What does HackerNews think of PaperWM?

1. https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

I used to have dual monitors, but now I use a super ultrawide 32:9 monitor. It required learning to use window managers since most OS's don't support multitasking setups like that, but I can use layouts now that I couldn't before. I also use PaperWM[1] with it and it feels particularly effective on ultrawides.

[1]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

I think this approach tries to solve the 'cramming too much windows in a single virtual desktop' that sometimes can be felt with tiling WMs. For example, when I'm drawing something in Krita I'd want to see some references of what I'm drawing - I'd just scroll a bit to unveil an adjacent Falkon window to browse some images on the internet, do some strokes and scroll back to Krita's window - without having to resize it in half.

[0] https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

But I get it, not for most people but then again my desktop is 21:9

https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

>16:9 screens are cramped

I think this depends on the screen size. Small screen, yes, because you mostly use apps full screen. Large screen, no because you can run side-by side

I find it funny, because I would say I have seen more floating window manager, when I was browsing GitHub, so I assume it is also quite easy to create a new one from scratch. Such floating VMs usually have 200-1000 LOC and die after 1 month after initial commit. Recently, xwm has been on HN [0] and it is small in terms of SLOC. There is smaller one called tinywm[1]. When we would compare them to i3[2] and sway, we can see they have thousand times larger codebase but they also bring a lot more features.

I keep my fingers crossed for more sophisticated WMs like PaperWM[3], which is "tiled scrollable window manager" to take off. They might synthesize ideas from floating and tiling managers and provide a better tool to manage windows on a screen.

[0]: https://github.com/mcpcpc/xwm

[1]: https://github.com/mackstann/tinywm

[2]: https://github.com/i3/i3

[3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

I love the idea of a wm calculus I hope that it comes to life somehow.

What I can recommend you to look at, not sure it is very on-topic, is related to layouting is cassowary and constraint-based layout systems, autolayout is one of them, along the browser layout engine like css grid and flexbox.

A question to finish: what do you think of https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM?

To my knowledge there's no any other tiling window manager that implements this mechanic(?) Ie. traditional tiling WMs force all windows in a workspace to fit within the monitor.

This mockup (and paperwm) organize the windows in a non-overlapping strip that is allowed to extend beyond the left and right monitor edges. This allows for a nice spatial map.

Say my monitor has room for two windows but I need to use 3 windows. With a tiled strip this workflow is quite nice: (| indicates the monitor edges, AA window content of window A, etc. ^ marks the active window)

    C|AAB|
      ^^
     
     |CAA|B
      ^

It's also possible to define more specialized operations: When one window is primarily used for input and two mostly for viewing (eg. editor, documentation, code-artifact) I use the following setup:

   |AAB|C
    ^^
   
   |AAC|B
    ^^

In addition we have a floating layer that can easily be toggled. Useful for windows I need access to from a large number of places (across workspaces, etc.)

We also implement touch-pad gestures to switch workspace and scroll the tiling left/right (only on wayland)

[1] https://desktopneo.com/#panels