October 2011 - xmonad

responding to xrandr events (or: I'm looking for an xmobar-like app that will work with lots of screen rotations)
by Rogan Creswick 04 Nov '11

04 Nov '11

I apparently have unusual usage patterns when it comes to multiple monitors, and it's causing problems for xmonad (and other WMs too, but Xmonad is the one I care about..). I frequently change the arrangement, orientation, and number of monitors on my system (it's a laptop that I dock 5-6x/day, and I alternate between sitting/standing at my desk, and I also just like rotating an external 19" lcd depending on the task at hand.). The problem I have is that I haven't found any status-bar like programs (eg: xmobar, taffybar) that will keep up with the screen adjustments I do. (gnome-panel worked, but it's apparently being phased out, and I'm not particularly happy with gnome dependencies anyway.) I usually end up with a status bar that's offset into the middle of the screen after a rotation / addition (taffybar) or, with xmobar, the bar eventually disappears entirely. I think I can probably fix things by tweaking taffybar/xmobar to respond to resize commands from xmonad, but I don't know how to detect the screen geometry changes within my xmonad source. This looks like the right module to start with: http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/X11/Graphics-X11-Xlib-Extras.html#t%3AEvent but I haven't been enlightened by any of the Event values, and I don't know enough to tell if there are event types missing (eg: XRRScreenChangeNotify, maybe?) or if I just don't know how to interpret the xmonad module/types. Does anyone have suggestions? Thanks! Rogan

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darcs patch: Small bugfix to X.L.Fullscreen
by Audun Skaugen 03 Nov '11

03 Nov '11

When using xmonad on another machine, the XMonad.Layout.Fullscreen module stopped refreshing the layout when a window entered fullscreen. This patch makes the layout modifiers return a Just instead of a Nothing on the FullscreenChanged message, fixing the bug. I do wonder, however, why the modifiers worked fine before. The patch also fixes some funny whitespace. -- Audun Skaugen

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What XMonad Configuration Best Replicates Default Ion3 Behavior and Feature Set?
by Matt T. Proud ⚔ 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

Hi all, I'm new to Haskell and am approaching XMonad as a want-to-be-former Ion user, mainly because Ion is now abandonware. In any case, I would like to find a configuration for XMonad that best mimics default Ion behavior. I published this question to Stack Exchange a while back but never got any useful feedback: http://superuser.com/q/348919/102354. If you have used Ion in the past or are relatively familiar with its behavior, I'd love for you to chime-in, either here or in the Stack Exchange question. A snapshot of my question is as follows: """Not being very familiar with Haskell and lamenting that [Ion 3][1] is now abandonware, I am curious if anyone out there has found a way of replicating the default Ion 3 behavior and aesthetics in [XMonad][2]. If I can't have a near-exact replica of Ion 3-style behavior in XMonad, here is what would be critical to me: 1. Virtual desktops that are empty by default and that spawn full-screen applications, which can be split horizontally or vertically evenly, leaving an empty adjacent pane. 2. The panes, which house open windows, are manually resizable, preferably via keyboard. 3. The panes exhibit tabbed behavior, meaning that they can house multiple windows. 4. Windows can be tagged and moved between panes / virtual desktops via keyboard sequence. 5. A given window may be temporarily exploded into full-screen mode via keyboard sequence. 6. Each virtual desktop may have its panes divided independently of other virtual desktops. >From my investigation, it appears that there are several configurations that provide #3. For as much as I want to spend the time to familiarize myself with Haskell, I just simply don't have time. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. As far as I can tell, Ion has no conception of master pane or window, so this behavior is not desired. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_%28window_manager%29 "Ion 3" [2]: http://xmonad.org "XMonad"""" Thank you, Matt

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Monthly patch review
by Gwern Branwen 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/repo_http:__code.haskell.org_XMonadContrib.html and http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/repo_http:__code.haskell.org_xmonad.html are currently both clear of patches to review. Apart from that, I conclude 1.0 must be released. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net

