for only that. Okay?
    - _dain_ 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - rvz 4y ago
        There is no need to be so angry over the truth. Assuming you read the comment chain, it's quite simple, the use-cases for this are almost invisible, adds no benefit other than complexity and henceforth, explains why Linux desktop support is ill defined. So explaining the truth of not supporting complicated prehistoric contraptions is somehow upsetting to folks emotionally attached to their desktops? EDIT: Also with your own edits it really does show that the truth indeed hurts those that can't handle it when you are all over the place: >> What the fuck are you talking about? Getting very upset and angry. Causing one to sway into irrationality and reduced reading comprehension such as: >> But saying there's no use-case is crazy .. can you not read? There is 'little to no use-case' and it is almost invisible even if there is a use-case. Surely you can read that and know that it isn't absolute. Yet, I'm the one that can't read? Your reading comprehension is quite low when you're angry over a windowing manager. >> Look at your unhinged, boorish tone, uncouth bragging about how much money you make, your passionate and irrelevant denunciation of the Linux desktop, the deep personal offense you're taking to other people's UI preferences ... it's sheer projection. I gave the reason why Linux Desktop support is ill defined. It is the truth and clearly it is upsetting you. >> Do you have bipolar disorder or something? You really don't seem psychologically healthy. Yet it is not me that is swearing, showing anger and giving short abrasive responses without explanation? Those who don't have a refutation often try to divert the subject to attacking the claimant and to make it all about them. Oh dear.
- Airblader 4y ago
  Back when I used i3-gaps myself (yes, that time is behind me, sorry), I liked the visual clarity gaps provide. And from years of interacting with the community I know many people feel the same way. It just makes things feel less cluttered.
  - jchw 4y ago
    Out of sheer curiosity, what kind of setup do you use today? I did briefly try i3-gaps myself but ultimately never daily drove it. (nowadays I run Sway, but with no gaps.)
    - Airblader 4y ago
      This will make some people sad, but I'm on Mac these days. I was using i3 until the very end though, and I do dearly miss proper window management. My shortcut setup now is an absolute mess. I technically did run i3-gaps because of some features, but not gaps. This was mostly because I actually mostly used a one window per workspace approach, and if more, then a tabbed layout, so no need for gaps there.
      - jchw 4y ago
        I'm not sad per-se. I mean I have a strong distaste for modern macOS, but it's not like it matters to me personally what anyone else runs. I'd just prefer to not run it myself. I will say though that I run Linux more than ever these days. I'd say the reason has more to do with Windows and macOS feeling like worse prospects than Linux actually improving as a desktop OS... That said, I'd like to take this moment to tangent. I really, really despise the rise of SOC2 theater. It has largely killed Linux workstations at startups, and I am pretty close to quitting out of the industry due to the amount of stress this has cost me.
      - _V_ 4y ago
        Honestly I ran Mac for 3 years or so and i3 was one of the reasons I went back to the Linux. That and the "war on hackers" that Apple seem to wage last few years also did not help (breaking uBlock in Safari, inability to permanently disable some system services without having to disable SIP and thus losing ApplePay+disk encryption to name a few)
- _dain_ 4y ago
  why do books and websites have margins between the text and the edge of the page? because a judicious amount of blank space between elements just looks nice and makes it easier to read. typographers and graphic designers think very hard about this stuff, it isn't useless. the same thing goes for desktop windows. a bit of space between them makes the interface less cramped. if you're staring at it for 12 hours a day it's nice not to have things so cramped and pushed up against one another. I'm kind of amazed at the sheer vehemence of the anti-gaps people. they always have to say "it's useless, I don't know why anyone would want it --" [proceeds to ignore all explanation for why it isn't useless and why people do want it] "-- therefore it shouldn't exist and the people who want it are decadent". I've never seen bizarre attitude to any other (optional!) UI feature. it reminds me of those 20th century modernists who denounced serifs on letters, or ornament on buildings. or idk puritans and icon-smashers or something. miserable tube-brained people.
