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797 lines
32 KiB
TeX
797 lines
32 KiB
TeX
%guide to wmii-3
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%Copyright (C) 2005, 2006 by Steffen Liebergeld, Salva Peir\'o
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%This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
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%modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
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%as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2
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%This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
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%but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
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%MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
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%GNU General Public License for more details.
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%You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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%along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
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%Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
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%02110-1301, USA.
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\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article} %options given to article are inherited to all packages
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\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
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\usepackage[left=3cm,top=2cm,right=2cm,bottom=3cm]{geometry}
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%\usepackage{ngerman}
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\usepackage{times}
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\usepackage{indentfirst,html,moreverb}
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% remove this if you want, it's just a matter of imposed imperialist cultures
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% so if I'm given the chance to choose I choose to indent the first paragraph
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% (I learn this way in the school, and don't want to relearn the british way)
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%% welcome to the the dirty hacks section
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\newcommand{\hrefx}[1]{\href{#1}{#1}} % explicit \href
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% un'% below so latex2html can handle refs correctly (until a better solution is found)
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%\renewcommand{\href}[2]{\htmladdnormallink{#2}{#1}}
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%\renewcommand{\hrefx}[1]{\htmladdnormallink{#1}{#1}}
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%\renewcommand{\verbatiminput}[1]{\input{#1}}
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%\usepackage[dvipdfm]{hyperref} % disable clickable refs
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\newenvironment{itemize*}
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{\begin{itemize}
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\setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}
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\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}}
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{\end{itemize}}
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\date{\today}
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\author{
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Steffen\\Liebergeld \\\\
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\small{with help from}\\
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Salvador\\Peir\'o
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}
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\title{A Guide to wmii-3%
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\thanks{Thanks to the wmii community in particular all the people in the Credits section}
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}
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%\email{stepardo@gmail.com \and saoret.one@gmail.com}
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\begin{document}
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\maketitle
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\tableofcontents
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\newpage
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\section{Abstract}
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\subsection{Who brought this to you}
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This guide was written by Steffen Liebergeld, who got lots of help
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from Salvador Peir\'o and a patch from Jochen Schwartz.
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\subsection{The purpose of this document}
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This document tries to be a good starting point for people new to
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wmii-3. People who have used wmi, wmii-2.5 or even ion will get
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to know what is new and different in wmii-3, and people who have
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never used a tiling window manager before will fall in love with
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the new concept.
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\subsection{Wmii - the second generation of window manager improved}
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Wmii-3 is a new kind of window manager. It is designed to have a
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small memory footprint, be extremely modularised and have as
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little code as possible, thus ensuring as few bugs as possible. In
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fact, one of our official goal is to not to exceed $10 K$ lines of
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code~\footnote{
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the $10 K$ SLOC restriction benefits that it's easier
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to read/understand, thus it's easier to use and get used to it.}.
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Wmii tries to be very portable and to give the user as many
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freedom as possible.
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Wmii-3 is the third mayor release of the second generation of the
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window manager improved~\footnote{ the ii is actually a roman
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letter for the number 2.}. Wmii first introduced a new paradigm
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in version 2.5, namely the dynamic window management, that
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overcomes the limitations imposed by the WIMP paradigm (see also
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the companion \emph{wmii.tex}).
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\subsection{Target audience}
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I presume the reader already has experience with Unix, knows all
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the basic terminology and concepts like files or editors.
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I hope you are open minded against new ideas, and willing to spend
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some time learning it~\footnote{remember the refrain: ``nobody can
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teach you what you don't want to know''.}.
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If you only want to know how to operate wmii-3 and are not
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interested in the inner workings or in scripting, you may read the
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chapters ``Configuration and install'', ``Terminology'' and
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``First steps'' and skip the rest.
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However, to get the most out of wmii-3 you should possibly read
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the whole document. Another possibility is to read the
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introductory chapters first, use some time to get settled in the
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wmii-world and read the scripting chapters later on.
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\section{Configuration and install}
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\subsection{Obtaining wmii}
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Wmii is licensed under the MIT/X Consortium License, which
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basically means it is free software, and you are free to download
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from \hrefx{http://wmii.de} free of charge~\footnote{ please have
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a look at \hrefx{http://wmii.de/repos/wmii/LICENSE.} for
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details}.
