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Strange behaviour when resizing windows

asked 2014-10-16 19:18:02 +0000

jr88er gravatar image

When I have to windows next to each other sometimes I need to make one bigger. After pressing Mod+r to resize windows say left and right, when I press the right arrow the window opens up left and when I press the left arrow then it closes up right. This should be when you press the left arrow it shoul dopen up left and right arrow it should open up right. Then somehow it switches to the right directin after a few uses, to change again when I need to resize the windows on a new seesion or desktop.

Anyone noticed this? Is there a way to make i3 bahave the right way when resizing windows all the time?

Thanks

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answered 2014-10-16 19:28:50 +0000

Michael Rose gravatar image

left and right and up and down in this contexts are shrinking and growing horizontally and vertically not resizing in that direction. It isn't working wrong its working differently.

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Thanks for the answer, I wasn't aware that this is how it's meant to behave. If I wanted to get windows shrinking left or right and the arrows correspond to the movement direction, how would I achieve this in i3?

jr88er gravatar imagejr88er ( 2014-10-16 21:42:23 +0000 )edit

Windows grow or shrink to take up more or less space. i3 doesn't understand contextual directions. A window either gets bigger or smaller, and the keys which grow or shrink the window are always the same.

ANOKNUSA gravatar imageANOKNUSA ( 2014-10-17 04:17:56 +0000 )edit

The keys that grow or shrink the window are not the same. If the active window is on the ringht handside and after Mod+r I press left arrow the window shrinks, the left border moves to the right. I personally find that strange every text editor you use left arrow pressed means the cursor moves left.

jr88er gravatar imagejr88er ( 2014-10-17 06:46:31 +0000 )edit

Thanks for your answers I suppose I have to accept this feature as programmer inteded.

jr88er gravatar imagejr88er ( 2014-10-17 06:52:22 +0000 )edit

You're thinking about this incorrectly. Arrange three windows horizontally---left, right and center. Focus the center window and resize it horizontally. Notice what happens. That function---growing/shrinking a window from the center---is done with one keypress, regardless of window position.

ANOKNUSA gravatar imageANOKNUSA ( 2014-10-18 17:34:42 +0000 )edit
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answered 2014-10-17 07:02:30 +0000

Adaephon gravatar image

The default bindings are set such that up and left shrink windows by 10 percantage points in height and width respectively. down and right grow windows.

mode "resize" {
    # [...]
    bindsym Left        resize shrink width 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Down        resize grow height 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Up          resize shrink height 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Right       resize grow width 10 px or 10 ppt
    # [...]
}

For example: if the window takes up 25 % of the available width in a container, growing it by 10 ppt will make it take up 35 % (with all other windows shrunken equally). If the window is the left most window in a container it will (and really can) only grow to the right. If the window does not border on the edge of the container (in direction of resizing) it will grow in both directions.


That being said, it is only the default setting. You actually can tell the resize command to grow and shrink in a specific direction. You just have to use left or right instead of width and up or down instead of height. So you could add something like that to your i3 configuration:

mode "resize" {
    # [...]
    bindsym Left        resize grow left 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Shift+Left  resize shrink left 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Down        resize grow down 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Shift+Down  resize shrink down 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Up          resize grow up 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Shift+Up    resize shrink up 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Right       resize grow right 10 px or 10 ppt
    bindsym Shift+Right resize shrink rigth 10 px or 10 ppt
    # [...]
}

resize grow left moves the left border to the left or rather outwards. resize shrink left moves the left border to the right (!) or rather inwards. (So with resize the keywords left, up, down and right really indicate borders with grow and shrink indicating direction.)

(You may want to experiment a bit to find bindings that feel natural. While pressing Up to move the top border of a window upwards is quite intuitive, pressing Shift+Up to pull the top border down might not be. Perhaps Shift+Down or separate modes for growing and shrinking would be better.)

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Asked: 2014-10-16 19:18:02 +0000

Seen: 213 times

Last updated: Oct 17 '14