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<p>Guys, I'm really excited, I want to share this with you : I
managed to solve <a
href="http://www.rncbc.org/drupal/comment/7175#comment-7175">the
biggest ergonomics gripe that I had with Qtractor</a>, and given
the fact that I live in it, you can imagine my trepidation :p<br>
</p>
<p>You see the mixer is a <i>floating</i> window. And while that's
fine for a lot of people in a lot of use cases, for me, most of
the time, it's not. I don't like floating windows, for many
reasons, and to avoid the questioning of my very membership of the
troubadour's guild, let's skip to the first : Just because ;
Please don't waste our time, go play with your own windows and
float them to your heart's content :/<br>
</p>
<p>I basically need to see my mixer at all times. Well no, not at
all times, in fact most of the time I'm in the timeline, full
screen ; But when I want to see it, I definitely want to see my
timeline <i>as well</i>, all of it. Very rarely/never do I need
to see <i>just the mixer, full screen</i>.<br>
</p>
<p>Note that I had this issue with basically <i>every</i>
horizontal timeline-based DAW that I used (Ableton live - up until
7, after that I don't know - comes to mind) the only viable
alternative being the Ardour way, where the selected track/bus can
be embedded on the side. I love that.<br>
</p>
<p>Add to that the fact that a lot of WMs don't always honor the
position directives of said floating windows, like typically, in
both Unity and i3 "default", when one toggles the mixer's display
with either the mixer button or the F9 shortcut, it springs back
in the dead center of the screen, no matter where you
painstakingly positioned it before. I don't know about you, but
grabbing my mouse to constantly resize a window <i>the same way
every time</i> simply ruins my joie de vivre. Oh, I'm sure in
Kwin it's pixel perfect ;) back to our overlapping problem : I
want to see my mixer, but I also want to see ALL my tracks by
scrolling vertically/zooming in the timeline. I also, when I open
a plugin GUI, or more than one for that matter, dont want it/them
to get in the way.</p>
<p>And finally, according to recent studies floating windows are bad
for the ozone layer. If you ask me for an interview, that's what
I'll say :)<br>
</p>
Enter <a href="https://i3wm.org/">i3</a>. This "tiling" WM is quite
popular, it's light, configurable, and very well documented. I
cannot emphasize "light" enough : Try it on this old laptop that
struggles more at each Debian iteration. The idea is that no window
overlap/float, except for, well, floating windows. Obvious ones,
file copy dialogs, that sort of things. And Qtractor's Mixer is, by
default, in this category, so I struggled a bit to get to what I
want, but I finally did it (and missed a heartbeat) look:<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/TeYHkjlHtTg">https://youtu.be/TeYHkjlHtTg</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://youtu.be/sTKr_G2AnKQ">https://youtu.be/sTKr_G2AnKQ</a><br>
<br>
It's a directive in i3 config file, that targets this specific
window based on its class and name, discovered using the xprop
command. That means that under this regime, it will <b>never</b>
float again.<br>
<br>
for_window [class="Qtractor" instance="Mixer - Qtractor"] floating
disable<br>
<br>
One can go further and specify precise sizes, positions and layouts,
and put them in the config file, and switch to them on-the-fly. Oh,
and of course everything can be resized/re-positioned with the
keyboard. i3, by default, uses the super (win logo) key in a very
elegant, mnemonically and unobtrusive way. Fantastic, told ya.<br>
<br>
Now let me tell you, the real fun begins. No window overlap, no more
"always on top" hacks, or putting down the guitar pick to fiddle
with the (*$-@+°#¤!) mouse ; Everything respond at the touch of a
key, this is per-fick :) cheers everybody. Programmers, musicians,
carpenters and motocyclists, lovers, friends, acquaintances, etc.
and <i>of course</i> (duh) every combination of it :)<br>
<br>
<br>
yPhil<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Yassin "xaccrocheur" Philip
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://yassinphilip.bitbucket.org">http://yassinphilip.bitbucket.org</a></pre>
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