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Comment by MontyCarloHall | Hacker News Reader

>If the idea of a filesystem limiting the depths of nesting sounds insane, imagine a filesystem where every level of nesting is conceptually different, where there's one program that you use to manage some levels of nesting and another program for other levels of nesting, where you can't move things from one level to another.

>That is the state of window management today

Why is this insane? Unlike directories in a file system, different levels of windows are conceptually different; it would make no sense to be able to embed a workspace (top level) into an alert box (lowest level), or a browser tab (middle level) in a terminal (unrelated middle level).

That the author has no justification for why they think this is “insane” nor any suggestions for what should be done differently speaks volumes.

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There are many reasons I might want to combine browser tabs and terminals.

For example, I might have a web server running in a terminal and the website open in a browser tab. Wouldn't it make sense to have the terminal in a tab, next to the browser tab?

Or I might see some error message in the terminal and google it in a browser tab.

>Wouldn't it make sense to have the terminal in a tab, next to the browser tab?

Yes, the operative word is next to. This is already possible with any of today’s window managers (just drag the windows next to each other). In fact, certain tiling window managers (e.g. i3, notion) make it possible to permanently place the terminal as a tab next to the browser window, and move the two around as a unit.

You still haven’t made a case for arbitrarily nesting windows, which was the feature desired in your original post.

You're making the case for arbitrarily nesting windows for me. When you talk about placing the terminal as a tab next to the browser window and being able to move the two around as a unit, you're talking about creating a new window that contains both the terminal and the browser window.

What I would like to have is the desktop split into separate areas (windows?) and that not be restricted (not only half or one quarter, but arbitrary many splits). Then, any split could have a number of tabs, including just one. And the tabs could be anything. The right half of my screen could be a container with tabs, and one tab be a terminal, one be a browser, and one be a text editor.

Currently, the text editor can have tabs, but they are all text files, the terminal can have abs, but they must all be terminals, the browser must all have tabs with pages...

The whole desktop being managed like an IDE seems like it would accomplish it.

On a separate note, there seems to be something wrong with the analogy you're using. You say it does not make sense to have a terminal in an alert box. Going with the filelsystem analogy the author suggested, that would be like having a directory inside a text file. Yeah, it doesn't make any kind of sense. There are intermediate nodes (folders, windows, tabs) and leaves (files, editors, web pages, videos, terminals). The point seems to be to have infinitely nested intermediate nodes, and leaves at any level. So the alert box could be inside 5 window splits and 3 tabs, but of course inside it would never be anything else.

Tiling window managers like i3 do everything you described.

I mostly use windows, and that's my problem, of course.

But with i3/xmonad, if I run vscode or intellij, can I have the file explorer view be in a different place in the hierarchy than right next to the source editors?

IntelliJ lets you split out its internal file explorer view into a separate window, so you can place it anywhere in the hierarchy, even in a separate virtual desktop.

vscode doesn't let you split out the internal file explorer view, but the reverse is possible- you can quickly open any file in its own window, which can then be placed arbitrarily.

Many tiling window managers also allow you to group arbitrary windows into tabs.

much of what you're suggesting can be done with a tiling WM. In Xmonad, I do something similar with a concept they label "workspaces", in that a given workspace has an accreting collection of features which can be summoned and set aside as a unit. The intermediate unit is a tile, and tiles can be hierarchically composed.

>Wouldn't it make sense to have the terminal in a tab, next to the browser tab?

ChromeOS does this with crosh.

Author doesn't say that there should be know limits for certain hierarchies if they make no sense like a workspace in an alert box.

But what about a workspace in a workspace in a workspace etc.

One is a limit based on the logic of a hierarch, the other ist jus a limit.

The former is a strict rule, no workspace in an alert box, the latter depends on the level inside the hierarchy, one is obvious, one might be hard to know and keep track of.

> or a browser tab (middle level) in a terminal (unrelated middle level).

That sounds a lot like jupyter

my analogy would be that you have a house, in that house you have rooms and in those rooms you have humans

why you cannot have houses inside humans?

while analogy to a filesystem would be: you have a box, and in that box you can have another box, and another etc.

Exactly, nobody (sane) would complain that you can't put a folder in a file but why is there only a certain level of folder depth allowed?

AFAIK there is no limit of depth in modern filesystems (at least in design), there is usually limit in path length (in bytes) but that's just that you have to limit somehow implementation to prevent pathological instances.

Eg imagine bug in some script that create some directory structure in a loop and bug that causes it to create infinite depth.

It makes sense to say "enough" at some point, otherwise you could destabilise whole system.

macOS’s new Stage Manager feature does this.

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