[lug] Window Tiling Tools for Display Management

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Thu, 2020-01-09 at 14:51 -0700, Rob Nagler wrote:
> On a Mac, there seem to be a number of tools to help you manage
> window placement. Here are two:
> 
> https://cordlessdog.com/stay/
> https://github.com/jigish/slate
> 
> I haven't tried them. I have enough trouble keeping track of a couple
> of windows on one screen. Maxwell: how do you keep track of 30-50
> terminal windows?

The short answer is that I perform actions in geographically consistent
locations on my computer.

So start with five static virtual desktops in Gnome Shell v3.  The
first one has my general purpose activities (email, daily journal, ssh
tunnel sessions, chat rooms, general purpose browser).  That's where I
start my day.  Desktops 2 - 5 populate based on the work I'm doing like
working with photos, organzing files, but more likely coding up
something to deploy with Chef.

On one of those coding focused virtual desktops I might have 3-5 'tall'
terminal windows open with code in them using vim.  Very old school and
something I'm moving away from.  I can fit three 85x37 windows on the
top half of my screen with some overlapping, and I might layer a couple
on top of each other.  But when I'm coding those will only have code in
them.

The lower portion of the primary monitor has another three terminals
with a little overlapping.  I do things like manual git commands in the
bottom right and I might upload code from a local system to a server in
the bottom left window.

The second monitor has larger windows for monitoring log files, testing
the code I've written, etc.

I love making diagrams so I recently made a diagram for some
documentation and my displays works like this:

https://github.com/maxwax/coding/blob/master/coding.png

This setup works for me in that I have been productive with it for
years, but right now, purposely in-between jobs I'm re-evaluating
everything.  So I'll switch to the left half of the primary display
being a single Atom (or other) editor with multiple tabs and a reduced
set of terminals performing various testing, deployment and interaction
activites to the right.

This is a fascinating subject to me because when I see people with
random windows scattered all over their display I have no idea how they
get things done and stay sane.  But to each their own, it's like one
person with a clean minimal office and the other with piles of paper
causing them to forget where they put their nobel prize.  We each have
to do it our way, but sharing ideas is great.
-- Maxwell Spangler

===================================================================
Denver, Colorado, USA

maxwellspangler.com
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