json-internal-documentation.md

Documentation for JSON exported layouts

Tiling Shell supports importing and exporting its layouts as a JSON file. With this you can create your own custom layouts, or fine-tune already existing layouts.

The exported layouts (from the preferences) are a collection of Layout objects. A Layout object is an object with two (2) properties:

• identifier as a string
• a list of Tile objects

Example JSON of a Layout object would look like

{
	"id": "The identifier",
	"tiles": [
		...
	]
}

A Tile object has five (5) properties:

• The X (x) axis as a float
• The Y (y) axis as a float
• The width (width) as a float
• The height (height) as a float
• A list of identifiers groups

The x, y, width and height are percentages relative to the screen size. Both x and y start from the top left of a Tile.

So a Tile with x = 0.5 and y = 0.5, on a screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels is placed at x = 0.5 * 1920 = 960px and y = 0.5 * 1080 = 540px. For example, if the width and height of the Tile are set to 0.25, this gives a Tile of width = 0.25 * 1920 = 480px and height = 0.25 * 1080 = 270px.

The group attribute is mainly used in the layout editor where it determines which Tile(s) are "linked": if you resize a single Tile it's linked neighbour(s) are also updated.

For more in depth information you can look at an in depth explanation of group(s).

Example JSON of a Tile object would look like this

{
	"x": 0,
	"y": 0,
	"width": 1,
	"height": 1,
	"groups": [
		1
	]
}

Example JSON file

Finally, an example JSON file describing one Layout with two tiles.

{
	"id": "Equal split",
	"tiles": [
		{ 
			"x": 0,
			"y": 0,
			"width": 0.5,
			"height": 1,
			"groups": [
				1
			]
		},
		{
			"x": 0.5,
			"y": 0,
			"width": 0.5,
			"height": 1,
			"groups": [
				1
			]
		}
	]
}