June 2007 - xmonad - Haskell.org

Announce: xmobar-0.1 released!
by Andrea Rossato 23 Jun '07

23 Jun '07

Hi! Sorry if I didn't keep the promise of refactoring Tabbed.hs, but I've been quite busy. I'll do it, though. Moreover, I wrote this stuff, a real status bar, inspired by the Ion3 one. I sent a mail about it a couple of days ago, as a challenge to Robert to rewrite dzen2 in Haskell... No answer, so there I am. Well, XMobar, I called it this way, is not going, I hope, to compete with dzen, since it is designed to work only with a configuration file (see xmobar.config-example). No piping and stuff. Moreover, it is just a status bar (should work with any WM). Screenshots: with xmobar.config-sample http://gorgias.mine.nu/xmobar/xmobar-config-sample.jpg another one (text align to left): http://gorgias.mine.nu/xmobar/xmobar-2.jpg I forgot to take the default screenshot (when you run xmobar without config). Well, just find out. Grabit and run: xmobar You can grab the source of this release here: http://gorgias.mine.nu/xmobar/xmobar-0.1.tar.gz Darcs repo here: http://gorgias.mine.nu/repos/xmobar/ Documentation is absent. Anyway, there is a template to set the output: <command> will cause xmobar to run the command and display the output. <fc=#FF0000>text</fc> will make "text" red. See in Monitors/ some examples of monitors that can take advantage of that (they are built during the installation process, as xmb-net, xmb-cpu, xmb-mem). The configuration sample xmobar.config-sample uses them. Below the README. It all started by trying to understand how to use Xlib with Haskell. Hope you'll enjoy. I did. Studying Haskell is indeed a joy. I hope the name XMobar is not a problem (confusion with xmonad): let me know, I can change it. Ciao Andrea ------------( README )----------- XMobar - a status bar for the XMonad Window Manager ABOUT ----- Xmobar is a minimal status bar for the XMonad Window Manager. It was inspired by the Ion3 status bar, and supports similar features. See xmobar.config-sample for a sample configuration. Try it with: xmobar xmobar.config-sample INSTALLATION ------------ tar xvfz xmobar-0.1 runhaskell Setup.lhs configure --prefix=/usr/local runhaskell Setup.lhs build runhaskell Setup.lhs haddock (optional for building the code documentation) runhaskell Setup.lhs install (possibly to be run as root) Run with: xmobar /path/to/config $ AUTHOR ------ Andrea Rossato <andrea.rossato(a)unibz.it> LINKS ----- The XMobar home page: http://gorgias.mine.nu/xmobar/ XMobars darcs repository: http://gorgias.mine.nu/repos/xmobar/ The XMonad Window Manager http://xmonad.org

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darcs patch: add new LayoutHelpers module.
by David Roundy 23 Jun '07

23 Jun '07

Here's a start of a sketch of a helper module to make it easier to write correct layouts, and also to insulate layout-writing code from changes to the Layout representation in XMonad core (e.g. so we can make it safe to modify layouts in doLayout, as LayoutHooks and SimpleStacking do). It's not very useful yet, but I still think this is suitable to go into the main XMonadContrib repo. David Fri Jun 22 07:29:50 PDT 2007 David Roundy <droundy(a)darcs.net> * add new LayoutHelpers module.

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darcs patch: Add SinkAll module.
by joachim.fasting＠gmail.com 23 Jun '07

23 Jun '07

Sat Jun 23 07:05:10 CEST 2007 joachim.fasting(a)gmail.com * Add SinkAll module. Provides a means of pushing all windows on the current workspace back into tiling. Not all that useful, but might be preferable to restarting or manually pushing windows.

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darcs patch: Magnifier.hs: needs -fglasgow-exts to compile.
by joachim.fasting＠gmail.com 23 Jun '07

23 Jun '07

Fri Jun 22 13:14:42 CEST 2007 joachim.fasting(a)gmail.com * Magnifier.hs: needs -fglasgow-exts to compile.