- Blikkentrekker 4y ago
  IT makes windows stand out more from each other. They are in effect very thick borders that stand out. Do you believe there is no merit to being able to set border size for windows?
- linsomniac 4y ago
  At work I have a 43" "cheap" monitor that is more of a TV than a monitor. Meaning, at the very edges the backlight isn't behind the pixels at a desk viewing distance. i3+gaps allowed me to put a gap around the left, right, and bottom few pixels, so my text right at the edge wasn't unreadable.
- weberer 4y ago
  Remember old fashioned paper newspapers? Now imagine reading one that didn't have margins between blocks of paragraphs.
- _V_ 4y ago
  I look at that thing most of the day. I don't think it is that unbelievable that I'd like to look at something a little bit nicer than default i3. :shrug:
ohazi 4y ago
Both the author of i3 and the author of i3-gaps (who is also a maintainer of i3) originally opposed merging the i3-gaps code because the code was a bit hacky and had certain edge cases where it would break things (e.g. you couldn't enable both gaps and titlebars simultaneously). This was done deliberately so that the two codebases could be easily kept in sync. They weren't necessarily opposed to introducing a gaps-like feature if an implementation was deemed acceptable. Unfortunately this state persisted for years, and it turns out gaps is a popular feature, so they both eventually decided to bite the bullet, merge it, and then work on cleaning things up rather than waiting indefinitely for a unicorn implementation that was likely never going to appear.
- secure 4y ago
  That’s right. We waited for a volunteer to help with the merge (as we both didn’t have enough time to spend on working on gaps), but nobody ever showed up. Eventually, because life circumstances permitted it, I was able to spend a few weeks, first getting gaps merged as-is (as discussed and communicated) and then even cleaned up, addressing all known limitations.
  - MaxMatti 4y ago
    So there's no further cleanup needed? Or are you still looking, just in a different repo?
    - secure 4y ago
      No further cleanup needed
- Blikkentrekker 4y ago
  Cynically speaking I'm somewhat scared of the way i3 is programmed that adding gaps would have to be hacky. My instincts tell me that if that be the case, the code probably isn't very clean and itself full of hacks.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
EDIT: Comments from the maintainers have painted a completely different picture while I wrote this so none of this applies here but I'm leaving it up as a general view on maintainership. Very strange, makes me want to avoid i3 altogether. It's not like it requires a lot of code to support configurable, optional gaps. Probably the rationale is something asinine like "I don't like gaps, gaps are dumb" or "buhu I don't like the completely negligible overhead" I actively avoid projects whose maintainers are MDFLs rather than BDFLs.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I think it is generally best to not assume people have asinine motivations.
- the-grump 4y ago
  The beauty of free software is that nobody will coerce you to use it, and nobody cares if you use it. I'm incredibly thankful to the maintainers for doing the thankless job of keeping i3 stable and for doing it so well.
- Airblader 4y ago
  I see your point (in general terms). But I think people tend to overlook the hidden costs of optional features in terms of maintenance and complexity (in code, documentation, and for users). In i3 we have always tried to weigh benefit against cost. We also really care about compatibility. It's easy to add a feature, difficult to maintain it, and impossible to remove it.
  - secure 4y ago
    Yup! We even have an FAQ entry on the reasons for not merging features without careful consideration: https://faq.i3wm.org/question/778/why-is-patch-not-merged-and-made-optional/index.html%3Fanswer=779.html https://faq.i3wm.org/question/778/why-is-patch-not-merged-an... Also, saying “it’s not that many lines of code” comparing the before and after state is too simplistic: it doesn’t include the cost of changing the existing code into the desired state, which can be a significant effort, even if the number of lines doesn’t differ much before and after. See https://github.com/i3/i3/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Astapelberg+gaps https://github.com/i3/i3/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Astapelberg... to get an impression of how much work it was to merge gaps.

