Hi XMonad users, I'm playing a little bit with XMonad and its primitives to see how the core works. One idea is to create a set of visible hints that the user can display when an action is taken. For example, when the user changes the workspace to the previous workspace, then a left arrow appears in the centre of the screen. Those hints are very similar to what happen on other WMs and personally very useful. With this idea in mind I started to think about requirements: they should be always visible (on top of the stack) such that the user can see them but they should be not-intrusive so that they don't disturb the work of the user. They should be removed automatically after sometime. One last thing, I would like to stick to the XMonad color configuration. I started with the left arrow. I get the code idea from XMonad.Actions.GridSelect because it shows a grid of windows or workspace using XMonad draw primitives. I created the code below which draws a left arrow in the centre of the screen and set it in my configuration such that when I move the the prev workspace, the arrow is showed and then deleted (using ((modMask, xK_Left ), drawArrow xpConfig 10 (Arrow 200 200) >> prevWS) as configuration in XMonad.hs). Before I show the code, let me say that the code (almost) works and let me make my questions: 1) is the code correct or I'm doing it in a wrong way? 2) how to put the window on top of the stack such that it is always visible. For now, for some reason the arrow is not visible when the layout is MouseResizableTile (the window is under all the not-floating windows) but it is visible with ThreeCol and Full. That's a mistery for me and I can't make any progress on that 3) how to ignore the input such that it pass trough the created window 4) the way that I use to kill the window using thread is correct? Can I do something better? 5) an open question: is there any way to use composite such that the windows can be transparent? I don't think XMonad supports composite, that's why it's an open question, but I really would like to add it and obtain some of the effects available in WM like Compiz. It's more general than what I want to do, I really would like to see the transition between screens as in compiz. Thank you, Mario data Arrow = Arrow { head_w :: Integer, head_h :: Integer } drawArrow :: XPConfig -> Integer -> Arrow -> X () drawArrow conf span (Arrow { head_w = head_w, head_h = head_h }) = gets (screenRect . W.screenDetail . W.current . windowset) >>= \s -> let half_w = div head_w 2 half_h = div head_h 2 cx = div (fromIntegral $ rect_width s) 2 cy = div (fromIntegral $ rect_height s) 2 x0 = fromIntegral $ cx - half_w - span y0 = fromIntegral $ cy - half_h - span p1 = Point (fromIntegral span) (fromIntegral $ half_h) p2 = Point (fromIntegral head_w) (fromIntegral span) p3 = Point (fromIntegral head_w) (fromIntegral head_h) in withDisplay $ \dpy -> do let dflt = defaultScreen dpy let scr = defaultScreenOfDisplay dpy rootw <- asks theRoot win <- liftIO $ mkUnmanagedWindow dpy scr rootw x0 y0 (fromInteger $ head_w + span) (fromInteger $ head_h + span) liftIO $ mapWindow dpy win gc <- liftIO $ createGC dpy win bordergc <- liftIO $ createGC dpy win liftIO $ do Just fgcolor <- initColor dpy $ fgColor conf Just bgcolor <- initColor dpy $ bgColor conf Just bordercolor <- initColor dpy $ borderColor conf setForeground dpy gc bgcolor setBackground dpy gc bgcolor fillRectangle dpy win gc 0 0 (fromIntegral $ head_w + span) (fromIntegral $ head_h + span) setForeground dpy gc fgcolor setBackground dpy gc bgcolor setForeground dpy bordergc bordercolor fillPolygon dpy win gc [p1,p2,p3] convex coordModeOrigin freeGC dpy gc freeGC dpy bordergc -- kill the window forkIO $ do threadDelay(1 * 1000000) unmapWindow dpy win destroyWindow dpy win sync dpy False return ()