[BZ#771804] [auto-move-windows] Automatically remove preceding empty workspaces
Submitted by Stephen Michel
Link to original bug (#771804)
Description
I propose that when the first workspace is empty, it should be automatically removed and all the existing workspaces shifted up -- the same behavior as the last workspace when the second to last workspace is emptied.
The reason for this is that if I select a window on the first workspace and move it to the workspace above, it will create a new workspace above and shift the other workspaces down. The problem is, if I then close that window or move it back down, the first workspace persists. If I have a lot of open windows, I now need to individually move all the windows back up a workspace to restore my original layout.
Two similar-scope alternatives that I like less are to disallow creating workspaces at the top in this way or to add a way to manually delete a workspace.
Slightly larger scope: The way I think about dynamic workspaces, the absolute position doesn't matter; the invariant is the position of workspaces relative to one another. Instead of the current "jump to workspace X" shortcut, it would be much more useful if one workspace were marked as the primary workspace and then set all the "jump to" commands were relative to its location.
That's relevant to this issue because then the behavior above would change to be, "If the top workspace is empty and above the primary workpace, remove it." This would fix my issue while preserving functionality like auto-move windows.