November 2007 - xmonad

Remote Controlling XMonad: Cases and Materials
by Andrea Rossato 24 Feb '08

24 Feb '08

Hi, this is a follow up of the thread started by Zed Lopez[1] on controlling XMonad remotely. Stefan O'Rear proposed a solution[2] and I implemented it[3]. We briefly discussed this solution on the #xmonad channel[4] and I thought some more documentation was needed on the methodology to use to achieve the goal. allbery_b reported that such an approach has been used by Mozilla, so I wanted to find more examples to study. Zed said that it was missing this feature from Ratpoison.[5] BTW, the successor of Ratpoison, Stumpwm is developed in Common Lisp...;-) So I went to have a look at how ratpoison deals with the subject and this is what I discovered[7,8]. This is what happens in Ratpoison: a. the Client (that sends the command): 1. creates w simple window 1 pixel width 2. sets an atom (RP_COMMAND) with a command to that window 3. sets an atom (RP_COMMAND_REQUEST) in the root window with XChangeProperty: this atom carries the first window id 4. waits for a propertyNotify to be sent to this window b. Ratpoison: 1. gets the property of the root window (which will return the id of the window containing the command string) 2. searches the window with the command string and executes the command 3. writes an atom (RP_COMMAND_RESULT) to the window with the command result. This will send the propertyNotify the will unblock the client. A similar approach is also used by Enlightment (see src/comms.c) and its remote shell Eesh (see Eesh.xs). WMII, instead, uses libipx and a Plan9 approach (I must confess I don't know much about P9), while DWM has no remote control capability. Now, attached you'll find two archives. The first one is a simple way of running commands from an external program, without a two way communication. It is basically a refactoring of the patch I've already sent[3]. It is simple and effective. I had no problem running it here. The second archive (xrcRatpoisonWay.tar.gz) instead is the ratpoison implementation: I literally copied the algorithm. And there's is a problem. This code produces an X server crash every now and then. I cannot reproduce it and, no matter how many times I read it, I cannot find a bug in my code. I believe there's something wrong with Xlib.Extras.rawGetWindowProperty (a null pointer?). Indeed if you change in ServerMode.hs: let c' = Just [118,105,101,119,49] --c' <- io $ getWindowProperty8 dpy c win no more crashes. You may also see that the command execution sometimes fails. Is that something that used to happen in Ratpoison too? Anyway it is something I think it is worth to investigate a bit more. And I think I will. BTW, these patches require a vary small modification to XMonad itself. XMonad has just to wait for a propertyNotify event sent to the root window. If that happens a hook is called (I named that hook serverHook). I do not want you to equivocate: I'm not pushing for this patch to be included, but I thought to report here some of the information I was able to gather on the subject. Moreover, as far as I can understand, there's is not so much interest in this feature. But here this stuff proved to be quite addictive...;-) Thanks for your kind attention. Andrea [1] see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2007-July/001502.html [2] see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2007-July/001509.html [3] see http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/xmonad/2007-July/001533.html [4] see http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/irc/xmonad/2007-07-26.txt [5] http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ [6] http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/ [7] see also http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/ratpoison/src/communications.c?root=r… [8] see also receive_command() and execute_remote_command() and related comments here: http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/ratpoison/src/events.c?root=ratpoison… [9] http://search.cpan.org/~rbs/Eesh-0.3/

7 11

darcs patch: reword comment (previous version didn't make sense to me)
by Lukas Mai 06 Jan '08

06 Jan '08

Thu Nov 22 17:59:25 CET 2007 Lukas Mai <l.mai(a)web.de> * reword comment (previous version didn't make sense to me)

2 1

Component-Contrib: patch LayoutScreens.hs
by Jacula Modyun 07 Dec '07

07 Dec '07

Hello haskellers, Configuring my first xmonad start, I ran into a little misspelling mistake in the LayoutScreens.hs usage notes. The patch is, I think, self explanatory. Thank you -- Start Patch -- --- XMonadContrib/LayoutScreens.hs.orig 2007-11-30 09:40:48.000000000 +0000 +++ XMonadContrib/LayoutScreens.hs 2007-11-30 09:41:42.000000000 +0000 @@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ -- > import XMonadContrib.LayoutScreens -- -- > , ((modMask .|. shiftMask, xK_space), --- > layoutScreens 1 (fixedLayout $ Rectangle 0 0 1024 768)) +-- > layoutScreens 1 (fixedLayout $ [Rectangle 0 0 1024 768])) -- > , ((controlMask .|. modMask .|. shiftMask, xK_space), rescreen) -- %import XMonadContrib.LayoutScreens

2 1

xmonad 0.4 now in debian
by Joachim Breitner 06 Dec '07

06 Dec '07

Hi, this weekend, my xmonad 0.4 packages (including X11-extras and XMonadContrib) have been accepted to Debian unstable, and should be apt-get’able for anyone using that distribution. From there, they will probably migrate to Ubuntu as well somehow. Interesting links: Package pages: http://packages.debian.org/sid/xmonad http://packages.debian.org/sid/xmonad-rebuild http://packages.debian.org/sid/xmonadcontrib Bug page (not much yet :-)): http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=xmonad;dist=unstable I hope that this will give xmonad a wider audience. Greetings, Joachim -- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner mail: mail(a)joachim-breitner.de | ICQ# 74513189 | GPG-Key: 4743206C JID: joachimbreitner(a)amessage.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/ Debian Developer: nomeata(a)debian.org

