Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/mil/foo-wm

A minimal window manager that organizes windows in a tree data structure, provides a socket to send commands to, and nothing more.
https://github.com/mil/foo-wm

Last synced: about 2 months ago
JSON representation

A minimal window manager that organizes windows in a tree data structure, provides a socket to send commands to, and nothing more.

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
foo-wm: Foo Window Manager

============================

Foo Window Manager is a minimalistic window manager that does two things and two things only:



1. Provides a tree data structure in which you can organize windows.

2. Provides a socket for IPC along with a basic DSL for manipulating and traversing the tree.



As a results of *only* doing these two things, `foo-wm` most likely works a bit differently than other window managers you may be acquainted with. Mainly, strangest of all to the newcomer, `foo-wm` **does not provide**: workspaces or keybindings. The former can be emulated through foo-wm's tree and the latter can be provided through any X keybinding program (such as `xbindkeys`).



> A foreword: `foo-wm` should be considered unusable alpha software. I use `foo-wm` on a daily basis, although that doesn't mean you should (unless you are interested in contributing). `foo-wm` doesn't have full support for many basic window managment functions (ICCCM/EWMH). Although, ICCCM/EWMH support is a top priority currently.



### The Makefile will generate:

`foo-wm`: The window manager itself which can be thrown in `.xinitrc`. It is reccomeneded that you start `foo-wm` with a keybindings manager, such as `.xbindkeys`, as it will be very diffucult to interact with `foo-wm`'s socket otherwise. The location and name of the socket, is to be specified in `src/config.h`. If no `SOCKET_NAME`, is specified then a name will be automatically generated based on the PID of the socket in the form of `/tmp/foo-wm-pid.socket`.



`foo-wm-c`: This is a simple and dumb command line client for interacting with `foo-wm`. `foo-wm-c` takes the syntax of `foo-wm-c '/tmp/your-foo-socket.socket' 'ipc command'`. Any language that provides a UNIX socket interface can be used to communicate with `foo-wm`, `foo-wm-c` is just a simple C client for doing so. Additionally a ruby client for interacting with `foo-wm`'s socket can be found at `scrips/client.rb`



The Tree

--------

All operations in `foo-wm` are related to manipulating and the traversal of the tree.  All nodes within the tree are one of two types.



1. **Client** Nodes

	- Just a single  X11 Window

2. **Container** Nodes

    - Holds one or more other **Client** or **Container** Nodes

    - Has a *Layout* property which may be changed with the *layout* IPC command



At any given time using `foo-wm` there are three essential nodes within the tree at play:



1. **Root** Node

    - The top of the tree

    - Issuing a zoom command with a negative delta approximates this node

2. **Focus** Node

    - The node which is currently manipulated on by using IPC commands

    - Issuing a zoom command with a positive delta approximates  this node

3. **View** Node

    - The node which the screen is currently viewing



The FOO-DSL and the Zooming Nature

---------------------------

Now that you understand that all foo-wm does is maintain a tree of windows, now you'll want to know how to mainuplate the windows in the tree. For this, you simply send commands to foo-wm in the specifications provided in `FOO-DSL.md`. 



For example, sending the zoom command through the provided command line client. 

`foo-wm-c '/tmp/foo-wm.socket' 'zoom 2'`



Inspiration

-----------

Inspirations include: 

DWM, monsterwm, catwm, dminiwm, i3, herbstluftwm, wmii, and tinywm



Contributing

------------

Foo Window Manager is very much open to contribution. Please get in touch via email if you are interested or just take a stab at something in `TODO.md` and send a pull request.