Re: [xmonad] announce: XMonad.Util.WindowProperties

On 19/03/2008, gwern0@gmail.com wrote:

On 2008.03.19 22:31:02 +0200, Roman Cheplyaka scribbled 1.8K characters:

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* gwern0@gmail.com [2008-03-19 16:26:07-0400]

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On 2008.03.18 20:54:32 +0200, Roman Cheplyaka scribbled 1.4K characters:

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Just pushed new module: XMonad.Util.WindowProperties.

This module allows to specify window properties, such as title, classname or resource, and to check them. In contrast to ManageHook properties, these are instances of Show and Read, so they can be used in layout definitions etc.

It was a part of IM layout before, and now I hope it will help Braden with his PlainConfig.

-- Roman I. Cheplyaka (aka Feuerbach @ IRC)

Is this module intended to also eventually include setters of window properties? (I only see getters.)

It isn't. Actually, I hear such idea for the first time. How do you see it?

-- Roman I. Cheplyaka (aka Feuerbach @ IRC)

Well, I was musing that there could be situations in which rewriting window properties on the fly could be useful. For example, you've seen my runOrRaise stuff? It doesn't work if, say, Emacs is inside a terminal. To solve this you would hypothetically write 'bind m "setWindowClass 'Emacs'"' (if you follow my pseudo-code). And who knows what other stuff you could do. For example, if you're allowed to create new window properties on a window, you could implement a per app copy-paste system!

But not all hints are settable -- for instance, whilst a WM_TITLE hint is, there is no guarantee that it is to remain valid during the application's lifetime (i.e., the application can rewrite it at any time - *cough* firefox). Then there are those hints such as WM_CLASS which are only settable before the window is mapped (i.e., in the WithDrawn state). Using xprop under the hood should allow you to realise this in part. But compliance with the ICCCM here is paramount. -- Thomas Adam