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\subsection{Configuration and Installation}
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First of all, have a look if there are binary packages of wmii in
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your distribution. Debian, Ubuntu and gentoo should already have
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good packages. If you found a package to trust, you may now safely
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skip this paragraph.
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For all those who are still reading this, let me tell you you are
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on the good side because if you grab the sources and compile them
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you'll benefit from having everything in it's original place, so
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it'll ease your use of wmii.
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\begin{enumerate}
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\item Uninstalling a previous version:
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\begin{verbatim}
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cd /path/to/wmii-previous
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make uninstall && make clean
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\end{verbatim}
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In case you're installing a newer version of wmii, this is the
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first thing you should do otherwise you'll end up messing
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binaries, configuration files and manual-pages of different and
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thus incompatible versions, to do this run the above commands.
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\item Unpack it:
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\begin{verbatim}
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tar xzf wmii-3.tar.gz
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cd wmii-3
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\end{verbatim}
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\item Edit the configuration:
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\begin{verbatim}
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vim config.mk
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\end{verbatim}
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The most important variable to set is the \verb+PREFIX+, which
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states, where you want wmii-3 to be installed to.
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\item Run make and make install:
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\begin{verbatim}
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make && make install
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\end{verbatim}
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\item Instruct the X-Server to start wmii as your default window
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manager. You may do that by editing the file \emph{\~{}/.xinitrc}.
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\begin{verbatim}
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#!/bin/sh
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exec wmii
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\end{verbatim}
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Make sure that the \emph{\~{}/.xinitrc} is executable:
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\begin{verbatim}
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chmod u+x ~/.xinitrc
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\end{verbatim}
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\end{enumerate}
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And you are finished. Please note that we do not use the autoconf
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tools for various reasons, you may read about it here~\footnote{
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\hrefx{http://www.ohse.de/uwe/articles/aal.html} \linebreak[1] and
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\hrefx{http://lists.cse.psu.edu/archives/9fans/2003-November/029714.html}
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} . Please don't ask us to use autoconf, we won't do it.
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\section{Terminology}
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Before you actually start doing your first steps in wmii, we have to
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make sure we are both talking about the same things. So here is some
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terminology.
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\subsection{Clients}
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A client is a program, that draws a window to the
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screen~\footnote{ Actually it is the program that requests the
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X-server to draw the window. But never mind;-)}. For example your
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browser or your xterm is a client.
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\subsection{Focus}
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In X11, exactly one client gets the users input. If you write some
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command in your xterm, this xterm has the focus, whereas all the
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other windows do not receive/react on the input you
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give~\footnote{ Actually this is not precise at all, because some
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programs catch input before it is sent to the focused client. But
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you do not need to care about this.}. We will say from now on,
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that the xterm has the focus.
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\subsection{Events}
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Events are generated by your input. For example when you click
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into a window, that is an event. Events are used for example to
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interact with the window manager. You will see how this works
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later on.
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\subsection{Tags}
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Tags are names/labels you can give for clients. That allows you to
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group clients. In wmii, there are no workspaces anymore. Instead,
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we simply show only one tag at one time. Thus, if you name a
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client "web-browser" and request the wm to only show the tag
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"web-browser", you will only see that one client. If you tag a
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xterm with the same tag, it will also be shown, when your first
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client with the tag "web-browser" is visible. It is also possible
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to give clients multiple tags, but more on this later.
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\subsection{View}
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The view concept refers to the tags that you want to view at a
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given time, so when you request the window manager to only show
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windows with one particular tag, you may call this a view. You
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might imagine, that this somehow resembles the "workspace" of
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other window managers.
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You might have different views with only one of them visible at a
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particular time. Thus, the concept of ``view'' is completely
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virtual.
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Views are defined by the tags only, so if you don't have a tag of
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a particular name, you don't have a view of that name. Similarly,
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if you destroy the last client with one tag, the view with the
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same name also gets destroyed.
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\subsection{Column}
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In wmii, you are able to divide each view into different columns,
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which are distinct parts of the screen, divided by an invisible
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line between each other. You should be aware, that every column
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holds at least one client. As soon as you close the last client of
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a column, the column will be destroyed.
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Please be aware, that every view has at least one column.
