November 2011 - xmonad

darcs patch: Export types to reduce haddock warnings.
by Adam Vogt 19 Nov '11

19 Nov '11

1 patch for repository code.haskell.org:/srv/code/XMonadContrib: Sat Oct 23 15:57:55 EDT 2010 Adam Vogt <vogt.adam(a)gmail.com> * Export types to reduce haddock warnings.

2 1

Volume Keys
by Marco Guidetti 18 Nov '11

18 Nov '11

Hi all, thank you for all the feedback about the xmobar stuff: I have resolved in using an external script which manages both xmobar instances, except for the one that is with spawnPipe. It works and seems reasonable. Now, there is something more I'd like to fix. I have a Lenovo X220, and I am trying to use the mute/volume buttons. I have read something online about using this: ((0, XF86AudioLowerVolume), spawn "amixer -c 0 set Master 2dB-") ((0, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), spawn "amixer -c 0 set Master 2dB+") [in this case xmonad --recompile returns something along the line of "there is no XF86AudioRaiseVolume in current context"] or like this: ((0, 0x1008FF11), spawn "amixer -c 0 set Master 2dB-") ((0, 0x1008FF13), spawn "amixer -c 0 set Master 2dB+") [in this case a recompile succeeds, but nothing changes: probably the 0x is wrong?] but neither of them is not working. I tried to use xev to get the keycode of the volume buttons, but xev does not react at all when I press them. This *really* puzzles me, since they do work if I use my old gnome-based setup. So .... ideas? :) Thank you very much, marco PS I realize a simple solution is to bind the spawn "amixer ..." stuff to something else on the keyboard, but it doesn't seem right :)

2 2

Revisiting XMonad.Prompt
by Nathaniel Filardo 17 Nov '11

17 Nov '11

I have wanted, for a long while, to revisit XMonad.Prompt and make it use the main event hook, rather than its own sneaky manipulation down in IO land. I've started working on it as I consider the current behavior a bit of a wart, but it will mean the loss of mkXPromptWithReturn and the making-asynchronous of mkXPrompt. (i.e. The String -> X () argument will be invoked after the function has returned.) In looking through XMonadContrib, it looks like most users of XMonad.Prompt would be OK with this; xmonad-extras' XMonad.Prompt.Eval and XMonad.Prompt.MPD would need to be rewritten (which I can do, I think) and so I wonder if other users would notice the shift? If there's not overwhelming objection, I'll get a patch out soon for people to review. Thanks in advance. --nwf;

4 4

Re: [xmonad] exiting: asking for confirmation (or a four-key combination)
by wagnerdm＠seas.upenn.edu 16 Nov '11

16 Nov '11

Quoting Brandon Allbery <allbery.b(a)gmail.com>: > Daniel's solution has the potential for problems, because xmonad's main > loop isn't processing events while it's running. (This is a common problem Can you suggest a way to manifest this problem? I tried a bunch of stuff (shift+insert, middle-clicking on dmenu, middle-clicking outside of dmenu, hitting ctrl-c), and none of it hung xmonad; what else can I try? Anyway, my understanding of the putSelection problem was that xmonad made two threads, both making X calls, and this was the problem; the solution I posted uses two processes (not threads). Furthermore, xmonad-contrib module XMonad.Util.Dmenu defines functions whose source I basically copied and pasted to write my code snippet (but they don't allow custom prompt strings). If there's a danger when using them, that danger NEEDS to be added to the documentation. ~d