amalgamated_inc 4y ago

sway has had gaps built in for a long time :) I don't use them though, why waste screen space?

nextos 4y ago
I use gaps in XMonad and I find they help to make screen borders (or shading in case I use a compositor) more visible to quickly move my eye to the active window.
abhinavk 4y ago
If I have a 27 or 34-inch monitor, I can spare 4-5 pixels for elegance.
- LeonM 4y ago
  i3 user here with 42" monitor: I still wouldn't waste the space for gaps/elegance/eyecandy. But, as with anything, this is a matter of personal taste.
- amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  I have a 27" monitor, and I use a 3px border for the active window border, so I suppose I'm wasting some space.
  - doug713705 4y ago
    I have two 27" 4k monitors and don't want to waste a single pixel. I did not looked how the gap feature can be enabled/disabled and I really hope the default is disable contrary to the new "drag window" feature that can not be disabled and that regularly disrupt my workflow. (I know that an upgrade add the ability to disable the drag window feature, it's just not available in FreeBSD yet).
jesusofnazarath 4y ago
[dead]
autophagian 4y ago

secure 4y ago

i3-gaps is included in i3 v4.22, which is available in many Linux distributions already. You can find the release notes at https://i3wm.org/downloads/RELEASE-NOTES-4.22.txt https://i3wm.org/downloads/RELEASE-NOTES-4.22.txt Documentation for the gaps feature is at https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#gaps https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#gaps

Airblader 4y ago

Hi. I'm the maintainer of i3-gaps and also a maintainer for i3. The story of this merge is not only several years long, but a true success story in OSS in my eyes. I took on i3-gaps by taking an existing patch and rebasing it to the latest i3 HEAD. From there it became popular and I took on the maintainership, eventually contributing to i3 itself and finally becoming a maintainer there as well. Whilst originally gaps were considered an "anti feature" for i3, years ago we already decided that we'd accept adding gaps into i3. Clearly the fork was popular, and as someone else pointed out here as well, the Wayland "port" of i3, sway, added gaps from the beginning on with great success. However, the original gaps patch was focused on being small and easy to maintain. It caused a few issues and had some drawbacks. We made it a condition that porting gaps into i3 would have to resolve these issues. Alas, this could've meant a lot of work that no one took on for the years to follow. Recently, however, the maintainers of i3 got together (a chance to meet arose randomly). During that meeting we decided that it'd be better to just merge the fork and improve it later. And as it happened, Michael, the author and main maintainer of i3, did all that work during the port as well. What resulted is the end of almost a decade of i3-gaps, and a much better implementation thereof. I'm incredibly happy to see this happen after all this time, and a big shoutout to Michael here for all that work. Edit: Hadn't realized Michael was commenting here already. I guess leaving the background and story from my side of things doesn't hurt regardless.

digitalsin 4y ago
Thank you and the team for all the hard work! i3/gaps has always been my favorite twm.
- ews 4y ago
  Adding to that, I didn't fully move to wayland until sway was mature enough for my day to day work. i3 (I think I found the project through a twit from somebody at Google) is completely burned into my mind and my current workflow and I just could not living without it.
secure 4y ago
Thanks for providing the background here, and thanks for maintaining i3-gaps over all the years! :) I’m also happy we could complete this merge now!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

britneybitch 4y ago

I recently installed arch and when you select i3 it makes you choose between i3-wm and i3-gaps. This led me down a bit of a rabbit hole, but in the end I was happy to find I didn't have to choose between forks after all!

cod1r 4y ago
[dead]
- _neil 4y ago
  britney innit
- britneybitch 4y ago
  It's britneybitch.

danuker 4y ago

I just realized I've been using this magnificent piece of software for 7 years. Stealing some tray icons (volume, clipboard, KTeaTime, network), I built the setup I'll probably use for another 7! Thanks to everyone involved! Tiling WMs rule!

jadbox 4y ago
I just wish that i3 came with a gnome-like settings app for casual desktop users!
- codethief 4y ago
  The key (on Ubuntu at least) is to simply go with the standard Ubuntu installation and then switch to a custom .xinitrc-based X session that starts i3. That way, you can still fire up the usual Gnome dialogs (e.g. for printers) when you need to. (Obviously, some settings related to configuring your desktop – e.g. key bindings – will no longer work.)
  - UtahDave 4y ago
    Or use Regolith Linux. They've done a fantastic job integrating i3 with Ubuntu, including settings, etc
    - grimgrin 4y ago
      in case this thread becomes informational for interested folks: fedora lists a page of images with alternative desktop environments baked in and i3 is one https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/ https://spins.fedoraproject.org/en/
  - savingsPossible 4y ago
    Fully agree! I have mint, using the xfce-based version. I can open xfce-panel whenever I dont know what to call on the cli (and then promply close it :P)
- KMnO4 4y ago

