Short: Tile windows by dragging them to an edge Uploader: michele.dipace@kaffeine.net (Michele Dipace) Author: Michele Dipace Type: util/cdity Version: 0.5 Architecture: ppc-amigaos >= 4.0.0; ppc-morphos Replaces: util/cdity/edgesnap.lha WHAT IS NEW IN 0.5 Every hotkey can now be changed on a new Hotkeys page of the preferences, in the icon's tooltypes or as a Shell argument, with an input description as Exchange writes it (HOTKEYLEFT=ctrl alt cursor_left); none, or an empty field, leaves an action without a key. The keys as they come are the ones of 0.43. The four quarters get actions of their own (HOTKEYTOPLEFT and so on), with no key until you give them one, and CX_POPKEY (also POPKEY) opens the preferences, as Exchange's Show button does. The preferences window now has two pages, Snapping and Hotkeys, with the width cycle setting beside the side keys; it refuses a key the system does not understand, or two actions on the same key, with a requester, while the commodity skips such a key and says so in its output instead of not starting. Keys change at once when the preferences are saved, without a restart. An ARexx port, EDGESNAP, lets a script, a dock button or a file manager do what the hotkeys do: SNAP (LEFT RIGHT MAXIMIZE TOPLEFT TOPRIGHT BOTTOMLEFT BOTTOMRIGHT CENTRE), RESTORE, QUERY (RESULT is where the window is snapped), SELECT, PREFS, ENABLE, DISABLE, VERSION, HELP and QUIT, on the active window or on another window matched by a TITLE AmigaDOS pattern, for example rx "ADDRESS EDGESNAP 'SNAP LEFT'". On MorphOS an ARexx interpreter must be installed, as the system's own rexxsyslib has none; on AROS One the command is SYS:Rexxc/RX. edgesnap.library 2.25 brings corrections from a review of 2.24, among them a window closed while the library waits for it, a press beside a seam on AROS, and two cases of the old size coming back on a drag away: a short pull of a maximised window (a few pixels are now enough), and a window that followed the pointer during the drag. WHAT IT IS EdgeSnap gives AmigaOS 4.x, MorphOS and AROS (x86_64, aarch64 and i386) the window snapping that Windows and macOS users reach for without thinking. Drag a window against a screen edge or corner and it glides into that half or quarter of the screen. A frame shows where it will land before you let go. Two windows that end up side by side share a seam, and that seam can be dragged: both windows are resized together, so half and half becomes sixty and forty. Docks and panels are detected and never covered. It installs as a commodity that starts with the system, so the behaviour is simply there. Nobody has to launch anything. THIS IS A BETA Version 0.5 is still a beta. I checked it on real hardware on MorphOS 3.20 on a PowerMac G5 (with ARexx) and on a Raspberry Pi 400 with AROS aarch64, and under emulation on AmigaOS 4.1, MorphOS and AROS One 1.3 x86_64. The i386 build comes from the same sources; library 2.25 was tried on AROS One x86 under emulation. On one AROS installation Wanderer's drawers can show black areas after a snap; another program that moves windows does the same there, and the AROS developers are looking into how Wanderer redraws a drawer. All of it remains worth reporting. The interface below 1.0 is not frozen. If EdgeSnap covers your dock, misses your seam or draws something odd, please include the system, version banner, steps and a screenshot in your report. Report it here, or to the address at the top of this file: https://github.com/kaffeine1/edgesnap/issues INSTALLING Unpack the archive and double-click Install. It recognises the system, proposes the matching build, and asks before doing anything: the library goes to LIBS: and the preferences window to SYS:Prefs/. On AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS the commodity goes to C: with a line in S:User-Startup. On AROS it goes to SYS:WBStartup with its icon, and the first preview's copy in C: is stopped and removed. On the Raspberry Pi and on 32-bit AROS, and on any AROS whose own Installer cannot copy files, Install does all of this by itself after one question. Updating is just installing again: the running copy is stopped and replaced, with no reboot, except that on the Raspberry Pi a new library takes over at the next boot. USING IT - Drag a window's title bar until the POINTER touches an edge or a corner, then release. - Grab the seam between two tiled windows (the pointer becomes a double arrow) and drag it to re-balance them. - Drag a snapped window away from the edges and it gets back the size it had before. - ctrl alt cursor left/right/up snap the active window, ctrl alt cursor down puts it back where it was, ctrl alt c puts it in the middle at the size it has, and ctrl alt z opens a selector under the pointer with all of that on nine cells. - Every hotkey can be changed on the Hotkeys page of the preferences, in the icon's tooltypes or from the Shell, and the four quarters and opening the preferences can be given keys there too. - The ARexx port EDGESNAP lets a script, a dock button or a file manager do what the hotkeys do: rx "ADDRESS EDGESNAP 'SNAP LEFT'". - Settings live in SYS:Prefs/EdgeSnap, native on each system: ReAction on AmigaOS 4, MUI on MorphOS, Zune on AROS. EdgeSnap follows changes at once, without being restarted. - Exchange enables, disables or removes it, as with any commodity. - EdgeSnap QUIT stops it from a Shell or a script. FOR PROGRAMMERS The behaviour lives in edgesnap.library, not in the commodity: the commodity is a client of it like any other program can be. Another program can place a window in a zone or in any rectangle, find and move the seam between two tiled windows, list the windows with their state, follow their changes and lay out several windows in one call. Since 2.10 the library also serves tiling window managers: one client owns the interactive drag and any number own their layouts, work areas keep an identity across a screen mode change, and a layout group can keep every other program, the commodity's drag included, off its windows. Since 2.20 a group can also keep gaps between its windows and margins from the edges of the screen. Since 2.24 a tiler can list the seams between the windows of a group and move each one by a token that names its windows, and a seam dragged between them keeps the group's gap. The included esnaptest client exercises the whole API on every system. The library says 2.25 while EdgeSnap says 0.5, and that is not a mistake: a library's version is its interface, not its product. While EdgeSnap is below 1.0 treat that interface as not frozen: methods are only ever appended, never moved or removed, but names and arguments may still change. THANKS The icons are by Carlo Spadoni, who drew them for EdgeSnap and let me ship them with it. The testers on the AROSWorld forum found the black areas in Wanderer's drawers, the colour left along the seam and the traces of the preview frame on one graphics driver, each with a video or a log that made the cause findable. A MorphOS user asked for the old size back when a snapped window is dragged away, the hotkeys came from a conflict found on real MorphOS hardware, and the author of a tiling window manager asked for the seams of a group. LICENCE AND SOURCE MIT. The full text is in the LICENSE file inside the archive. Source, issues and the design notes: https://github.com/kaffeine1/edgesnap