I gave some more thought about why I considered this is important/useful.
I am sure that having windows "near the center" is no big deal for most people, and I am in the minority that wants them actually centered.
For me I think it is mostly an accessibility issue. I have gotten used to always centering content as much as possible because for me having content even slightly off-center can cause neck pain, and trigger migraines. So my experience has been having windows opening slightly off-center, not fixing that alignment because I was focused on things, and ending up in a lot of pain later in the day as a result.
your concern about cascading windows towards the bottom right screen corner and therefore occupying small part of the screen
I have no idea what you are referring to?
Are there usecases that we are unaware of that are broken because of cascading?
Yes: I want my new windows to open in the center of the display. They currently don't do so, even though that preference worked for a long time previously.
it's also the first time I hear somebody complain about window cascading
I'd have complained sooner but I haven't had the bandwidth to track down the issue before now, and I wasn't aware of the original change when it was opened.
Just because no one has put in the complaint until now ("why do my windows not open centered/top-left sometimes??") doesn't mean they aren't out there - especially with the tiny fraction of users who code or submit bug reports.
Done with !5522
Cascading behaviour was introduced with !3229
This change makes the cascading behaviour optional, which:
Center
, and having windows sometimes not
opening centered without the user knowing why)Before | After |
---|---|
Kristen McWilliam (b7b8f518) at 25 Mar 15:30
placement: make new window cascading optional
those who have special wishes for their window placement algorithm need to (and can) resort to special tools
I don't see how the user setting Window placement: Centered
& expecting the windows to be centered can really be considered a special case.
If the aim is to avoid windows being covered, it sounds like the desired placement policy would actually be Minimal Overlapping
:
Will place all new windows in such a manner as to overlap existing windows as little as possible.
That said, if there is a desire for "other placement policies, but don't cover previous windows completely" I can see how some people may prefer that behaviour, and broadly speaking I think it sounds reasonable and this change is a positive one with the following caveats:
I'd think that if one of these placement policies was selected, a checkbox beneath the combobox could be shown to say something like:
✅ New windows don't completely cover existing windows
I am unsure why you seem so against that.
I don't think that works if the windows are different sizes, it calculates the center taking into account the windows' height and width. So setting a generic rule for "center new windows" will only work for windows that are the size you chose with "detect window properties" - others will be offset because of their size.
Even if that worked though, applying the "magic behaviour" on top of the requested policy doesn't seem right - otherwise setting the preference to "Open new windows centered" isn't accurate, rather it has become "Open new windows centered. Unless they cover a window, then open them somewhere not centered (but kinda close)."
One of the first comments in that bug report was @davidedmundson voicing exactly such a concern:
If a user has chosen a strategy that explicitly states what it should do (centered, zero cornered, maximised, under mouse) then doing something "magic" and not what the user explicitly asked seems like a bad idea.
That bug report was from 2003, so it makes sense it had more time for people to take the time to update/notice/report/check the code/etc, compared to this much more recent change. Even for me, it's something I've been wanting to poke at for some time now and just haven't had the energy to bother until just now - but that doesn't mean it wasn't bothering me. :)
If you want new windows to be placed strictly in the center or top left corner, it is easy to achieve this with a window rule.
If it is possible to make a rule that essentially says "center a new window initially, unless there is another rule that sets its size/position" I don't know how to do that.. doesn't seem like a very user-friendly way to deal with unexpected behaviour though (eg. "open windows centered" doesn't actually open them centered)
Kristen McWilliam (c82ad686) at 23 Mar 17:33
wip
I've been wondering why my window placement policy didn't appear to be working anymore.
I feel like this should have an option to change this behaviour; now if one chooses a placement policy like Centered
, windows sometimes open up not centered.
Users may want it placed as requested even if it ends up covering a window. I'd even say that setting a policy like Open Centered
or Open In Top-Left Corner
and then only kind of doing that by default seems counter intuitive.
I don't think it currently does anything to manage a version of clang-format - just wondering if it can add a step that builds/downloads a specific version of clang-format, installs it to kde/usr
so that everyone automatically has the same version in the toolchain.
Kristen McWilliam (94f350e0) at 22 Mar 19:56
feat: enable use as a screensaver
... and 1 more commit
Kristen McWilliam (2b633ada) at 22 Mar 19:51
Kristen McWilliam (d5f22823) at 22 Mar 15:56