[FEATURE]: Keep tiled windows below, start all windows in floating mode.

[Eoin-ONeill-Yokai]

Summary

I would like to be able to invert the "keep floating windows on top" behavior with the additional ability of starting all new windows in "floating" mode. This way, users who use a KDE system would have 100% predictable behavior compared to the vanilla KDE windowing experience, but would also have the additional ability of pushing certain windows into a tiled context onto the "desktop layer".

I was going to make a fork of this with such behavior for my own use case, but wanted to know what your opinion on this idea is. Basically, I like the idea of a tiling KDE environment, but I feel that most of the time I want to opt certain windows into this behavior. It would also solve some issues I have with programming where my debug builds start in tiled mode in a tiny window size where I might want to test the application using an arbitrary size (for gui testing, for example.)

A clear and concise description of what you want to happen

Settings Menu:

• Clickable option for "Start new windows in floating mode."
• When the above option is checked while "Keep floating windows on top" is enabled, it would actually flip the logic and set all tiled windows to Keep Below Others mode. This would mean that tiled windows are now the exception, whereas the default configuration treats floating windows as the exception.

Usage:

• All windows start floating, even child windows of existing applications that are tiled.
• You can tile a window by pushing a hotkey, which would put the windows into whatever tiling context is selected for the desktop or activity.

A clear and concise description of any alternative solutions or features you've considered.

No response

Additional info

Thanks for making a great KWin plugin!

[Kevadroz]

In my opinion "Keep tiled windows below" should be it's own option, independant of whether windows open floating or tiled by default.

[Eoin-ONeill-Yokai]

I agree, that would be better.

[benemorius]

I really like this idea of having an out-of-the-box behavior that gives the user the same experience they're familiar with until they activate a hotkey.

I added a "float new windows" option in this branch: benemorius@96d69c256ab9c3c7124ae3ab93101b26f5d24cb1

@Eoin-ONeill-Yokai can you test that branch and see if it works like you expect?

[Eoin-ONeill-Yokai]

Yeah I can give it a try sometime this upcoming week.

[Eoin-ONeill-Yokai]

@benemorius Sorry for the late reply. It's been a busy year for me.

That change seems to be pretty close to what I want. I'm not sure about how to phrase this feature (even in my own feature) but it seems roughly like what I'd want.