December 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

XMonad 0.5, combo layouts, swapDown and swapUp
by Dave Harrison 06 Feb '08

06 Feb '08

Hey all, First up, love the new configuration method, my xmonad.hs file is now nice and tiny :-) Quick "maybe glitch" though, I'm using ComboLayout with Tabbed, and I find that when I first add lots of windows to the layout the alt-tab order is correct (also when adding windows into the middle of the stack it's correct). When I swapDown or swapUp _in_ the stack, the order is correct. But if I swapDown or swapUp at either end of the stack the ordering goes rather pearshaped (the ordering is no longer correct "visually" if you see what I mean). Is this a known thing ? My xmonad.hs is below. Cheers, Dave ---- import XMonad hiding (Tall(..)) import qualified XMonad.StackSet as W import XMonad.Layout.Tabbed import XMonad.Layout.Combo import XMonad.Layout.TwoPane import XMonad.Layout.NoBorders import XMonad.Layout.HintedTile import XMonad.Config (defaultConfig) import XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog import XMonad.Util.Dmenu import qualified Data.Map as M import System.IO (hPutStrLn) daveConfig = defaultConfig { defaultGaps = [(0,15,0,0)] , logHook = dynamicLog , terminal = "xterm -fa Mono -fs 12" , layoutHook = smartBorders ( combineTwo (TwoPane 0.03 0.5) (tabbed shrinkText defaultTConf) (tabbed shrinkText defaultTConf) ||| mytab ||| tiled Tall ||| tiled Wide ||| Full ) , keys = \c -> mykeys c `M.union` keys defaultConfig c } where -- layouts tiled = HintedTile 1 0.03 0.5 mytab = tabbed shrinkText defaultTConf -- key mapping overrides mykeys (XConfig {modMask = modm, workspaces = ws}) = M.fromList $ [((modm, xK_Left ), sendMessage Shrink) -- %! Shrink the master area ,((modm, xK_Right ), sendMessage Expand) -- %! Expand the master area ,((modm, xK_p ), spawn "exe=`cat /home/dave/.dmenulist | dmenu -b -p \"$\"` && eval \"exec $exe\"") -- @@ Launch dmenu ] main = xmonad $ daveConfig

5 9

xmonad user survey!
by Don Stewart 25 Jan '08

25 Jan '08

Hey all, xmonad's reaching a fairly stable place featurewise (and stability-wise too). Now is perhaps a good time to ask people what we can do to improve xmonad further. * What things annoy you? * What things do you like? * What things can be done better? * What things are missing? * What things do you miss from ion/wmii/dwm/compiz * What things do you not miss from ion/wmii/dwm/compiz ... :) If you've any suggestions for things we can change to make xmonad better fit your workflow or whatever, please shout out! If you grumble when xmonad doesn't do something you think it should -- let us know! With information like this we can continue to improve our progressive window manager :) -- Don

22 31

xmonad on OLPC laptop?
by Armin Roehrl 19 Jan '08

19 Jan '08

Hi all, did anybody get xmonad to run on the OLPC laptops? Could you share instructions how you installed it? Thanks a lot, -Armin P.S.: Sorry if you get this email twice.

4 4

darcs patch: Add ShowWName a layout modifier to show the workspace...
by Andrea Rossato 14 Jan '08

14 Jan '08

Hi, this is a follow up of Don's user survey: David Benbennick suggested to have the possibility so see the name of the new workspace when you switch. David Roundy suggested a way to achieve it. And I, with his help, implemented it. Still with some problems I seem not to be able to solve. The fist one is the old thread related problem: since I need to create a window and destroy it after 1 second (the interval can be configured), I need to stop the main thread execution for a second. Most of the time xmonad is blocked in a foreign call (XNextEvent) in the 'forever' loop. This means I cannot destroy the window in a forked thread (which would be blocked too): so I have to block the main thread. But I have to block the main thread in doLayout (actually redoLayout, since we are talking about a layout modifier), which means we block *before* returning the windows and rectangles list... which means, the window with the workspace name is displayed *before* displaying the workspace itself! This is the reason why I use xmobar and DynamcLog to know the workspace I'm in, and this is the reason I did not push this patch. Perhaps I'm missing something really stupid (David?), but I'm not so sure...;) What do you think? Andrea Fri Dec 28 19:16:04 CET 2007 Andrea Rossato <andrea.rossato(a)unibz.it> * Add ShowWName a layout modifier to show the workspace name when switching

4 16

Xmonad 0.5 + Gnome
by Jevin Maltais 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

So I'd like to be Xmonad to replace metacity in gnome. I've read (and tried) the instructions over at: http://xmonad.org/gnome.html which is a great write-up. Unfortunately however, I just can't get it to fly with gnome. setting WINDOW_MANGER="/home/jevin/bin/xmonad" gets me gnome + xmonad but the gnome-panel is why weird on workspace 1 and simply does not appear on the other workspaces. Attached is the result. My xmonad.hs: import XMonad main = do xmonad defaultConfig { defaultGaps = [(24,0,0,0)] , borderWidth = 2 , normalBorderColor = "#222222" , focusedBorderColor = "#6666ff" , terminal = "gnome-terminal" } Also, the gnome-panel not longer seems to be included in the manageHook anymore. Jevin -- Jevin Maltais [jevin(a)techie.com] http://jevy.org

4 8

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

darcs patch: Use LANGUAGE pragma. (and 1 more)
by Joachim Fasting 06 Jan '08

06 Jan '08

Sun Dec 30 07:18:17 CET 2007 Joachim Fasting <joachim.fasting(a)gmail.com> * Use LANGUAGE pragma. Sun Dec 30 07:19:20 CET 2007 Joachim Fasting <joachim.fasting(a)gmail.com> * Correct caps in module header.

2 1

xmonad user survey!
by Rickard Gustafsson 06 Jan '08

06 Jan '08

True that! Tagging is indeed far superior to workspaces. It is by far the biggest issue keeping me ambivalent in the choice between DWM and xmonad. For users not used to the tagging approach there won't be any difference. But tagging may not fit in with the ability to have different layouts on every desktop. On [Sun 23.12.2007 10:23], Damjan Vrencur wrote: > Hi! > > On Sunday 23 December 2007 06:47:34 am Don Stewart wrote: > > > Now is perhaps a good time to ask people what we can do to improve > > xmonad further. > > > > * What things do you miss from ion/wmii/dwm/compiz > Tagging. > > > * What things do you not miss from ion/wmii/dwm/compiz ... :) > A statusbar that is part of a window manager. > > > > > With information like this we can continue to improve our progressive > > window manager :) > > > > Regards, > -- > Damjan Vrenčur <~> http://lmmri.fri.uni-lj.si/damjan/ <~> GPG key: C6A3146F > _______________________________________________ > xmonad mailing list > xmonad(a)haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/xmonad

2 1

darcs patch: shiftPrevScreen and shiftNextScreen, to make CycleWS c...
by mail＠joachim-breitner.de 06 Jan '08

06 Jan '08

Mon Dec 31 18:16:09 CET 2007 mail(a)joachim-breitner.de * shiftPrevScreen and shiftNextScreen, to make CycleWS consistent

2 1