Apps are not windows: Don't group windows by application (in the tiling popup)

[janopae]

Briefly describe how the feature should work

Instead of grouping windows by application in the tiling popup, I propose showing all windows ungrouped (along with a window preview) as long as the window list is short enough.

In case we need to handle too many windows to fit on the screen, the view could still become scrollable. If the windows are sorted by a heuristic for their relevance (e. g. "recently used", like in the [alt]+[tab] pop-up), this would ensure that the most relevant windows would still easily be accessible.

Explain why this feature should be added

• you can tile windows, but you can't tile applications
• less clicks to select a window when other windows of the same app are open
• all windows could have window previews
• applications are a very technical and complicated concept. Imagine you write a document and you want to tile a source to one side. Depending on the source file format, it might be open in a different application, and depending on what else you have open, there might be multiple windows rendered by that application. This is stuff you don't want to think about just to tile a window.

Explaining why 2 files are shown in 2 different groups currently basically requires explaining file formats, the idea of programs being needed to paint the file contents on screen, and file format support of programs. This is complicated and technical stuff if you think about it.

[Leleat]

@Leleat Is this feature going to be dropped? If yes, this would significantly ease the implementation of https://github.com/Leleat/Tiling-Assistant/issues/298. If not, I'd try to support this in my implementation.

I am going to continue the discussion here since it's related to this feature request (so that we won't ping the other user).

Eventually, I will drop tilegroups-in-app-switcher. Maybe the next time I am going to remove the older GNOME Shell support. But I have no specific plans ATM. But I'll be happy if someone reworks the altTab code, since it kinda sucks and is a lot of copy-pasta from GNOME Shell's altTab/SwitcherPopup.

That said, just to be sure that we are on the same page, I don't mind adding a window-based Tiling Popup. But if you implement it, please make it an opt-in feature that can be toggled in the preference window. I personally prefer the app-based approach since it keeps the list short and it fits better with GNOME since GNOME Shell also uses the app-based AltTab by default.

[janopae]

Okay, I'll set out to do this, but having the option makes the implementation even more complicated, so I can't say when.

Would you be fine with binding the option to which kind of overview is bound to alt+tab?

Ubuntu uses the window switcher by default on alt+tab, therefore I think it makes sense for this to be the default on Ubuntu.

[Leleat]

Would you be fine with binding the option to which kind of overview is bound to alt+tab?

Ubuntu uses the window switcher by default on alt+tab, therefore I think it makes sense for this to be the default on Ubuntu.

Sure, sounds good to me.