Dragging a window to 2nd row or more fails in Overview

[Francewhoa]

Summary

Dragging a window to a workspace only works for the first row of the grid. Dragging a window to a workspace on the second or more row of the same grid, are automatically moved to the first row. This short two minutes video shows this challenge at:

• https://vk.com/video-225763421_456239017
  or
• https://rumble.com/v4sox7b-gnome-shell-wsmatrix-dragging-a-window-to-2nd-row-or-more-fails-in-overview.html
  or
• https://tube.fedi.quebec/w/i1pF3TgYQzSLnnJQs1GRsr

The needed end result is that users are able to drag a window to any workspaces on any rows within the grid

Any volunteer for a patch? Both me and the Ubertus.Org team would be happy, as volunteer, to contribute testing and documentation, if needed.

Steps to reproduce

1. Watch this short 2 minutes video for the Workspace-Matrix configuration and a summary of all the steps at:

   • https://vk.com/video-225763421_456239017
     or
   • https://rumble.com/v4sox7b-gnome-shell-wsmatrix-dragging-a-window-to-2nd-row-or-more-fails-in-overview.html
     or
   • https://tube.fedi.quebec/w/i1pF3TgYQzSLnnJQs1GRsr

2. Use the most recent stable Debian 12 Bookworm, GNOME 43.9, Wayland, and Workspace-Matrix 38

3. Using Workspace-Matrix, create a 5 x 4 grid. So total 20 Workspaces.

4. Using the Overview/Activities window, try to drag and drop a window to any Workspace between the Index 6 and 20. This fails. This is the challenge. The needed end result is that users are able to drag and drop windows to any Workspaces. Not just from 1 to 5 in this example.

5. Same result with GNOME Wayland or X11 (Xorg)

Speculated cause

My guess is that the cause of this challenge is related to this array of list. In other words, the drag and drop works only in the first array. Details about this are in those 2 comments:

• By @ebeem at Fix padding of workspace thumbnails in overview #181 (comment)

• By @SKelem at Show workspace matrix in activities overview #13 (comment)

Suggested resolution

How about those 2 steps:

1. Migrate _lists to one list? So that the drag and drop works. Another benefit of only one array is a better compatibility with other GNOME extensions.

2. Instead of arrays, use CSS to create the grid. This would keep the data and the display fully independent. Not interfering with each other.

Related tickets

Those tickets below seems to be about different challenges. Some tickets claim that the drag and drop is resolved. But this present ticket is to confirm that it is not resolved. This challenge can be reproduced with the steps above.

#177

#200

#231

#234

#259

#267

#273

[mzur]

Hi thanks a lot for the detailed report. Can you please try the changes of #270 and see if this fixes the issue for you?

[Francewhoa]

Thanks for your reply @mzur :) Will do. I'll add my result here.

[Francewhoa]

Done. Test result at #270 (review)

[Francewhoa]

Today, I added copies of my video from February 22nd, 2024 at:

• https://vk.com/video-225763421_456239017
  or
• https://rumble.com/v4sox7b-gnome-shell-wsmatrix-dragging-a-window-to-2nd-row-or-more-fails-in-overview.html