July 2007 - xmonad - Haskell.org

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/

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darcs patch: only display any given window once.
by David Roundy 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

Hi all, This change is independent of the change to delete. Together they make sticky windows (via the CopyWindow contrib module) work nicely with Xinerama. Without this change, a gap will be visible on one or more screens when a sticky window is present in workspaces present on multiple screens, which is not the end of the world, but is a bit ugly. With this change, each window is displayed on only one screen. Note that this is just an amend-recorded version of my earlier patch, fixed to work with the modified API. David Tue Jul 24 07:13:10 PDT 2007 David Roundy <droundy(a)darcs.net> * only display any given window once. This change goes along with the sticky window work. It makes xmonad display each window once and only once, with preference given to the focussed screen. It has no effect when there are no duplicate windows, except to make things less efficient. We could do better using Data.Set (or Data.Map) to store the set of windows that are visible.

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darcs patch: DeManage.hs: haddock compatibility.
by joachim.fasting＠gmail.com 02 Aug '07

02 Aug '07

Wed Jul 25 12:09:10 CEST 2007 joachim.fasting(a)gmail.com * DeManage.hs: haddock compatibility.

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darcs patch: w3c validation police
by wagnerd＠stanford.edu 29 Jul '07

29 Jul '07

Sun Jul 29 01:51:39 EDT 2007 wagnerd(a)stanford.edu * w3c validation police

2 1

darcs patch: Add FlexibleManipulate extension (and 1 more)
by Michael G.Sloan 29 Jul '07

29 Jul '07

Sat Jul 28 20:14:02 PDT 2007 Michael G. Sloan <mgsloan(a)gmail.com> * Add FlexibleManipulate extension Sat Jul 28 20:24:07 PDT 2007 Michael G. Sloan <mgsloan(a)gmail.com> * Fix warnings in FlexibleManipulate (Sorry!)

2 1

darcs patch: Add FlexibleManipulate extension
by Michael G.Sloan 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

Sat Jul 28 20:14:02 PDT 2007 Michael G. Sloan <mgsloan(a)gmail.com> * Add FlexibleManipulate extension

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darcs patch: Commands: refactoring to include in MetaModule
by Andrea Rossato 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

Hi, description says it all. ciao andrea Sat Jul 28 15:20:29 CEST 2007 Andrea Rossato <andrea.rossato(a)unibz.it> * Commands: refactoring to include in MetaModule Just a small refactooring (well, now runCommand requires a command list, and I added runCommand' that will take a string to run it against the default command list) to include this module in MetaModule so that we can track it in case of API changes (this patch has been requested by Spencer).

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darcs patch: added workspaces to hs-boot (needed by XMonadContrib.C...
by Andrea Rossato 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

Hi, I tried to send this before, but with a wrong from address. The number of workspaces is something that is needed by Commands, and could be useful for other modules too. Ciao Andrea ps: following a patch to Command.hs to make it trackable from MetaModule Sat Jul 28 15:17:56 CEST 2007 Andrea Rossato <andrea.rossato(a)unibz.it> * added workspaces to hs-boot (needed by XMonadContrib.Commands and possibly other modules)

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darcs patch: SwitchTrans.hs, initial version
by l.mai＠web.de 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

Sat Jul 28 17:38:26 CEST 2007 l.mai(a)web.de * SwitchTrans.hs, initial version

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darcs patch: QuickCheck filter preserves order
by Karsten Schoelzel 28 Jul '07

28 Jul '07

Sat Jul 28 20:45:34 CEST 2007 Karsten Schoelzel <kuser(a)gmx.de> * QuickCheck filter preserves order

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