What Are Scratchpads and WHY Are They Good?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ต.ค. 2024
- Today I talk about what scratchpads are and why you should use them.
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==== Referenced ====
Jake@Linux's video - • I3 scratchpad support ...
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#windowmanagers #scratchpads #thelinuxcast
Great vid Matt! Also I have a window manager agnostic scratchpad script and video.
that terminal Guake or Kquake is called that because its an homage to the old game Quake III Arena from the 1999. In the game to use the command terminal for godmode for example would drop down from the Top.
I knew it was a game. Partiall credit?
gotta go further back, the first quake game had one
He was talking about Yakuake not Guake...
it was also in quake 1 and 2, and established ctrl-` as the defacto keybind for drop-down, or scratchpad, consoles.
@@TheLinuxCast xfce4-terminal also has this, it's called drop down, but you can have it appear anywhere you want.
Do you've a series by the name of Linux 101? In the sense that when a beginner enters the Linux space they are bombarded with so many terms that it's literally overwhelming.
So, having a series which goes by any name but explains the terms in a short & succinct manner would be helpful to the new user.
Like this video, imho, this can become a part of that series by the title "What is a Scratchpad or Scratchpad explained" and it'll be really helpful to the new user.
Also, you explained it very nicely, no BS, just straight to business.
Great work!
I hear the very same from my viewers... how do I aay this, well just straight to it...I've been a linux user for several years 20+, and there are things I've needed clarification on or a refresher on, and so I went looking for a tutorial, and found confusion instead. Matt, was one of only 2 who make good videos out there, that's why I watch him, and started my own... I feel the very same as you about his channel...but you definitely should here then rant !!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@thelinuxtube What distro do you use now and what then? Do you have a job in a technical field or do you use it for personal stuff only?
@@anon_y_mousse I use Arch, installed the vanilla way, but I've used all tge distros except for gentoo ( don't know why yet, but it is on my list to try!) Yes I work for myself doing pc repair.. have been since 1989..I really enjoy the computing world.
Scratchpads are a lot more useful for people that use a lot of their workspaces, since you can keep something you'll just need from time to time on a separate space away from everything else. If you only use one or two at a time, they're kinda pointless, since you can just throw everything up on one of the empty spaces you never use. I'll keep either a terminal or messenger open in a scratchpad so I don't have to try to remember which workspace I've got it on.
I never call that a scratchpad. I always call that a floating window. To me a scratchpad is that, you scratch your notes and goes away and bring back at anytime. Doing that with any other application beside with your text editor. I been calling that a floating window. That's how I always describe the difference between the two.
all of your windows float if you aren't tiling.
it seems scratchpads are mostly useful if you use a tiler. Floating people have everything hidden in the dock/panel. But if you use a tiler, you move through workspaces like a ninja... I don't understand scratchpads existence...
I use my scratchpad to open a small window with Leafpad for quick notes / todo. Super handy. I usually have a terminal open on every workspace so less need of that in a scratchpad, although I'm still going to setup a term pad as well. (qtile scratchpads are pretty easy to setup).
I usually just use vim at the terminal for quick notes. My main note file is perhaps too long these days, after just about 5 years it's 17k lines long, but I find it a lot easier to sort things in one file than to have 20 or 30 files. At the start of a section I'll do #point of interest# so I can just /foo it.
Ever since I changed to Linux I have been oscillating between:
1) What does X means?
2) *searches for X*
3) WAIT, WHAT?! YOU CAN DO THAT?!
Truly a wonderful rabbit hole. Thanks for the info on scratch pads
Then you have vim, where it's like that but it just never ends.
Like do you know you can ctrl+6 to switch to last buffer? I literally descovered that out of nowhere and now i use it costantly
@@no_name4796 just started on VIM recently, thanks for the tip. It's just rabbit holes into rabbit holes.
Between you and Jake I can't live without scratchpads.
I am a laptop user and my display is 17.3". So, a WM might sound counterproductive. However, I am using Qtile because of scratch pads and the built in "max" layout that maximizes the first window. As Matt mentioned, you don't need workspaces for somethings. I do because I like to keep my development apps running on one workspace, etc...
And here I always assumed that scratch pads were "notepad" applications... Thanks!
I put everything in scratchpad except the Windows I am using currently, it ensures I have a distraction free environment and I can focus on the task meanwhile apps like Slack, Thunderbird running in scatchpad so I get calendar and messaging notification
Thank you Matt another great video. I always wondered what scratchpads we're myself. I've been using window managers with tons of workspaces maybe I'll give scratchpads a try sometime. I'm just glad there's something lower in your favorites list below Emacs and that is clearly (sorry DT) XMonad. I was a long time vim user until I came across the autofill function. I use emacs mostly for writing and that 1 function allowed me to transform and generate documents quickly. I know your position on emacs just saying. Peace and best wishes for continued success.
