How does the different layouts in awesome work?

Question

I have been using awesome in on ubuntu 14.04 for a while. The default layouts defined in rc.lua is:

layouts =
{
    awful.layout.suit.floating,
    awful.layout.suit.tile,
    awful.layout.suit.tile.left,
    awful.layout.suit.tile.bottom,
    awful.layout.suit.tile.top,
    awful.layout.suit.fair,
    awful.layout.suit.fair.horizontal,
    awful.layout.suit.spiral,
    awful.layout.suit.spiral.dwindle,
    awful.layout.suit.max,
    awful.layout.suit.max.fullscreen,
    awful.layout.suit.magnifier
}

I have a hard time to wrap my head around this! Some of them I managed to understand (I think) just by testing them out, but not all of them.

I have tried to find some documentation that describes it but with no success. Is there some documentation where I can read about them and the conceptual thoughts behind it all? When and how they are suitable for different tasks.

I understand that its individual but if there was some sort of information at all about these things the awesome community would benefit greatly form that I think!

Answer 1

I understand a visual documentation would be awesome, but afaik there is none. There is a (very superficial) text description here, though, which I'm transcribing (which some minor fixes) below:

• awful.layout.suit.corner.nw

Corner layout. Display master client in a corner of the screen, and slaves in one column and one row around the master.

• awful.layout.suit.corner.ne

Corner layout. Display master client in a corner of the screen, and slaves in one column and one row around the master.

• awful.layout.suit.corner.sw

Corner layout. Display master client in a corner of the screen, and slaves in one column and one row around the master.

• awful.layout.suit.corner.se

Corner layout. Display master client in a corner of the screen, and slaves in one column and one row around the master.

• awful.layout.suit.floating

The floating layout.

• awful.layout.suit.magnifier

The magnifier layout.

• awful.layout.suit.max

Maximized layout.

• awful.layout.suit.max.fullscreen

Fullscreen layout.

• awful.layout.suit.spiral.dwindle

Dwindle layout.

• awful.layout.suit.spiral

Spiral layout.

• awful.layout.suit.tile.right

The main tile algo, on the right.

• awful.layout.suit.tile.left

The main tile algo, on the left.

• awful.layout.suit.tile.bottom

The main tile algo, on the bottom.

• awful.layout.suit.tile.top

The main tile algo, on the top.