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\subsection{Layout}
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You may order clients in a column in three different ways. The
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first, which is also the default, is to give each window equally
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much vertical space in a column. The second is to have each client
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maximised in the column, showing only one of them at a time, while
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hiding the others. And last but not least you may have the clients
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stacked, which means to have one client use as much space as
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possible and to show only the title-bars of the other windows.
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\section{Getting started}
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It is now time to start diving into the wmii user experience. I
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suggest you to try the things I describe yourself immediately
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instead of first reading it, forgetting half of it and then trying
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to start. It is very helpful if you have this document printed out
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or have it on a different machine, since you won't be able to view
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it during your first steps in wmii.
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On a special note, the \emph{MOD} key I am referring to may resemble
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different keys on different platforms. It is what X knows as the
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\emph{Mod1} or \emph{Alt} key. Probably this is the key labelled with
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\emph{Alt} at the left of the space-bar on your keyboard.
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The notation \emph{MOD}-\emph{Key} means to press \emph{MOD}, hold
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it and to press \emph{Key}.
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All key combinations may be freely configured, but for the sake of
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simplicity I'll stick with the default bindings for this
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introduction. You may find out how to alter the bindings in the
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section \ref{sec:scripting}.
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\subsection{First steps}
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You may now start your X session. Since it is the first time you
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start wmii, a window with a little tutorial will show up. You are
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free to read it, but you may also follow the beginners guide :-)
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First of all, press \emph{MOD-Enter} to start an xterm. It will
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take half of the vertical space, so you now have two equally big
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windows. If you press \emph{MOD-Enter} again, you have three
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windows that are equally big.
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To switch between the three windows, you may now press
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\emph{MOD-j}, which cycles the focus between the three windows.
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You may also press \emph{MOD-k} to switch to the window above or
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\emph{MOD-j} to switch to the window below the current.
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Now have a look at the title-bars of those windows. They show some
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important information: the first term is the name of the tag of
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the window. Then, after the vertical line (the pipe symbol) wmii
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shows the title of the window.
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The same information is also shown on the menu-bar. The first
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things are names of the different tags you gave to your windows,
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with the current view highlighted. Then it shows the title of the
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focused window. On the right side it shows some system status
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information like the load and the current time (see subsection~%
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\ref{subsec:status} for details).
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\subsection{Using Columns}
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As you know wmii uses columns to align your windows. Even now,
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that you didn't really see it your view already consists of one
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maximised column. The next step is to create a new column.
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In wmii columns are defined by its clients. Thus you need a client
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to create a new column. That is why you may now focus a client of
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your choice and press \emph{MOD-Shift-l}. As you see, wmii created
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a new column by dividing the view horizontally in two equally big
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spaces. The last focused client has been put into the new column.
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If you close the last window of a column, the column will vanish
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immediately. And when the last column is gone, the view will be
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removed accordingly.
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It should be clear, that you really need at least two clients to
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have two columns.
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If you press \emph{MOD-j} to change focus, you will see that wmii
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actually cycles the focus in the current column only. That is why
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you need commands to change the current column.
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In wmii you may use \emph{MOD-l} to change to the column on the
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right and \emph{MOD-h} to change to the column on the left.
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It is also possible to make a client swap columns. To move a
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client to the column on the left, press \emph{MOD-Control-h} and
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to move it to the right column, press \emph{MOD-Control-l}.
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\subsection{What about layouts}
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Layouts are different methods of how to align windows in a
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column. They apply only to one column each. Thus it is possible to
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have different columns in one view, each having another layout.
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The default layout is to give each client in the column equally
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much vertical space. You may enable this layout with \emph{MOD-d}
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(where the ``d'' stands for default).
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Another layout is the stacked layout. You enable stacking by
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\emph{MOD-s}. As you see now, there in only one client using as
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much space as possible, whereas you only see the title-bars of the
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other clients in the column. You may still switch between the
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clients in the column using \emph{MOD-j}.
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The third layout is the max-layout, which maximises all the
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clients to use all the space in the column each. Only the focused
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client is visible and the other are hidden behind. You may still
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switch between those clients with \emph{MOD-j}.
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\subsection{Float pages}
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You may have asked yourself how classical clients, consisting of
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multiple windows fit into the picture.
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Well, they don't. But wmii has a solution to make the usable
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nevertheless. For clients like the Gimp or xmms there is a special
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mode, which has completely different semantics.