4 7

xmonad as an outsider
by Weeble 15 Nov '11

15 Nov '11

I have been reading the xmonad development thread, and it got me to thinking about my experiences with xmonad. I definitely think things could be improved, but I'm not sure how would be best. Maybe it's all a documentation thing, or maybe some of it could be new or changed APIs. I'll just try to explain how I have experienced xmonad, and what gave me problems. First of all, as background, I am a programmer. I did a little Haskell at university, but not much and I use it so rarely that I can never remember the syntax. Mostly I program in C#, C++, Python and a little bit of Coffeescript. I run Ubuntu on a laptop and mostly only install stuff via apt-get. I like the command-line and vim, but I'm no anti-mouse purist and spend a lot of time using only the mouse or the touchpad while browsing the web. I think I first installed xmonad via apt-get, and at some point had some problem that meant moving to cabal or darcs. That was a bit of a pain, especially trying to understand where each of these things had put files and knowing whether I'd successfully uninstalled them later. What is much more of a pain is months later when I try to change something and realise I need to upgrade and then I'm not even sure how I installed xmonad in the first place, so I'm not sure what I need to do to update it. After an upgrade to a new version of Ubuntu there's generally a period of a few weeks before I find the time to figure out how to get xmonad up and running again. Configuring xmonad is generally pretty mystifying. Even though I have a basic knowledge of Haskell, it's often very hard to untangle things in the config file or in examples. Problems I've had: * Strange symbols, like ".|.", "|||", "-->", "=?", "<&&>". These can't be Googled for, so it's hard to find out what they do or where they're defined. Haskell already has lots of operators that aren't particularly familiar to programmers coming from other languages, so this just seems to add to the confusion. * Hard to find out where functions are defined. Example configuration files generally import all modules into the one big namespace. In Python, the equivalent construct, "from foo import *" is generally discouraged for this reason, but I don't know what's conventional in Haskell. It seems the forms "import Module (x,y,z)" or "import qualified Module" would be better for example configuration files, as they aid discoverability: then when I see a name used in a configuration file I can easily see which module it came from without having to grep through source files. * Poor layout documentation. One of the things I was most interested when I was a new user was in finding out what layouts were available and how to compose them. I found the layout documentation to be very limited. There's no overview and there are no diagrams, just a great big list of layout names, so to find anything you pretty much have to try them all one by one. Even worse, some of them require arguments that they do not document. E.g. http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmonad-contrib/XMonad-Layout-Dishes.html If there is somewhere that shows example screenshots of all these layouts, it would be good if it was more prominently linked from the docs. * Baffling failure messages. If you make a mistake in your xmonad configuration, or if you upgrade and the API for something has changed, the error messages are generally very hard to understand, and it can take quite a deep understanding of Haskell to realise that you just missed out an argument or used the wrong operator. I think most of these things can be improved, though maybe not the error messages. I really love *using* xmonad, and I've not found another window manager that I'm nearly as happy with, but the horror of *configuring* xmonad wastes a lot of my time and makes me disinclined to recommend it to others. Weeble.

6 11

exiting: asking for confirmation (or a four-key combination)
by Ramon Diaz-Uriarte 13 Nov '11

13 Nov '11

Dear All, Occasionally, I do something silly and by mistake type modMask + shift + q and xmonad, as it should, immediately exits. When done accidentally, this is a pain. So: a) is there a way to get xmonad to ask for confirmation to exit? b) alternatively, can I define four (of five) key combinations, so I need to do something really contrived to exit? I've searched both answers without success, and my attempts at four-key combinations have not worked (even if I get xmonad --recompile to run). Thanks, R. -- Ramon Diaz-Uriarte Department of Biochemistry, Lab B-25. Facultad de Medicina (UAM) Arzobispo Morcillo, 2 28029 Madrid Spain Phone: +34-91-497-2412 Email: rdiaz02(a)gmail.com ramon.diaz(a)iib.uam.es http://ligarto.org/rdiaz

3 5

Re: Issue 126 in xmonad: xmonad doesn't warn when xmonad executable cannot be found
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

Updates: Summary: xmonad doesn't warn when xmonad executable cannot be found Status: Accepted Labels: Usability Comment #6 on issue 126 by vogt.adam: xmonad doesn't warn when xmonad executable cannot be found http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=126 In #xmonad today, jeffwheeler had some trouble getting his config to reload. It seems like this problem could have been avoided by adding a bit of logic to the default config: Currently M-q is bound to: spawn "xmonad --recompile && xmonad --restart" This could instead be something like: spawn $ "which xmonad && { xmonad --recompile && xmonad --restart } || " ++ "xmessage xmonad not in \$PATH: \"$PATH\"" But maybe this logic should be implemented in haskell, or is the /bin/sh syntax used here going to work everywhere? -- 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 3

register XMonad as window manager with X
by Jochen Keil 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

Hello, I have switched from gnome to xfce and came across some issues with xfce + xmonad. One more prominent issue was that xfce4-panel checks if a window manager is running. It does so by looking through all atoms with XGetSelectionOwner(). However, XMonad does not set a window manager atom using XSetSelectionOwner(). Therefore it takes some time until xfce4-panel times out and finally starts up. To overcome this situation I took some code from XMonad's Main.hsc and wrote a function to register XMonad with an atom. registerXMonad :: X () registerXMonad = do dpy <- asks display root <- asks theRoot wmSnAtom <- io $ internAtom dpy ("WM_S" ++ show (defaultScreen dpy)) False io $ xSetSelectionOwner dpy wmSnAtom root currentTime Currently I'm running this from the startupHook, but I think this would be more appropriate in XMonad's Main. Best Regards, Jochen

