Add more detailed instructions for disabling the Compiz Grid plugin to the FAQ

[Atcold]

Was: Broken window size cycling on Ubuntu 14.04

Issue

I am not sure if this is a bug or just something I did wrong. On a Ubuntu 12.04 the window size cycling was working perfectly (I was able to switch from 1/2 to 1/3 to 2/3 by pressing the number multiple times). Now that I've installed quicktile on Ubuntu 14.04, the only available size is 1/2.

Debugging tips

• <Ctrl>+<Alt>+0 does minimise the current window.
• <Ctrl>+<Alt>+5 does switch between maximised and "almost maximised".
• If I open a terminal and try to cycle through the different position for the "corner sequences", the first is caught but the following repetitions just drop the number I'm pressing into the terminal.
• The "side sequences" are, instead, always caught, but the dimension does not cycle.

[avaly]

I suspect that <Ctrl>+<Alt>+0 and <Ctrl>+<Alt>+5 work as you describe because they might be handled by the Grid plugin of Compiz. Try disabling that plugin or change the modifier keys.

[ssokolow]

Sorry about not responding to this. It arrived while my GitHub notifications were silently broken and I overlooked it when catching up.

The first thing you'll want to do is check whether the problem is in the keybinding part or the window-moving part.

On my system (Lubuntu 14.04.1), the following shell script snippet will cycle the active window through the various sizes without relying on the keybinding (You'll need to adjust the path to quicktile):

for X in 1 2 3 4; do sleep 1; ~/src/quicktile/quicktile.py top-left; done

If it works for you, then it's a keybinding issue and @avaly is probably right. If you still have the problem, then it's probably Unity messing with a particularly fragile aspect of QuickTile's current approach to determining where it is in the cycle.

Let me know which it is and I'll investigate further.

[ssokolow]

@Atcold: Ok, I've made the --debug output much easier to understand and added a line like this so it's easy to tell whether it's receiving the keypresses.

DEBUG: Received keybind: <Primary><Alt>KP_Home

Try with the latest revision and, if you don't see that when pressing a key, then @avaly is right. If you do see it, then paste the --debug output and we can work from there.

[Atcold]

OK. I am sort of busy these days. But I will try eventually (since this app is awesome). Here there are some instructions, but I remember that once, playing with it, I screwed up my desktop because it installed some GTK* stuff, and I had to purge them all, wasting a entire day. Thank you guys!

[Atcold]

OK, I have the same behaviour on my laptop, where I do not have installed your app. Hence, I believe that this Grid plugin of Compiz is conflicting. About disabling it, I don't have a clue about how to do that. It would be nice if it would came by default with your app installation.

[ssokolow]

@Atcold:

I can write instructions, but I can't write a script to do it for you. Force-overriding user preferences is fragile and a big no-no.

(And it leads to the mess you see on Windows where two or three different programs end up having tray icons whose only purpose is to squabble over who gets control over what.)

[Atcold]

That would be great! As I said, I have already screwed up once, and it has been very painful recovering the whole stuff... without exactly knowing the reason for the desktop's crash.

[Atcold]

Please, feel free to close this issue from the commit to the documentation :wink:

[ssokolow]

I run Lubuntu and usually don't run with any compositing, so I'll need to find a moment to set up Ubuntu in a VirtualBox VM first. Once I've done that, I'll ask you to double-check my instructions before I commit them.

[Atcold]

Sure thing!

[ssokolow]

I know it's been six years, but sorry that I forgot about this.

I'll rename it and leave it open as a reminder to write those instructions.