Templated Tile Layouts Across Workspaces on Start

[DrSRC]

First, I want to say thanks for putting this extension together. It adds a lot of functionality to the gnome desktop, which (after a lot of desktop environment hopping) I am finding to be what best works for my flow. However, I was curious if you could / would consider a feature that allows opened applications to populate predesignated tiles and workspaces?

For context, my inspiration for this request comes from my brief experience with hyprland. In hyprland, users can edit a config file so that applications that launch on start / login are automatically routed to specific workspaces. For example, if I wanted to start firefox and console (terminal emulator), I could instruct it in the config file to launch them on separate workspaces OR to launch them on the same workspace and it would automatically tile them - often with a left/right screen split. I don't want this extension to mirror hyprland, but the capacity to control where applications launch on start would be BIG for me! I have some random ideas about this, but it's just to help with brainstorming, not necessarily guide whatever efforts you may have time for.

Based on my understanding and use of this extension, we can customize tiling layouts and establish different tiling layouts per workspace, and even rely on the extension to make best decisions about which tile to place certain applications (a feature I haven't used yet), which makes me think this idea is like 90-95% of the way implemented. I would like to be able to use gnome to autostart applications and then have the tiling extension apply rules that I designate to place them in different tiles across different workspaces. For example, I could see having rules that look something like this (it doesn't have to be this pretty):

• Workspace 1 [80/20 Split]: RStudio [Tile 1] & Files [Tile 2]
• Workspace 2 [50/50 Split]: Evolution [Tile 1] & Calendar [Tile 2]
• Workspace 3 [Full Screen]: Remmina

If we could assign identifiers to the tiles (ID) in each custom layout (CLO), it might be able to be brute forced:

• Workspace 1 [CLO:ID]: RStudio
• Workspace 1 [CLO:ID]: Files

I imagine there might be some consequences to a feature like this, such that if I open up new firefox windows, it might try to force them to that location, but given how the tiling shell currently works, I assume I'd be able to simply move them out and around where needed.

I've reviewed the available documentation and features, but I don't quite have a bead on if something like this can be executed with the current version of the tiling extension. If this can already be accomplished, perhaps with an undocumented process, I'd love to look into it. If it's not feasible to implement something like this, I'll also understand!

Thanks again for your time!

[DrSRC]

Follow up - it looks like this possibility is closer than I had originally thought.
After further review, I noticed there is a .json file that contains tile layout information:
https://github.com/domferr/tilingshell/blob/8a1f21620d5d8f1db7c5b6b45c0ef0c483801420/doc/example-layouts.json

If it would be possible to have certain tile layouts assigned to certain workspaces and then have preferential placement of applications in those tiles and workspaces (we could use gnome autostart features to start up the applications), this could accomplish that goal.

[thyttan]

This sounds adjacent to #100

[DrSRC]

Thanks for referencing that! Yes, it does appear to be adjacent. I didn't see that thread initially.

[thyttan]

And this one is similar as well #140 😇

[DrSRC]

Seems like there is a lot of interest in features similar to and perhaps that build off this common framework.

[domferr]

Thank you everyone for the conversation! Currently one can achieve some of this by enabling Tiling Shell's auto-tiling and manually switching to the desired workspace before opening a new window. Moreover, one can pick a different layout per workspace. However, there is anything allowing to do so automagically, yet!

The problem here is that despite there is a lot of interest on ideas like this, it feels like there are some common things across all the ideas. To generalize, people are interested into:

• Open a set of windows and tile all of them in a specified layout
• Open windows and automagically auto tile them in other workspaces, tiles and layouts
• Create a layout starting from the current tiled windows, then remember it and auto-tile the same windows the next time you open them (all of them or just one of them? lol)
• Have auto-tiling rules such as: how and when auto-tile on monitor number X, how and when auto-tile to the workspace number Y, etc...

I believe some of those ideas are great, but I'd prefer to start from the problem we wanna solve to find the right solution. Otherwise it is like building a car before discovering we actually want to go to the moon 😄