Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen

Limbic~Region has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

All,
Khisanth asked on #perl (freenode) if anyone knew of an algorithm for placing a variable number of Xterms on a screen with a few constraints:

Xterms should be as close to the same size as possible
As much of the screen space should be used as possible
The Xterms should be as reasonably shaped as possible (it is ok to have a very wide Xterm that isn't as high but a skinny long one is of no practical value)

Obviously the last one is somewhat of personal preference so bonus points to an algorithm that has sane defaults but allows it to be configurable. The assumption is that such an algorithm already exists because of windows managers but it seems like a fun diversion.

My initial idea is below though I only spent about 30 seconds thinking about it.

Start out using the entire screen width for each xterm and just dividing the height amongst the number of windows. If the height of each window is less than some critical number, divide the screen in half vertically and repeat. If the height of each window is still less then the threshold, divide the screen into thirds vertically and repeat (ad nausea).

Obviously if the division does not come out evenly the bottom row has the odd windows divided evenly across the entire width of the screen.

Can you come up with a good algorithm for this (keeping in mind the bonus)?

Cheers - L~R

Comment on Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen

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Re: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by ig (Vicar) on Jun 05, 2009 at 02:16 UTC
Here is another approach. Features include: Only two sizes of Xterm window (O1) Minimum difference between larger and smaller windows for a given minimum aspect ratio (01) Entire display is covered (O2) All windows exceed a minimum aspect ratio (width/height) (O3) Tunable for target aspect ratio (O3) Read more... (3 kB)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by JavaFan (Canon) on Jun 05, 2009 at 07:52 UTC
Given there's no constraint about overlap, the simple solution is to have all xterms the same size, and the size of the screen. And if you add a constraint about non-overlapping, there still isn't a constraint all xterms need to be visible: I'll take one xterm the size of the screen, place it on the screen, and put the rest of the xterms out of the viewpoint. It's a harder question if you add the constraints: No windows may overlap. All windows need to be completely visible. There may be existing windows which should remain completely visible. The latter basically means the exercise is more than just tiling a simple rectangle. But it may mean the problem becomes NP-complete.	[reply]
Re^2: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by Anonymous Monk on Jun 05, 2009 at 10:01 UTC
Or maybe use teminator and create a session.	[reply]
Re^3: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by Khisanth (Novice) on Jun 05, 2009 at 17:59 UTC
This is actually for a xchat script to deal with channel windows so that won't work :)	[reply]
Re^4: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Jun 06, 2009 at 02:04 UTC
Re: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by spx2 (Deacon) on Jun 05, 2009 at 10:13 UTC
wmii3 is very good at this problem , maybe studying its algorithm will shed some light on this	[reply]
Re: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by JavaFan (Canon) on Jun 05, 2009 at 12:33 UTC
The assumption is that such an algorithm already exists because of windows managers but it seems like a fun diversion. Is it? I gladly admit I don't know most window managers, but the few I haved used only place one window at a time - they don't seem to be confronted with the problem of placing many windows at once. Furthermore, it's usually not up to the window manager to determine how large a window should be; it's the application that asks "please mister window manager, I've a window of this size, would you please put this on the screen?"	[reply]
Re^2: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on Jun 05, 2009 at 13:33 UTC
JavaFan, I likely know even less about window managers than you. It was a comment made by Khisanth and I took it at face value. According to spx2, at least 1 windows manager is good at this. Again, I took the statement at face value. Cheers - L~R	[reply]
Re^2: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by jorgegv (Novice) on Jun 05, 2009 at 15:20 UTC
Well I seem to recall, in the good'ol' days of Windows 3.1, the Program Manager had an option in the Windows menu which read "Tile Windows" and that did exactly that: tile all open windows so tat all were visible and covered all the screen.	[reply]
Re: Fitting N Xterms On An X by Y screen by bsb (Priest) on Jun 05, 2009 at 23:33 UTC
Xmonad is a tiling window manager, which maybe a useful source of ideas: tour screenshots core layout contrib tiling algorithms I like the sound this: The XMonad.Layout.LayoutCombinators module provides combinators for easily combining multiple layouts into one composite layout I've not even tried xmonad (I'm still using e16)	[reply]