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xmobar: url change
by Andrea Rossato 22 Jun '07

22 Jun '07

Hi! This afternoon I experienced a bad system failure: to put it briefly, gorgias.mine.nu has gone. I've put xmobar-0.1.tar.gz and screenshots here http://gipc49.jus.unitn.it:8080/xmobar/ I'll have some difficulties in next few days but I'll check my mail. The darcs repository will not be available for the time being. hope to solve this problem soon without any data loss. Sorry for the inconvenience (in the case you tried to download the source). Ciao Andrea

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problems with self-modifying layouts
by David Roundy 22 Jun '07

22 Jun '07

Hi all, (This email is partly a resend of content attached along with a patch, which I realize folks might not have seen, since I sent a fixed version of that patch. If you come across this twice, and find it as boring the second time as the first, my apologies.) There's design problem with some of the recently-introduced self-modifying layout modifiers, which include Decorations and SimpleStacking. The trouble is that while it's easy for a Layout to modify itself in response to an event, there's no safe way for a layout to modify itself in during a doLayout call. One answer to that is to simply state that "layouts should not do that." This seems an unsatisfying answer to me, as we've already got two valid uses--one already refactored into LayoutHooks, an inherently buggy module. The trouble is that within doLayout, there's no way for a layout to modify itself, because it can't tell which layout it is... and because it may not be a "root" layout at all, but some intermediate modified layout. There seems to be a simple solution: data Layout a = Layout { doLayout :: Rectangle -> Stack a -> X ([(a, Rectangle)], Maybe (Layout a)) , modifyLayout :: SomeMessage -> X (Maybe (Layout a)) } so doLayout can modify itself. This makes all the Layout transformers a little harder to write, but a helper module ought to be able to fix that. And it makes me wonder yet again whether we should be defining a class class Layout l a where doLayout :: l -> X Rectangle -> Stack a -> X ([(a, Rectangle)], Maybe (Layout a) modifyLayout :: l -> SomeMessage -> X (Maybe (Layout a)) serializeLayout :: l -> String readLayout :: String -> Maybe (l, String) -- or some other parser-like thing data Layout a = forall l. Layout l a => Layout a This might lend itself to somewhat prettier Layout code that is more "data-structure-based" rather than self-modifying-function-based. I imagine this would lead to friendly interfaces for easy-to-write layout modifiers. David P.S. I'd be curious to see implemented a "popularity-contest" module for xmonad once we've got serialization, which could use the logging mechanism to report on the most frequently used layouts. And yes, this would be in XMonadContrib and only manually enabled. I have no idea how many people are actually using Tabbed, and how likely this is to break folks' Config files.

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darcs patch: fix usage info for LayoutScreens.
by David Roundy 22 Jun '07

22 Jun '07

Resend of previously-amended patch. It's good that you're fast Don... :) David Fri Jun 22 06:26:18 PDT 2007 David Roundy <droundy(a)darcs.net> * fix usage info for LayoutScreens.

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Xnest and Xmonad
by Simon Peyton-Jones 22 Jun '07

22 Jun '07

Hi Xmonaders I'm planning to use xmonad as the main vehicle for a 3-hr tutorial on Haskell at the Open Software Convention 2007, in 3 weeks time. The goal is to teach Haskell (not xmonad per se), but by doing it in the context of xmonad I hope to motivate and excite the audience. The audience is professional programmers, not undergrads. They are Java, Ruby, Python experts. I plan to go pretty fast. I want to make use of Quickcheck, maybe HPC, too. So my plan is to show them xmonad and then rapidly zoom in on some small purely-functional part to do some Haskell programming. So I need to - show slides - edit code - recompile - and show the resulting window manager in action Advice is that the safest thing to do is to run xmonad inside xnest, so that the slides, editor etc are not disturbed. SO HERE'S THE QUESTION Can someone give me some idiot-level step by step instructions for how to run xmonad inside xnest, alongside other running applications? I have all the pieces; I just need to know how to set up the config files or whatever. I know some of you have done this. Timescale: I'm going to working on this for the next 3 weeks, and then I have to deliver the tutorial. Needless to say I'd also love to have your suggestions for simple Haskell programming stuff that could be described and demo'd in this way. Don is already thinking about this -- thanks Don. thanks (NB: I'm not on the xmonad list, so pls include me in replies!) Simon

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darcs patch: add new LayoutScreens module.
by David Roundy 22 Jun '07

22 Jun '07

This version has only a fixed usage description. Fri Jun 22 06:15:06 PDT 2007 David Roundy <droundy(a)darcs.net> * add new LayoutScreens module.

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darcs patch: add new LayoutScreens module.
by David Roundy 22 Jun '07

22 Jun '07

Hi all, Here's a fix to make LayoutScreens work like Spencer suggested, by simply changing xineScreens itself. Much simpler. And incidentally I've verified with this that Combo+Tabbed+SimpleStacking does in fact seriously misbehave on Xinerama setups. Expect patches to modify the return type of doLayout some day... David Fri Jun 22 06:13:00 PDT 2007 David Roundy <droundy(a)darcs.net> * add new LayoutScreens module.

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