I'm sure there's a vim plugin for autofill if you really want it. I generally just do %s/foo/bar/gc if I'm not sure if it's going to match where I don't want it to, and leave off the c if I am, but I'm guessing you find that harder to use? Of course, if a plugin doesn't exist, it wouldn't be too hard to write a function and bind it to a key combo.
That's a great idea I haven't heard before, I personally wouldn't used, all the apps I use frequently have a designated desktop/workspace and the less frequent ones are so rare that makes no sense to configure the scratchpad for them, nonetheless I might find a use or two for this.
Huge fan of Yakuake for KDE. Also wrote a little TODO scratchpad for Godot. Works really well for game dev projects when I'm using Godot instead of just have hundreds of #TODO comments in various scripts that they would apply to.
Can you set scratch pads to autostart with certain assigned programs running...
Like htop or something like that? Like a TUI of some kind? Yes. You'd just use the -e flag and the name of the program (at least on most terminals)
@@TheLinuxCast sweet..
Yauke came from the game Doom sequel called Quake. I don't see the connection either.
this was very usefull tip, thanks
I still don't get it... You can just put it on its own workspace. It is not in your sight when not used, takes same number of actions to reach... If your wm doesn't have more workspaces, add more. I feel only difference is the styling since you will get floating window over the previous instead of getting to fullscreen window
That's actually what I do. I put my scratchpad in workspace 9. Two additional lines of code in dwm to bring the application with a keybinding to the current workspace (in my case, it is always alacritty). It is also possible to do it as a floating window, but I rarely use it that way. Now, to be fair, in many window managers, it is not easy to add arbitrary number of workspaces.
exactly, i feel the same.
@@rsmith31416 In this way you will always have one additional workspace that you have to cycle through.
@@007arek I don't cycle through workspaces.
would it be fair to say that scratchpads are like minimising a window?
yeah, that's essentially what it does, except there is no icon on the taskbar you can use to bring it back, so you need a key binding.
No, since they are moved to another desktop instance.
i always open a full screen terminal at workspace 1 and leave it there. and i use the other workspaces for other applications and stuff. if i need to do something on the terminal, i can switch back to workspace 1 which is also done by a keybinding. so what's the advantage of using a scrathpad terminal instead of doing that?
As someone else said it's a bit like a floating window. So when you bring it up it's on top of the windows on the current workspace. When I think of it on a desktop manager it's a bit like the Desklet/widget layer.
@@conceptrat I meant whole reason for workspaces is that you can open whatever and then you can leave them there and switch to another workspace then you can comeback if you want to. You can dedicate your whole workspace just for that terminal window why would i need it to be completely hidden. It's hidden when i'm not there anyways. If i can achieve same functionality built-in, why would i need a scratchpad? As far as i can see, it's just visual preference to have a hidden floating window (also you can have floating windows normally, they are not hidden that's all). So what i'm asking, is there a functionality advantage which i cannot achieve just by using a normal workspace, or is it just visual preference?
hey saar i also use alacritty+nerd font but still i am not getting those file type icons in my terminal.can u pls help me to sort this?
A scratchpad application sounds like the MS-DOS TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) applets of the 1980s. These were the bees' knees because by being memory resident and hidden, they could be summoned to appear instanly with their dedicated key binding. I've been longing for the return of TSRs for decades. Being already fully loaded in memory is key because their access (making them appear and then dissappear) should be absolutely instant - no hesitations at all. And needs to be possible to summon them to appear and overlay everything else in any desktop context.
I should probably use a scratchpad. I kind of do with using the run "dialog" to do simple math and run various commands, but a lot of the time I'll open a terminal and sometimes vim and do things that way. If I want it gone, either exit or send it to the last desktop where I occasionally have a music player. Though I've taken to watching various Linux talks. I saw this one the other day by Rob Landley from 5 years ago where he talked about setting up a minimal Linux system and did it while talking about it. It's only 2 hours if you're curious: th-cam.com/video/Sk9TatW9ino/w-d-xo.html
I can see the use when you have a mid range laptop
sway > i3
Putting a mpd client on a scratch pad is kinda pointless.... Since mpd is designed to play music as a deamon
You don't choose what to play?or choose a new playlist?mpd can't do that on its own.
alacritty, ~.... anywhere, anytime
Great video. Tho, I just can't seem to stop closing them :D
bindsym $mod+q [con_id="__focused__" class="^(?!btop|Terminator).*$"] kill
this little addition to a config file prevents it