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While wmii is a dynamic window manager, which really takes all the
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work of positioning and aligning clients from you, those old
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fashioned programs rely on the old window managing concept, where
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all the clients fly around on the desktop and the user has to tell
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them where to stay. We have the term floating windows for this
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rule.
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To come to the point: wmii also allows you to use floating
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clients. You may enable floating mode for a window by focusing it
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and pressing \emph{MOD-Space}. You may bring it back into a column
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(the column it came from) by pressing \emph{MOD-Shift-Space}.
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As a side note, this floating mode is actually the zeroth column
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internally. That is why there is not much special internal
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handling needed.
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\subsection{Tags}
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Up to now all your clients had the tag ``1'', and you only had
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this one view. It is obvious that having only one view might
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become a problem if there are too many clients cluttering it and
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making it a pure mess. Also you might want to have a view with
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your editor and your programming tools and another with your
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browser and a third with your music jukebox.
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The good news is, that with the concept of tags and views this is
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actually possible.
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You may give the focused client another tag by pressing
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\emph{MOD-Shift-Number}, number being one of the numbers 1 to 9.
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You can then switch views by pressing \emph{MOD-Number}.
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Whenever a new client is created, it automatically gets the tag of
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the current view.
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%% TODO: better tag handling (this is about to change in wmii till
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%%version 3)
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For the moment I just tell you, that there are further
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possibilities with tags, but they are mostly accessible with
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advanced techniques, you will learn in the next chapter. You will
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then be able to assign multiple tags to one client and to use
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proper strings as tags.
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\subsection{How do I close a window}
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Well, first of all every X-Client should have an option to close a
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window. But -as Murphy said- the world isn't like it should
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be. Thus, the Window Manager has to provide a fix for this. In
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wmii, we abandoned silly title-bar buttons and created a shortcut
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\emph{MOD-Shift-c} to close a window.
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\subsection{How do I start programs}
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You may start programs out of a xterm. But in wmii, there is a
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special program launcher, which is accessible per
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\emph{MOD-p}. Please note, that the logic behind this program
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launcher is mainly implemented in a shell-script.
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You will see a list of programs. If you now start to type, the
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launcher will cut that list to only show programs whose names
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include the letters you typed (in that order). Whenever there is
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only one option left, the launcher chooses it and you can start it
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by pressing \emph{Enter}. You are free to cancel any action by
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pressing \emph{ESC}.
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Thus, if you want to start firefox, just type ``fire'' and press
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enter\footnote{On my system it is sufficient to type ``efo'' to
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start firefox;-)}.
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\section{Looking under the hood}
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In this chapter you will learn how wmii was designed, which ideas
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the wmii developers followed and how it was implemented.
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\subsection{Dynamic window management}
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Wmii was designed around the new idea of dynamic window
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management. Dynamic window management means, that the window
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manager should make all the decisions about where to place a new
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client itself, thus taking all the extra work from the user and
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letting him concentrate on his work.
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\subsection{Modularity - using distinct tools for distinct tasks}
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The developers of wmii know about the most powerful ideas of
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Unix. One of them is the idea to use distinct tools for distinct
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tasks. By carefully designing the window manager, we were able to
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split the task into two smaller binaries, each with a distinct
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job.
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\subsection{The glue that puts it all together - 9p}
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Programs in Unix have several different possibilities to exchange
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information, the most powerful being sockets.
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To create a lightweight but powerful communication protocol, we
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looked closely at the design of Plan9 and chose the 9P2000
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protocol.
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The basic ideas for configuring and running wmii were taken from
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Plan9 too. Like in Plan9, everything configurable in wmii has a
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file-like interface, so everything is accessed consistently Thus,
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if you want to interact with a running wmii, you may access those
|
|
files either using the shipped tool \emph{wmiir} or - if you use
|
|
9p2000 - you may also mount the virtual file-system of wmii under
|
|
some directory in the hierarchy maintained by the OS kernel.
