PaperWM

PaperWM is an experimental gnome shell extension providing scrollable tiling of windows and per monitor workspaces. It's inspired by paper notebooks and tiling window managers.

While technically an extension it's to a large extent built on top of the Gnome desktop rather than merely extending it.

Installation

Clone the repo and run the install.sh script from the directory:

./install.sh

It will link the repo to ~/.local/share/gnome-shell-extensions/ where gnome-shell can find it. You can then enable the extension in Gnome Tweaks. Running the extension will automatic install of a user config file as described in Development & user configuration.

Usage

Most functionality is available using a mouse, eg. by clicking on a window at the edge of a monitor. But the primary focus is making an environment which works well with a keyboard.

All keybindings start with the Super modifier. On most keyboards it's the Windows key, on mac keyboards it's the Command key. It's possible and recommended to modify the keyboard layout so that Super is switched with Alt making all the keybindings easier to reach. This can be done through Gnome Tweaks under Keybard & Mouse ⟶ Additional Layout Options ⟶ Alt/Win key behavior ⟶ Left Alt is swapped with Left Win.

Most keybindings will grab the keyboard while Super is held down, only switching focus when Super is released. Escape will abort the navigation taking you back to the previously active window.

Adding Ctrl to a keybinding will take the current window with you when navigating.

Window management and navigation is based around the three following concepts.

Scrollable window tiling

New windows are automatically tiled to the right of the active window. SuperN will open a new window of the same type as the active window.

Activating a window will ensure it's fully visible, scrolling the tiling if necessary. Pressing Super. activates the window to the right. Super, activates the window to the left. On a US keyboard these keys are intuitively marked by < and >, they are also ordered the same way on almost all keyboard layouts.

A minimap will be shown when Super is continually being pressed, as can be seen in the above screenshot.

AltTab is of course also available.

Keybindings
Super, or SuperLeft	Activate the window to the left
Super. or SuperRight	Activate the window to the right
SuperHome or SuperEnd	Activate the first or last window
SuperCtrl, or SuperCtrl.	Move the current window to the left or right
SuperTab or AltTab	Cycle through the most recently used windows
SuperShiftTab or AltShiftTab	Cycle backwards through the most recently used windows
SuperR	Resize the window (cycles through useful widths)
SuperF	Maximize the width of a window
SuperShiftF	Toggle fullscreen
SuperN	Create a new window from the active application
SuperC or SuperBackspace	Close the active window

The workspace stack & monitors

Pressing SuperAbove_Tab will slide the active workspace down revealing the stack as shown in the above screenshot. You can then flip through the most recently used workspaces with repeated Above_Tab presses while holding Super downe. Above_Tab is the key above Tab (` in a US qwerty layout). Like alt-tab Shift is added to move in reverse order.

A workspace has a name and background color. Clicking on the workspace name lets you change them easily:

There's a single scrollable tiling per workspace. Adding another monitor simply makes it possible to have another workspace visible. The workspace stack is shared among all the monitors, windows being resized vertically as necessary when workspace is displayed on another monitor.

Keybindings
SuperAbove_Tab or SuperDown	Cycle through the most recently used workspaces
SuperShiftAbove_Tab or SuperUp	Cycle backwards through the most recently used workspaces
SuperCtrlAbove_Tab or SuperCtrlDown	Cycle through the most recently used, taking the active window with you
SuperCtrlShiftAbove_Tab or SuperCtrlUp	Cycle backwards through the most recently used, taking the active window with you

Note: Multi monitor support only works when Gnome Shell is configured to use the Workspaces span displays option in Gnome Tweaks (under the Workspaces heading).

Scratch layer

The scratch layer is an escape hatch to a familiar floating layout. This layer is intended to store windows that are globally useful like chat applications and in general serve as the kitchen sink. When the scratch layer is active it will float above the tiled windows, when hidden the windows will be minimized.

Opening a window when the scratch layer is active will make it float automatically.

Pressing SuperEscape toggles between showing and hiding the windows in the scratch layer. Activating windows in the scratch layer is done using SuperTab, the floating windows having priority in the list while active.

SuperCtrlEscape will move a tiled window into the scratch layer or alternatively tile an already floating window. This functionality can also be accessed in the windows context menu (AltSpace).

Keybindings
SuperEscape	Toggle between showing and hiding the scratch windows
SuperCtrlEscape	Toggle between floating and tiling the current window
SuperTab	Cycle through the most recently used scratch windows
SuperH	Minimize the current window

Development & user configuration

A default user configuration, user.js, is created in ~/.config/paperwm/ with three functions init, enable and disable. init will run only once on startup, enable and disable will be run whenever extensions are being told to disable and enable themselves. Eg. when locking the screen with SuperL.

We also made an emacs package, gnome-shell-mode, to make hacking on the config and writing extensions a more pleasant experience. To support this out of the box we also install a metadata.json so gnome-shell-mode will pick up the correct file context, giving you completion and interactive evaluation ala. looking glass straight in emacs.

Pressing SuperInsert will assign the active window to a global variable metaWindow, its window actor to actor, its workspace to workspace and its PaperWM style workspace to space. This makes it easy to inspect state and test things out.

Winprops

It's possible to create simple rules for placing new windows. Currently mostly useful when a window should be placed in the scratch layer automatically. An example, best placed in the init part of user.js:

    let Tiling = Extension.imports.Tiling;
    Tiling.defwinprop({
        wm_class: "Spotify",
        scratch_layer: true,
        oneshot: true
    });

Prior work

A similar idea was apparently tried out a while back: http://10gui.com/