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Gimp -- Newer Windows Plunging Under Older Windows
by Bastien Dejean 25 Oct '11

25 Oct '11

Hi, I stumbled across the following 'amusing' behavior while using Gimp: quite often, newer (floating) windows go under older windows. To make those hidden windows visible, one has to move the big foreground window whose hiding them and select them with the mouse to pull them to the foreground. How can I configure xmonad so that the floating window who has focus is at the top of the window layers? Greetings, -- Bastien

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Releasing 1.0
by Gwern Branwen 21 Oct '11

21 Oct '11

I spent the other reading a PhD thesis about time-based releases: http://www.cyrius.com/publications/michlmayr-phd.html All the projects involved seemed to prefer time-based releases, and there was much criticism of releases simply being endlessly dragged out and end-users being hurt by the delays and unclear forecasts. Let us say I was more than a little reminded of Xmonad and #xmonad. The last major release of xmonad was back when George W. Bush was president. There are no outstanding patches in http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/repo_http:__code.haskell.org_XMonadContrib.html or http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/repo_http:__code.haskell.org_xmonad.html Since then, awesome has made something like 10 releases; even dwm has made releases. There are plenty of bugs left in Xmonad, but I doubt many will be squashed given another few months or years. Let's just make the 1.0 release already. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net

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Using xmonad with freenx
by Tim Diels 17 Oct '11

17 Oct '11

Hi I'm trying to run xmonad within a freenx session, but I get this error: Xlib: extension "XINERAMA" missing on display ":1000". xmonad-x86_64-linux: XMonad/Main.hsc:83:18-88: Irrefutable pattern failed for pattern (Data.Maybe.Just nbc_) when using this command as x init script for the nx session: exec ck-launch-session xmonad freenx does not support xinerama, but I won't be needing multiscreen support, can I work around this somehow? E.g. Can I run xmonad in a way that does not require xinerama? Thanks in advance -- Kind regards Tim Diels

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[ANN] yeganesh v2.3
by wagnerdm＠seas.upenn.edu 17 Oct '11

17 Oct '11

Do you use dmenu? Do you find yourself repeatedly choosing the same two or three options out of an endless sea of millions? Then may I recommend to you yeganesh, the dmenu wrapper with a bit of smarts! Let your most commonly-used applications float to the top of the dmenu list, so you have to type less. New in version 2.3 is an "--executables" option (or just "-x" for those of you with RSI), which trolls your $PATH looking for executables. Now, instead of the clunky `dmenu_path | yeganesh` you can enjoy the far more elegant `yeganesh -x` ...which has the benefit of not relying on the existence of a script which has gone the way of the dinosaurs. To get the latest, just type: cabal update && cabal install --reinstall yeganesh Full documentation, including a feature list, complete changelog, installation instructions, and the all-important link to the bug tracker, is available at <http://dmwit.com/yeganesh>. ~d

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a patch for the dmenu binding
by wagnerdm＠seas.upenn.edu 13 Oct '11

13 Oct '11

The dmenu programmers have recently deemed dmenu_path too useless (grrrr), and so the default mod+p binding no longer works. Here's a fix. ~d

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Japanese fonts in an XFT xmobar or dzen panel with dynamiclog
by Daniel Anderson 12 Oct '11

12 Oct '11

Greetings Team, I've been trying to figure out a solution for a long time now on how to get different character sets like japanese and korean to render for xmobar or dzen with XFT from the xmonad dynamiclog. If my font is something like liberation or dejavu (mono/sans/serif/etc) I'll get squares for any japanese character that should be rendered (or chinese or korean / etc). It will render the japanese font if I set my font to be an actual japanese font like takao, but I'd like to have my full range of fonts work so it will render korean and other characters. Anyone know a solution to this? normally with any gtk/qt app, it will obey my fontconfig settings, though dzen and xmobar do not. Thanks Daniel

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