A traditional window manager
- Move and resize windows
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Zones and grids
- Fixed or saved layouts
All of this is genuinely useful, and Orvial does it too through Gravity.
Compared
Where window management ends, and workspace orchestration begins.
Orvial is not trying to win an argument with window managers. It is trying to solve the problem that starts once they have done their job.
If all you need is snapping, excellent tools already exist — and your operating system keeps getting better at it. Orvial is for the next problem: making the whole workspace behave as one system.
Side by side
How is Orvial different from a window manager?
Two different jobs, and the second one only becomes visible once your desk stops staying the same.
Orvial
- A desired workspace state, not a saved position
- One Scene resolved across different Environments
- Semantic display roles rather than coordinates
- Deliberate Environment-specific behaviour
- Reconciliation against the desk that exists now
- Verification, and attribution when something fails
Orvial is in development. These describe the model it is being built to deliver.
The distinction
What does a Scene do that a saved layout cannot?
A saved layout remembers a desk. A Scene remembers the work.
Coordinates describe where a window was. When the desk changes — a display unplugged, an ultrawide instead of three screens, a laptop on a train — those coordinates describe somewhere that no longer exists.
Orvial resolves the same intent against whatever is actually in front of you, rather than asking you to maintain a separate saved layout for every place you work. The words for all of this are defined on the glossary, and the engine is on how it works.
Follow the build
One useful update at a time.
Occasional notes as Orvial moves from engine evidence toward its first macOS release.