There is this tiling editor that has buttons like this:
But isn’t the vertical and horizontal split reversed in the editor? The button says SPLIT, that’s an action. So if you split something horizontal, it should cut it to panels that are stacked on top of each other. Imagine it being like a cube that you cut with a knife horizontally. You would cut from left to right, leaving two parts that are stacked. And if you split vertically, you would cut from top to bottom.
This could be just me thing, or cultural thing or whatever but at least someone explain the logic behind this. It is truly baffling.
Edit: confused even myself in original explanation.
I believe most people would agree that items stacked on top of each others are “stacked vertically” while items stacked next to each other are stacked “horizontally”.
Shortening “split the screen so that the two resulting items will be stacked vertically” to “split vertically” seems reasonable to me.
Yes, this has annoyed me since the beginning of time and it’s coming from pure tiling window managers. It’s meant for “split to have” resulting windows (in the H/V direction). Basically if KDE wants to keep that “convention” it should word it better.
The most important thing for me would be that the designation is always the same everywhere in Plasma and in KDE Applications like e.g. Kate and Konsole etc.
I prefer the designation and way to split in Kate, though - works better for my brain.
“Split vertical” instead of “split vertically”.
In German the words for the adjective and the adverb are the same what makes it even more confusing…
So “split vertical” = “split horizontally”
and
“split horizontal” = “split vertically”.
I have to admit that I like M$ description: “tile windows side by side” or “tile windows top to bottom” or something like that. It was used in the taskber for all open windows but the idea is the same.
That’s a confusion I always have with applications that allow any form of splitting, as both ways may be seen as correct.
My solution is to trust the icons instead.
For a keyboard shortcut mnemonic, I use | and - as visual cues to the new border formed, as opposed to shortcuts with h and v for horizontal and vertical.
When I see “Split Horizontally” I think of drawing a line from left to right.
When I see “Arrange Horizontally” I think of sharing the screen so that the tiles appear in order from left to right.
I do think the term “Split” in English is an ambiguous word for this scenario because the dialog can be implying “Split (the space) Horizontally” or “Split Horizontally (with a line).”
A better word may be “Arrange” or “Tile” in this scenario. “Arrange Horizontally” seems very succinct as it is only one extra letter. However, this may be confusing if there is only one tab open and the other is yet to be created. Maybe something like “Allocate” would be a better fit.
I will also note that on certain dialogs such as the menu buttons in Konsole the text can be changed by the user via a right click action.
of Konsole
of Kate
of the Tiling Editor