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Tools}
|
|
|
|
This section gives an little overview of the tools that wmii, but
|
|
for more detailed explanations you should read the man page of each
|
|
tool, that comes with wmii.
|
|
|
|
\begin{description}
|
|
|
|
\item
|
|
\emph{wmiir} is a little tool we use to alter the files in the
|
|
virtual file-system of wmii. It basically has four operations:
|
|
|
|
\begin{itemize*}
|
|
\item read
|
|
\item write
|
|
\item remove
|
|
\item create
|
|
\end{itemize*}
|
|
|
|
Wmiir needs to know the address of the file-system to work
|
|
on, so on startup wmii sets the environment variable
|
|
\verb+WMIIR_ADDRESS+ to make sure any tool wanting to
|
|
communicate with wmiiwm know it's file-system address.
|
|
This address can be:
|
|
\begin{itemize*}
|
|
\item a local unix address given with \verb+unix!/path/to/socket+
|
|
\item a tcp address given with \verb+tcp!hostname:port+
|
|
\end{itemize*}
|
|
|
|
If you want to work on another file-system, you may specify it
|
|
manually with the switch \emph{-a address}. A sample invocation
|
|
would look like the following:
|
|
\begin{verbatim}
|
|
wmiir read /
|
|
\end{verbatim}
|
|
This command actually prints the root of the virtual file-system
|
|
of wmii.
|
|
|
|
\item
|
|
\emph{wmiimenu} is a generic X11 menu. It is highly adaptable,
|
|
efficient and supports user-defined contents. You may want to
|
|
learn more about it by reading the man-page.
|
|
|
|
\item
|
|
\emph{wmiiwarp} is a little tool to position the mouse pointer to
|
|
different places. It only takes two coordinates as arguments.
|
|
|
|
\item
|
|
\emph{wmiiwm} is the main window manager binary. You may interact
|
|
with its virtual file-system only.
|
|
|
|
\item
|
|
\emph{wmiipsel} prints the contents of the X clipboard to
|
|
STDOUT. This is useful for scripts.
|
|
|
|
\end{description}
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Conclusion}
|
|
|
|
By having the virtual file-system and a lightweight protocol to
|
|
fit our tools together, we are now able to fully script our window
|
|
manager. You will see some examples in the section
|
|
\ref{sec:scripting}.
|
|
|
|
\section{Scripting wmii}
|
|
\label{sec:scripting}
|
|
|
|
In this chapter you will see how to script wmii. I will give you
|
|
some notes so you can start scripting on your own.
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Language}
|
|
|
|
As you've seen the only requirement for interacting with wmii is
|
|
to do operations on wmii's file-system hierarchy, and the easiest
|
|
way to do this need is by using wmiir, so shell scripting is the
|
|
easiest way of adapting wmii too fit your needs.
|
|
|
|
Given the above, you may script wmii in any programming language
|
|
you want. However, wmii's default scripts are written in a subset
|
|
of ``sh'' that is POSIX compliant so wmii is \emph{portable}. As
|
|
we don't need more complexity and wanted to give examples that
|
|
worked everywhere without dependencies on python, tcl, ruby, \dots
|
|
thus the following examples will stick with the well known ``sh''.
|
|
|
|
% - who doesn't have a shell?, extra! we're giving them for free this week
|
|
|
|
\subsection{actions}
|
|
|
|
In wmii you may group certain tasks into \emph{actions}. Actions
|
|
are nothing more than simple scripts which are located either in
|
|
your local or in the default wmii configuration
|
|
directory~\footnote{ \texttt{\$CONFPREFIX} is set in
|
|
\emph{config.mk} and by default points to \texttt{/usr/local/etc}
|
|
or \texttt{~/.wmii-3} if you have such a directory}.
|
|
By pressing \emph{MOD-a} you can open the actions-menu. If works
|
|
similar to the program launcher, but only shows actions.
|
|
|
|
You might want to add your own actions by writing shell scripts
|
|
and putting them into the right directory. For this you should
|
|
place a copy of the default action from the default wmii
|
|
configuration directory to your \texttt{\~{}/.wmii-3}, this way
|
|
your local copy will be executed instead.
|
|
|
|
This works because in the \emph{wmii} launcher script alters and
|
|
exports the variable \verb+$PATH+ as\\
|
|
\verb+$PATH=~/.wmii-3:$CONFPREFIX/wmii:$PATH+ before
|
|
launching the wmiiwm, this way local user actions under
|
|
\verb+~/.wmii-3+ take precedence over the defaults from
|
|
\verb+$CONFPREFIX/wmii+ of the default actions.
|
|
|
|
You may edit this file on the fly, which means you don't need to
|
|
stop wmii before editing. After you've finished editing, you may
|
|
simply run wmiirc and the changes will take effect, to do so just
|
|
open the actions menu (via \emph{MOD-a}) and choose the
|
|
\emph{action}.
