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Comment by the_gipsy | Hacker News Reader

What's the point of having two 67%-width windows next to each other?

For me (been using paperwm since ) the real point of having them is that a lot of windows don't really benefit from extra width (heck even hacker news website shows white bars in the sides) so by having 67% windows not only I'm not losing anything but now I have a context of which windows are to left and right of currently focused window and that helps me to remember where everything is located in this big wall of windows. I remember installing something using apt and looking for when it's going to be finished in the remaining 33% of screen (This use case is not that prevalent and is really limited in how much information of the other window can be perceived)

Another benefit is how sick it looks (In my opinion). Anyone looking would be interested.

As an example, I usually keep my code editor maximized, with a 67% gitui terminal to the left and a 67% "compile & run" terminal to the right. This way nothing is too small.

And then I use workspaces for different groups of windows, i.e. messaging apps, the browser, and different projects all go on different workspaces.

How is that useful? You only see half of the other window. Why not resize it to fit 33%, or fullscreen them both?

I use xmonad so I'm well used to tiling, I just don't get why you would want to have a view into only half of a window.

You could fullscreen them, yeah. Just for gitui on my monitor, I find that 67% is both sufficient and enough, and keeping a little bit of the other window in sight helps maintain spatial context.

Besides, when it's something like runtime logs in a terminal, I sometimes keep the terminal maximized (to avoid line wrapping), but only leave it peeking out, so that I can switch to it if I notice something strange in the left side of the output.

Okay, to each its own, but to me it still sounds a bit like a crazy workaround.

Not all of the window is usefull all of the time. Sometimes only the terminal half of the IDE is, sometimes just the editor half is. Same to the browser, sometimes you only need to look at the console and not the website (while testing something over the IDE). Resizing windows is actually way more annoying than just aranging them the right way so you can alway trigger the useful half.

I think most tilling WMs fails to realize how annoying windows that keep changing size are. If they do, the entire concept of automatic tiling seems way less useful.

Your problem is that you don't divide these windows. The terminal is obvious, and IIRC the browser console can be its own window.

That's not a "problem", it's a choice. Other examples where your "solution" isn't applicable is any code editor/video editing software (any software really) with multiple panels. Software generally don't render as a bunch of floating windows, they render a single window with multiple panels.

A choice made by whom? For who? Not you. That's why you have to resort to some bizarre layout, with some magic 67% size concerning both WM and individual windows' panels.

A code editor does not need a terminal, because everyone already has a terminal that is not restricted into one IDE window. Do you run tmux inside your IDE's terminal? Do you never use any other terminal? You shift the goalpost to video editing, what is the specific double-67% requirement now?

> You shift the goalpost to video editing

Did I not make a generalization that software UI often involve multiple panels in a single window? Just quit chery-picking arguments and think about that, and the fact that PaperWM exists, and again how anoying automatically resizing windows are.

Hey turns out I did say things other than terminal and video editor!

You cherry picked those specific examples yourself!

Floating WMs also exist, and all kind of unergonomic setups exists, I'm just questioning your reasoning.

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