16 48

Issue 482 in xmonad: Full system freeze
by codesite-noreply＠google.com 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

Status: New Owner: ---- New issue 482 by witsqu...@lavabit.com: Full system freeze http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=482 What steps will reproduce the problem? 1. Run xmonad with nvidia graphics card is the only know constant 2. 3. What is the expected output? What do you see instead? The system completely freezes, no response to keyboard or mouse input, cannot switch TTYs. Cannot SSH into the machine. This does not occur for me in other WMs (openbox, xfce). What version of the product are you using? On what operating system? 0.9.2 from cabal on Archlinux. Are you using an xmonad.hs? Please attach it and the output of "xmonad --recompile". Please provide any additional information below. There are a number of users on the Arch forum experiencing this same issue. The bug may be in xorg, but only xmonad users are getting this issue, so I wanted to notify you guys and see if we can get your input on this. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=129439

1 7

Re: [xmonad] Problem with custom layout
by Jan-David Quesel 10 Nov '11

10 Nov '11

Hey, I used the following layout: reflectHoriz $ combineTwo (TwoPane delta ratio) (modifyLayout $ tabbed shrinkText defaultTheme) -- 2nd column layout (due to reflect) (modifyLayout $ tabbed shrinkText defaultTheme) -- 1st column layout (due to reflect), unused Hope it helps constructing a solution to your issue. Regards, Jan On Tue, Nov 08, 2011 at 01:36:37PM -0800, Phil Thomson wrote: > Hi Jan, > > Thanks for the reply. I actually started with the L.Combo and > L.LayoutCombinators but had trouble producing the behaviour I > wanted. I switched to using the Master/Simplest/Tabbed combo on the > advice of someone on the IRC channel after that didn't work. > > Would you mind hpasting or sharing your xmonad.hs if you think > there's something in it I might be able to steal? > > I haven't gotten much response to my post yet, given the discussion > about the xmonad project itself; maybe I'll try re-posting in a > while when things are quieter. Didn't get much reply on IRC either. > Guess I'll just keep at it. :-) > > Thanks again, > > Phil > > > On Tue, 8 Nov 2011 11:10:26 +0100, Jan-David Quesel wrote: > >Hi, > > > >I have the same issue. The only solution I found so far was using > >a layout combinator like X.L.Combo but then it really gets messy > >with switching and shifting windows etc... but it might be a > >starting point... > > > >Regards, > >Jan > > > >On Tue, Nov 08, 2011 at 12:13:40AM -0800, Phil Thomson wrote: > >>Hi all, > >> > >>I have been trying to build a custom layout for my small-screen > >>netbook. The layout consists of a master area which contains one > >>window and (if there is more than one window) a slave area in which > >>all other windows are tabbed. > >> > >>My xmonad.hs is here: http://hpaste.org/53712 > >> > >>The magic comes from this line in myLayoutHook: > >> > >>addTabsAlways shrinkText myTabConfig (mastered 0.05 0.5 Simplest) > >> > >>which relies on XMonad.Layout.Master, XMonad.Layout.Simplest and > >>XMonad.Layout.Tabbed. > >> > >>The problem for me is that when I have, say, 3 windows open, and > >>window #3 (the second window in the tabbed slave area) is focused, > >>if I switch to window #1 (the master window), then window #2 (the > >>first window in the tabbed slave area) is raised (though not > >>focused) so that I can no longer see window #3. The behaviour I > >>would like is for window #3 to remain visible when I switch to the > >>master window and, more generally, for whatever slave window has > >>been visible to remain visible when I switch to the master area. > >> > >>I have tried another two-paned layout without being able to > >>eliminate the problematic behaviour. > >> > >>Does anyone know 1) another way to implement the layout I am looking > >>for with the behaviour I want or 2) a way to produce the behaviour I > >>desire with my existing custom layout? > >> > >>Phil > >> > >> > >>_______________________________________________ > >>xmonad mailing list > >>xmonad(a)haskell.org > >>http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/xmonad > >> > > -- Jan-David Quesel Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg Department of Computing Science Correct System Design D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany Phone: +49 (0)441 798-2376 Fax: +49 (0)441 798-2965

1 0