|
|
|
|
\subsection{wmiirc}
|
|
|
|
\emph{wmiirc} is a special ``sh''-script which is run on startup
|
|
of wmii, it's name is the result of ${}wmiirc=wmii+rc$~\footnote{
|
|
see \hrefx{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rc}.} , so as it's name
|
|
says takes care of running a set of commands for configuring
|
|
wmii. It does so by setting up the initial file-system, writing
|
|
some values to certain files and then enters the handling event
|
|
loop to react on events like key-presses, mouse clicks or
|
|
artificial events.
|
|
|
|
For the basic configuration of wmii, as changing the default
|
|
modifier key \emph{MOD=Mod1} or the navigation keys (by default
|
|
the \emph{hjkl} vim home row) this is probably the place to look
|
|
at.
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Changing the looks}
|
|
|
|
The look of wmii-3 is determined by colours only. And because we
|
|
wanted small and unimportant things to be as unobstrusive as
|
|
possible, we used another virtue of unix: \emph{Environment
|
|
variables}.
|
|
|
|
\begin{verbatim}
|
|
WMII_SELCOLORS='#000000 #eaffff #8888cc'
|
|
WMII_NORMCOLORS='#000000 #ffffea #bdb76b'
|
|
WMII_FONT=static
|
|
\end{verbatim}
|
|
|
|
\verb+WMII_SELCOLORS+ define the colours of the selected clients
|
|
window title and border, whereas \verb+WMII_NORMCOLORS+ defines
|
|
the colours of all the other clients. The numbers are hexadecimal
|
|
rgb, which you might know from html. You might get them with the
|
|
Gimps colour-chooser.
|
|
|
|
The definitions are as follows: the first is the colour of the
|
|
strings in bars and menus. The second is the main colour of bars
|
|
borders, whereas the third defines the borders and is used for the
|
|
3d-effects of title-bars and menus.
|
|
|
|
\verb+WMII_FONT+ accepts font names or full font strings, which
|
|
you might get from xfontsel. It defines the font to be used in
|
|
titlebars, status-bar and in wmiimenu.
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Filling the status-bar}
|
|
|
|
\label{subsec:status}
|
|
The status bar of wmii, has it's own directory \verb+/bar+ with
|
|
one subdirectory for each of the labels created. So while editing
|
|
this document the status-bar looked like:
|
|
|
|
\begin{verbatim}
|
|
$ wmiir read /bar
|
|
d-r-x------ salva salva 0 Mon Apr 17 14:19:51 2006 1
|
|
d-r-x------ salva salva 0 Mon Apr 17 14:19:51 2006 2
|
|
d-r-x------ salva salva 0 Mon Apr 17 14:19:51 2006 status
|
|
\end{verbatim}
|
|
|
|
At the same time each of the subdirectories contains two files,
|
|
|
|
\begin{verbatim}
|
|
$ wmiir read /bar/status
|
|
--rw------- salva salva 23 Mon Apr 17 14:22:14 2006 colors
|
|
--rw------- salva salva 23 Mon Apr 17 14:22:14 2006 data
|
|
\end{verbatim}
|
|
|
|
|
|
The first file contains the colour definitions that control how the
|
|
bar will be painted(appearance), while the second holds the data
|
|
to show (content).
|
|
|
|
So you can start your own experiments by creating a new label, and
|
|
explore and modify it by reading \& writing values to it's
|
|
\verb+colors+ \& \verb+data+ files. A nice feature of the bar
|
|
(and clients) is that they generate events corresponding to mouse
|
|
clicks on them. So you can open a terminal and launch
|
|
\verb+wmiir read /event+ and and see how the events are generated
|
|
when you click the bar, this is a mechanism that allows
|
|
controlling applications directly from the bar, when you've
|
|
finished, and don't want to look the \verb+foo+ label, just issue
|
|
a \verb+wmiir remove /bar/foo+.