ArcMex 4y ago

Both i3 and i3-gaps introduced me to TWMs and I remain grateful for the role they played in my productivity. Thanks, team. Congratulations on the merge. Take care.

deagle50 4y ago

Happy i3 + Plasma user here, great combo. Thanks for all your efforts!

Zamicol 4y ago
I tried installing Plasma and it crashed my machine. Had to go back to gnome. What distro are you using?
- deagle50 4y ago
  Arch with i3 instead of Kwin.
zem 4y ago
+1 for plasma, it has excellent support for swapping out the window manager

Zamicol 4y ago

i3 is my daily driver. Thanks i3 devs for what you do!

sohrob 4y ago

What a great project. For those who are wanting something similar for macOS, the Amethyst project is pretty great https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst (meant to be more like Xmonad actually but still a tiling wm).

zdragnar 4y ago
Has the performance improved over the past few years? Last I tried it (2017 or so?) It was so much slower than i3 that I couldn't stand it and went with hand-rolling something with hammerspoon. [Edit for context] I used Linux at home but was forced into a MacBook at work.
- _neil 4y ago
  Can’t say for certain, but I think the speed has improved over the past several years. Definitely more stable (for me anyways). I haven’t used i3 so I can’t compare the two.
- philsnow 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, is your hammerspoon substitute fit for showing off ? I'm a tiling window manager refugee and I love hammerspoon but every time I try to dive into making something like my old xmonad setup, I run into macos-specific issues about the concept of apps and windows and workspaces and such and them not mapping to my prejudiced mental model of how things should be.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    I didn't do a whole lot of tiling with it, mostly just added keyboard shortcuts to open or bring to the front specific applications as (at the time) I was on a Mac without an external monitor. I found I could switch between windows quickly enough that I never needed multiple visible on the screen at the same time. https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.application.html#launchOrFocus https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.application.html#launchO... was the primary method, though sometimes (such as teams) I had to get more creative. That said, I believe https://github.com/szymonkaliski/hhtwm https://github.com/szymonkaliski/hhtwm is quite popular, might be worth a shot if you want tiling.

stoppingin 4y ago

I've been a long time i3wm user, and I couldn't be happier with my workflow. What network managers are people using together with i3? I've been using wicd for a while, however with Debian deprecating Python2 this won't be viable for long. I haven't found another lightweight GUI network manager which works well with i3. This might not be the perfect place to ask, however I don't use Reddit.

Galanwe 4y ago
Network manager, with nmtui and nm-applet.
- memorable 4y ago
  Same here. NM worked flawlessly on my Sway setup, which is not i3, but Sway is very similar to i3 anyways.
- savingsPossible 4y ago
  nm-applet also, works fine
fold3 4y ago
Maybe iwctl would work for you?
8b16380d 4y ago
Network-manager is the easiest transition
lgunsch 4y ago
I use iwd and systemd-networkd. I don't use may applet or gui control. With my setup I just and up ignoring network configuration the majority of the time. Edit: I've found iwd such a huge improvement over past wireless networking solutions. It's a big improvement.

pentagrama 4y ago

> All i3-gaps features will become available with i3 4.22 (not released yet at the time of writing this). When was the time this was written? I don't see a published date on the announcement.

lionkor 4y ago
As I understand, v4.22 is released now and available in some distros already :)

lexx 4y ago

Installed i3 8 years ago. Still can't use anything else. I enjoy it so much. Thank you guys

BryanA 4y ago

Whew! I've always spent too much time deciding which way to go.

zem 4y ago

if i3 just had persistent workspaces I would love to give it a good try, but they seem astonishingly resistant to the feature. xmonad has its own issues but at least it has all the features I need.

