Samuel Onoja
eb84104940
Publish the guides from this repository to the GitHub Wiki. Organize them into Usage, Configuration and Development, with 15 separate configuration topics and redirects for the former website guide URLs. Add a tabbed-windows guide covering grouping, switching tabs and taking windows out. Document the scrolling indicator's defaults and limits, and link the guide from the README, shortcuts and IPC pages. Update from main, including the latest tabbed-layout changes. Separate Activities setup, configuration and publishing documentation. Review the guide prose with the unslop skill, keeping existing examples and heading links. The wiki workflow uses GitHub's built-in token to publish documentation changes on main. Validation: - 20 documentation tests pass, including README links and Activities/tab-indicator field coverage. - The publisher builds 46 wiki pages; the site build and Python syntax checks pass. - All 115 code examples from main are preserved. - The Python suite passes: 90 tests passed and 31 opt-in integration tests skipped, with the system GI module available.
3.8 KiB
Why Ferese
Alongside a window manager, you need Wi-Fi, audio and display controls, notifications and a lock screen. You can choose these components separately, but keeping their settings and behaviour consistent takes extra work.
Ferese includes a Wayland compositor, desktop shell, Settings, Control Center and a lock screen with shared configuration and theming. It keeps window management configurable while defining how a desktop change applies across those components.
Settings that apply beyond one component
An accent-colour change should reach the places where Ferese uses it, just as a motion-speed change should affect both window and shell transitions. The compositor and shell run in separate processes, but their shared theme and motion settings give them the same values to work from.
Settings and ~/.config/ferese/config.kdl edit the same configuration, so you can change a display in Settings, then open the file to adjust a binding or window rule. Settings preserves comments and untouched configuration content when saving, and file changes reload automatically. If an edit is invalid, the last working configuration stays active.
Ferese can coordinate the surfaces it draws and the transitions it manages; it does not control every animation an application draws inside its own window.
Different work needs different arrangements
A scrolling layout is useful when several windows need more space than can comfortably fit on one screen. Instead of shrinking everything to remain visible, the desktop can show part of a wider arrangement and move the viewport as focus changes. Tree tiling serves a different situation: the available screen is divided between windows so they can remain visible together.
Ferese supports both, with the layout selected per workspace. Floating windows are also available and remember their size and placement. A workspace can therefore use scrolling columns for a sequence of wide windows, while another uses tree tiling for a smaller set that needs to be viewed together.
Even within scrolling, moving focus does not always need to move the desktop. Ferese’s minimal focus strategy leaves a fully visible column where it is and scrolls only far enough to reveal a hidden edge. Other strategies centre the focused column or arrange columns into viewport-sized pages.
Movement that responds to what you do next
An animation often starts before you have finished deciding what to do. You might focus another window while the viewport is moving, reverse a fullscreen transition, or reopen a panel before it has finished closing. The desktop needs to handle that next input using the state already on screen.
Continuum, Ferese’s shared motion system, keeps a moving value’s current position, velocity and destination. Changing the destination can preserve the existing movement instead of restarting from rest. A dragged window follows the pointer directly so it does not trail your hand; when you release a gesture, its velocity passes to a spring.
A window’s content, clipping and border need to follow the same presented bounds. When the application closes, its live surface may disappear before the visual exit finishes, so Ferese retains an image for that transition. Shell content and its compositor-drawn material also need to leave together, or the text can disappear while its background or blur remains.
Testing the whole interaction
Resize coordination, output timing and interrupted transitions need testing and measurements on the hardware where the desktop runs.