3 4

Prompt: Keys not working
by Dominik Bruhn 02 Dec '07

02 Dec '07

Hy, as mentioned before I use xmonad and xmonad-contrib from darcs. The Prompt-Plugin (the problem occurs both in ssh-prompt and append to file) got a bug imho: By looking into the code I found out that you can exit the prompt with a CTRL+c and move in the prompt like on Bash using CTRL+a and CTRL+e. All these command dont work at all, alle command which use a CTRL Modifier generate strange characters in the Commandprompt but dont do anything. For example the CTRL+c generates a strange chineese looking charakter, the CTRL+a produces a black dot. Perhaps its a problem with my setup: The whole system is UTF-8, but in all other applications (bash, urxvt for example) these shortcuts work so I think its a problem with xmonad. Can anybody help me with this? -- Dominik Bruhn mailto: dominik(a)dbruhn.de

4 10

darcs patch: update XSelection.hs; apparently the utf8-string libra...
by gwern0＠gmail.com 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Fri Nov 30 11:14:29 EST 2007 gwern0(a)gmail.com * update XSelection.hs; apparently the utf8-string library has updated Note that this does not fix the apparent problems with actually using getSelection, even though it works fine from a GHCi prompt...

2 1

darcs patch: make Query a MonadIO
by Lukas Mai 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Wed Nov 28 20:51:26 CET 2007 Lukas Mai <l.mai(a)web.de> * make Query a MonadIO

2 1

Issue 96 in xmonad: certain dialogs get dropped in gnucash
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Issue 96: certain dialogs get dropped in gnucash http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=96 New issue report by and...(a)farwestbilliards.com: What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. open gnucash in xmonad 0.4 or later (bug confirmed in darcs as of 11/30/07 by byorgey on #xmonad). 2. select Edit->Find 3. Find dialog spawns and then dies. Not up long enough to finish drawing What is the expected output? What do you see instead? To spawn the dialog and allow it to persist. Instead it just vanishes immediately. What version of the product are you using? On what operating system? 0.4 on debian sid, up-to-date Please provide any additional information below. Interesting corner-case symptom: 1. open gnucash 2. select Business -> Vendor -> New Bill... -> Select button. It fails on the first click, but succeeds on the second. This makes me think it could *possibly* be a gnucash issue, because why would the dialog appear differently the second time? but that's a vague guess on my part. The other "find" dialogs exhibit this behavior as well: Business -> Vendor|Customer -> Find Bill|Job I'm not prepared to call this just a WM error, but the devs at gnucash are of the idea that it is. Note that this behavior only shows up in xmonad and E17 (of all things). GNOME, KDE, IceWM, XFCE, wmii2, dwm all work properly. thanks Issue attributes: Status: New Owner: ---- Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Medium -- You received this message because you are listed in the owner or CC fields of this issue, or because you starred this issue. You may adjust your issue notification preferences at: http://code.google.com/hosting/settings

1 0

can't configure xmonad with the latest GHC
by Valery V. Vorotyntsev 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Houston, I've got a problem. Having the latest GHC from darcs installed, I cannot configure xmonad any more. vvv@fun:~/src/xmonad$ runhaskell Setup.lhs clean cleaning... vvv@fun:~/src/xmonad$ runhaskell Setup.lhs configure --user --prefix=$HOME Configuring xmonad-0.4... Setup.lhs: At least the following dependencies are missing: base <3, unix -any vvv@fun:~/src/xmonad$ runhaskell Setup.lhs configure --prefix=$HOME Configuring xmonad-0.4... Setup.lhs: At least the following dependencies are missing: X11 ==1.4.0, mtl -any The dependencies are actually there, AFAIU: vvv@fun:~/src/xmonad$ ghc-pkg list /home/vvv/lib/ghc-6.9.20071125/package.conf: Cabal-1.3, array-0.1, base-3.0, bytestring-0.9, containers-0.1, directory-1.0, filepath-1.1, (ghc-6.9.20071125), haskell98-1.0.1, hpc-0.5, old-locale-1.0, old-time-1.0, packedstring-0.1, pretty-1.0, process-1.0, random-1.0, readline-1.0.1, rts-1.0, template-haskell-2.2, unix-2.2 /home/vvv/.ghc/i386-linux-6.9.20071125/package.conf: X11-1.4.0, mtl-1.1.0.0 A hint is highly welcome. ;) -- vvv

2 6

Component-Contrib: patch LayoutScreens.hs
by Jacula Modyun 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Hello haskellers, Configuring my first xmonad start, I ran into a little misspelling mistake in the LayoutScreens.hs usage notes. The patch is, I think, self explanatory. Thank you -- I've finally learned what "upward compatible" means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes. -- Dennie van Tassel

2 1