Excerpts from codesite-noreply's message of Thu Jan 21 11:24:17 -0700 2010:
Comment #5 on issue 361 by zl29ah: Layout.Tabbed works like Full http://code.google.com/p/xmonad/issues/detail?id=361
And how doesn't tabbedAlways work? Exactly like simpleTabbed.
I suspect what's happening here is that the default bitmap font, "-misc-fixed-*-*-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" is not loaded on your xorg server. Tabbed layouts fall back to Full when there is a font error. You could run `xset fp+ /path/to/fonts/misc' and `xset fp rehash' if you have it installed. You could then add that font path to xorg.conf so it gets used in the future. If you have no desire to mess with legacy fonts you can pick an xft font you have installed, say DejaVu, and use it in a custom theme with your tabbed layouts: myTheme = defaultTheme { fontName = "xft:DejaVu Sans:size=10" } main = xmonad defaultConfig { layoutHook = tabbedAlways shrinkText myTheme } Hopefully this gets your layouts working properly, and in the future xmonad communicates the problem more clearly, rather than hiding font problems behind unexpected layout behaviour. regards, -- wmw