4 ms·

I think I disagree. The point behind tiling WMs and why a lot of people use lightweight IDEs (meaning multi-window IDEs) is that the idea of virtual desktops i

I think I disagree. The point behind tiling WMs and why a lot of people use lightweight IDEs (meaning multi-window IDEs) is that the idea of virtual desktops is used as a state management and state chronic restoration tool. A lot of i3/sway users I've seen (including me) are using virtual desktops to not forget what they were working on before the current task. Each dependency that created a sub task in their workflow is represented by a "new layer set of windows". If they have multiple monitors, each monitor has a dedicated place for tools. E.g. the browser window for research, the debugging output, the app window they're working on etc. Why I think scrolling WMs don't integrate nicely with this is because they lose the state of the historic placement of windows, which is kinda bad for this kind of workflow. But it might be just my bubble of devs that I interacted with. Would be nice to hear how you were using tiling WMs before that? Was your workflow similar at all to what I described?

Sakos 2y ago
Precisely this. It feels like scrolling WMs and tiling WMs are entirely different paradigms. I see no way to transfer my workflow with tiling to a scrolling WM.
- NayamAmarshe 2y ago
  Yes, they are fundamentally different in a way (although you could still keep the same layouts with Scrolling WMs). Scrolling WMs are a lot more useful for laptops, where the screen area is limited. It replaces the need for multi-monitors for me and that's quite revolutionary.
- dawser 2y ago
  You can also use workspaces with a scrolling layout, you keep the advantages of both, and you don't need to keep on resizing/moving windows because they are too small. When I moved to Hyprland after having tried almost every DE and tiling WM, I had to write my own layout plugin (hyprscroller) because of how much I missed PaperWM. If you moved from classic DEs with floating windows and lots of mouse to a tiling WM, scrolling adds another advantage. You can even ignore it and use it as a classic tiling WM, but you also have all the advantages of scrolling once you find a use for them.
NayamAmarshe 2y ago
When I'm already on a laptop with a small screen, tiling only makes each app fight for screen estate. With Scrolling WMs, it's not an issue because it's just like switching to the second monitor by moving your mouse over to the other app. Now imagine instead of 2 monitors side-by-side, you could have infinite monitors. Not just side-by-side, what about stacked? Scrolling WMs come with vertical workspaces too! You can still use a Scrolling WM to tile everything the way you would on a Tiling WM and that is where it shines. It's a fantastic solution to the screen estate problem, which tiling managers struggle with. You're right that they are a bit different but I personally don't see the need for tiling when Scrolling WMs provide the same functionality (vertical and horizontal tiling + workspaces) as well :D

Sakos 2y ago

Precisely this. It feels like scrolling WMs and tiling WMs are entirely different paradigms. I see no way to transfer my workflow with tiling to a scrolling WM.

NayamAmarshe 2y ago
Yes, they are fundamentally different in a way (although you could still keep the same layouts with Scrolling WMs). Scrolling WMs are a lot more useful for laptops, where the screen area is limited. It replaces the need for multi-monitors for me and that's quite revolutionary.
dawser 2y ago
You can also use workspaces with a scrolling layout, you keep the advantages of both, and you don't need to keep on resizing/moving windows because they are too small. When I moved to Hyprland after having tried almost every DE and tiling WM, I had to write my own layout plugin (hyprscroller) because of how much I missed PaperWM. If you moved from classic DEs with floating windows and lots of mouse to a tiling WM, scrolling adds another advantage. You can even ignore it and use it as a classic tiling WM, but you also have all the advantages of scrolling once you find a use for them.

NayamAmarshe 2y ago

When I'm already on a laptop with a small screen, tiling only makes each app fight for screen estate. With Scrolling WMs, it's not an issue because it's just like switching to the second monitor by moving your mouse over to the other app. Now imagine instead of 2 monitors side-by-side, you could have infinite monitors. Not just side-by-side, what about stacked? Scrolling WMs come with vertical workspaces too! You can still use a Scrolling WM to tile everything the way you would on a Tiling WM and that is where it shines. It's a fantastic solution to the screen estate problem, which tiling managers struggle with. You're right that they are a bit different but I personally don't see the need for tiling when Scrolling WMs provide the same functionality (vertical and horizontal tiling + workspaces) as well :D