|
|
|
|
If you want to know more take a look at the status script, also
|
|
look the pages at \hrefx{http://wmii.de} for good examples, some
|
|
useful ideas that are already written:
|
|
|
|
\begin{itemize*}
|
|
\item \emph{status}: monitoring remaining battery, temperature,\dots on laptops
|
|
\item \emph{status-mpd}: controlling the running mpd
|
|
\item \emph{status-load}: show the machine load
|
|
\item \emph{status-net}: monitoring wireless network signal
|
|
\end{itemize*}
|
|
|
|
And last read the default status script and ask yourself: what it
|
|
does? \verbatiminput{../rc/status} The first line is a
|
|
\verb+xwrite+ function declaration, to save us from typing a lot,
|
|
all it does is to issue a write over the file named by first
|
|
argument. The following 3 lines take care of creating and setting
|
|
up the \verb+status+ label. And the last section is a \verb+while+
|
|
loop that \emph{tries} to write the machine's load and date
|
|
information to the bar.\\
|
|
|
|
The tricky bit here is \emph{tries}, so what could make the write
|
|
fail?, what would happen if \verb+xwrite+ wrote to a non existent
|
|
(removed) label, then it would fail, thus the condition of the
|
|
loop would be false, and the status script would end cleanly, that
|
|
makes sense because who want a program that updates a nonexistent
|
|
label.\\
|
|
|
|
Now if we go back to the first lines of the script you can see
|
|
that there is a \verb+sleep delay+ between the removal of the
|
|
label and it's creation.
|
|
|
|
This ensures that the \verb+status+ label will not exist, so all
|
|
the writes made from a any previously running \verb+status+ script
|
|
to it will fail, so they will finish.This way we make sure that we
|
|
only run one at each time. And thus we keep the one-to-one
|
|
correspondence between label and status script.\\
|
|
|
|
Now if you think that was neat, go to a public library and pick up
|
|
a copy of for example:
|
|
|
|
% \href{http://tpop.awl.com}{The Practice of Programming} (recall I don't get a cent for this).
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Assigning new tags}
|
|
|
|
As I told you before, you can do much more things with tags than
|
|
what you can do with the standard key-bindings. You might use any
|
|
string as a tag. You may even use more than one tag per client. To
|
|
do so, you have to separate the tags with a `` ''.
|
|
|
|
\begin{verbatim}
|
|
echo -n web code | wmiir write /view/sel/sel/tags
|
|
\end{verbatim}
|
|
|
|
This command would give the current focused client the tags
|
|
``web'' and ``code''.
|
|
|
|
You may now go to the new view web by executing the following:
|
|
|
|
\begin{verbatim}
|
|
echo -n view web | wmiir write /ctl
|
|
\end{verbatim}
|
|
|
|
As the development of wmii-3 prograssed, it became clear that this
|
|
action is so common, that it got its own keybinding. By default
|
|
\emph{MOD-t} brings up a menu to choose a view and
|
|
\emph{MOD-Shift-t} brings up a menu enabling you to assign new
|
|
tags to the focused client.
|
|
|
|
\section{The End}
|
|
|
|
We hope this has eased your way through wmii, because this is the
|
|
purpose of this document and so, if you've seen something that you
|
|
thing it's wrong, confusion or missing in this document, feel free
|
|
to drop us a note, by the way you consider convenient:
|
|
\href{http://wmii.de/index.php/BeginnersGuide}{direct mail},
|
|
\href{http://wmii.de/index.php/MailingList}{[wmii]} mailing-list,
|
|
\href{http://wmii.de/index.php/IRC}{\#wmii} irc channel or even
|
|
with smoke signals~\footnote{ but don't ask us for advice, here
|
|
you're on your own \texttt{;-P}.}.
|
|
|
|
Also remember that wmii is written by people with taste, so most
|
|
of the decisions made, have strong reasons supporting them, so if
|
|
you think something doesn't make sense in the picture just try to
|
|
understand it first by yourself before asking, probably you'll end
|
|
up learning a lot and if in the end it's wrong you'll provide
|
|
better feedback to solve the issue.
|
|
|
|
\newpage
|
|
|
|
\section{Copyright notice}
|
|
|
|
guide to wmii-3\\
|
|
Copyright (C) 2005, 2006 by Steffen Liebergeld, Salva Peir\'o
|
|
|
|
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
|
|
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
|
|
the Free Software Foundation, version 2
|
|
|
|
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
|
|
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
|
|
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
|
|
General Public License for more details.
|
|
|
|
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
|
|
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
|
|
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
|
|
02110-1301, USA.
|
|
|
|
\end{document}
|