jonas-w 4y ago
What do you mean with persistent workspaces?
- zem 4y ago
  hm, probably not the right term for it, but the workspace display in the pager does not show empty workspaces. so if I have windows open in workspaces 1, 3 and 7 e.g. they would be indistinguishable from windows open in workspaces 1, 2 and 3. xmonad does this right, it has all available workspaces displayed in the pager at all times.
  - Airblader 4y ago
    There's an open PR that will make this possible.
    - zem 4y ago
      that's awesome! do you reckon the pr is going to get accepted? I definitely remember reading discussions of this issue in the past and seeing a firm "we don't want this feature in i3" response.
      - Airblader 4y ago
        The PR is coming from one of the core maintainers, so yes, it will be accepted. It doesn't just implement this specific feature, though. It provides a more general approach for i3bar that enables this and many other use cases. This struck us as a good and flexible solution we can get behind.
Zircom 4y ago

thealchemistdev 4y ago

11 uninterrupted years. Once I discovered tiling window managers, I never looked back and never switched from i3wm. Thank you.

virtualwhys 4y ago

I guess it's been 12 years on i3, time flies :) Thanks to the maintainers -- a stripped down Linux distro + i3 is an incredibly powerful combination.

metta2uall 4y ago
Yep, I'm also grateful to have discovered i3, only several years ago for me. Thanks to its low memory usage it's helped me save a decent amount of money as I'm able to easily develop on a Linux VM running on an 8GB M1 and don't need to upgrade to 16GB.

voytec 4y ago

Thank you i3(-gaps) devs for your work on this productivity booster!

jeromenerf 4y ago

Maybe 15 years ago or so, I wrote the original “useless gaps” patch for dwm, because it felt packed, especially between different window styles (terminal, web browser, file manager for instance). The concept was new to tiling managers but quite common anywhere in photography, typography or web design. At the time, I spent a minute or two on the patch (the code is simple, and the patch is a hack), ten minutes on documentation Ascii art and zero minute on choosing a name for it. “Useless” made it sound like a casus forki, and “gap” could probably been just “margin” as in css. “Mal nommer un objet, c’est ajouter aux malheurs du monde” — Albert Camus ~”misnaming an object is adding to the world misery” Happy merging anyway!

Airblader 4y ago
Just now saw this comment. That's really neat, pleasure to "meet" you. :-) That naming certainly gave me some headache over the years because it always stuck, and seems to be the cause of all the heated discussions. Anyway, I also wouldn't have it any other way now!

tlhunter 4y ago

If i3 is still in an upstreaming mood I'd love to donate my web based theme/config generator: https://thomashunter.name/i3-configurator/ https://thomashunter.name/i3-configurator/

tomxor 4y ago

I went back and forth on gaps. I like the idea of maximising screen space utility (original reason for gaps feature rejection), but disliked the visual "feel" of i3wm window borders. Eventually I realised this was due to the visual asymmetry in the tile borders, which are drawn independently even though they share geometric edges - this causes inner edges to be twice the width of outer edges which looks kind of clunky. If you look at most people's gaps setup, most people either equalize the space between the outer and inner edges, or have gaps so large that it doesn't feel like it's part of the tiles any more. I also noticed that you don't get this feeling in tmux, where outer edges just don't exist... And that you can achieve the same in i3 by hiding outer edges and using 1 pixel borders, you end up with minimal 2 pixel "dividers" rather than borders: new_window pixel 1 new_float pixel 1 hide_edge_borders both Will be nice to have gaps available to play with in binary packages though.

_V_ 4y ago

Thank you for your work on i3-gaps, Airblader. I've been using it for years now. Started with plain i3 but quickly wanted something a bit more elegant and nicer to look at. I had 2 hi-res monitors so I was willing to sacrifice few pixels for an eye-candy. I spend most of my day looking at the thing after all :-) Honestly it baffled me for a long time that i3 did not have such a "simple" thing as gaps. I could understand the anti-pattern theory in the good ol' era of 1024x768 but nowdays? Anyway it is good to hear that it is merged. Thank you and Michael for the i3 experience, it is truly addictive. I was on MacOS for ~3 years and I missed it every single day there.