Brandon Allbery wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 16:30, Jacek Generowicz wrote:

...

Have you any suggestions on how to configure XMonad so that a single status bar is visible on every visible screen that happens to be connected at any time?

[...] this is simply not possible.

Fair enough. How about getting XMonad to figure out how many screens there are, and to start one on each screen? Maybe even removing/adding them as screens are (dis-)connected? Failing that, how about running a single status bar on the first screen, but being able to toggle struts on that screen even when the focus is on some other screen?

At Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:01:52 -0500, wrote:

Quoting Jacek Generowicz :

...

How about getting XMonad to figure out how many screens there are, and to start one on each screen? Maybe even removing/adding them as screens are (dis-)connected?

Here is a snippet from my xmonad.hs (with a few complicating factors removed):

import XMonad import XMonad.Hooks.DynamicLog import XMonad.Layout.IndependentScreens import XMonad.Util.Run

main = do nScreens <- countScreens hs <- mapM (spawnPipe . xmobarCommand) [0 .. nScreens-1] xmonad $ defaultConfig { logHook = mapM_ dynamicLogWithPP $ zipWith pp hs [0..nScreens] }

xmobarCommand (S s) = unwords ["xmobar", "-x", show s, "-t", "%date%%StdinReader%"] pp h s = marshallPP s defaultPP { ppOutput = hPutStrLn h }

That's great as a starting point. Many thanks. Did marshallPP and defaultPP appear in IndependentScreens between xmonad-contrib versions 0.9.2 and 0.10? Is there an easy way of finding the docs for older versions? As for adapting the number of status bars to the current number of screens, with something like the above in place, it's just a question of restarting xmonad when the screen configuration changes, which would be a workable solution. But if anyone has any suggestions on getting XMonad to spot the change itself, I'd be interested. Thank you.

At Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:08:43 -0500, wrote:

Quoting Jacek Generowicz :

...

Is there an easy way of finding the docs for older versions?

0.9.2 doesn't seem to be available, but 0.9.1 is and should be quite close to the same.

Hmm, I saw that 0.9.2 was missing, and assumed the same was true for all older versions. Sigh. Less haste, more speed.

...

But if anyone has any suggestions on getting XMonad to spot the change itself, I'd be interested.

Look into the eventHook. I believe clients are sent a message when the number of screens change. Supposedly, xmonad itself has some machinery for spotting this kind of thing, so you may be able to crib some code from core.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll file this for the long-term future. I used your code as inspiration for: main = do nScreens <- countScreens xmobars <- mapM (spawnPipe . xmobarCommand) [0 .. nScreens-1] dzens <- mapM (spawnPipe . dzenCommand) [1 .. nScreens] xmonad myConfig { logHook = updatePointer (Relative 1 1) >> mapM_ (dynamicLogWithPP . (bindPPoutput myDzenPP)) dzens >> mapM_ (dynamicLogWithPP . (bindPPoutput sjanssenPP)) xmobars } xmobarCommand (S n) = "xmobar -x " ++ show n dzenCommand (S n) = "dzen2 -e 'onstart=lower' -xs " ++ show n bindPPoutput pp h = pp { ppOutput = hPutStrLn h } With this, I just have to hit 'Mod-q' after the number of screens changes, to get the right number of status bars. This is such a trivial glitch compared the major configuration issues I have yet to resolve, that I'm perfectly happy with this solution at the moment. Thanks for your help.