i3 FAQ - Individual question feed

Resize with px and not ppt

Sun, 30 Mar 2014 20:01:05 +0000

Sorry my bad English, isn't my native language. My problem is the use of de command resize: resize grow|shrink [ px] [or ppt] In my case, I am trying to use a command to resize one pixel by time, like this "resize grow height 1 px". But they ignore the px value and use just the ppt value (10 ppt, the default value in this case). Doing a fast search in the source code, in the function cmd_resize (commands.c:767), I see, he just use the value of px when its applied to a floating window or floating container, else they use the ppt value. This is a bug or misinterpretation of the documentation?

Answer by Michael for
Sorry my bad English, isn't my native language. My problem is the use of de command resize: resize grow|shrink <direction> [<px> px] [or <ppt> ppt]

In my case, I am trying to use a command to resize one pixel by time, like this "resize grow height 1 px". But they ignore the px value and use just the ppt value (10 ppt, the default value in this case).

Doing a fast search in the source code, in the function cmd_resize (commands.c:767), I see, he just use the value of px when its applied to a floating window or floating container, else they use the ppt value. This is a bug or misinterpretation of the documentation?

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 12:44:44 +0000

The feature is working as designed. Pixels are meaningful when you are dealing with floating windows, because they are not part of the tiling layout. Percentage points (ppt) are meaningful when you are dealing with tiling windows, since for them, i3 actually stores/works with ppts, not pixels. If you really really want to use pixels, you need a custom script using the ipc interface (see http://i3wm.org/docs/ipc.html) that converts percentage points into pixels, does the calculation, converts back to percentage points, and issues a resize.

Comment by joek1010 for
The feature is working as designed.

Pixels are meaningful when you are dealing with floating windows, because they are not part of the tiling layout.

Percentage points (ppt) are meaningful when you are dealing with tiling windows, since for them, i3 actually stores/works with ppts, not pixels.

If you really really want to use pixels, you need a custom script using the ipc interface (see http://i3wm.org/docs/ipc.html) that converts percentage points into pixels, does the calculation, converts back to percentage points, and issues a resize.

Sun, 18 May 2014 22:50:29 +0000

Is there a reason i3 doesn't support fractional resize PPT values? You can use the method you describe above but since values get rounded to the nearest int you can only resize to approximately the value you wanted. Example: say I have 3 containers split evenly. it's impossible to resize one to 50%.