Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

Unia · 2013-12-07 00:24:35

Woohoo I contributed

bgc1954 · 2013-12-07 05:31:55

Trilby,

Actually, to increase the depth of the ellipse surrounding the tag, status/clock I ended up going the other way

status offset          =  2.00 2.00 -4.0 -4.0 5.0

to make it work for me. I still can't get the Super+Tab to switch windows in monocle mode. Maybe I need the J/k option keybinding?

Trilby · 2013-12-07 12:14:04

Oh, no, the default bindings wouldn't have Mod+tab cycle between windows. That toggles between the first container and another container. In monocle mode, there is only one container. keys "h" or "l" (mod, then h or l) move focus through windows in the container. Right now there is not way to simply cycle through visible windows, but there will be soon as this will be built into the macro language.

bgc1954 · 2013-12-07 20:10:19

Thx Trilby,

That makes sense and I now have switching bound to Mod+L/R arrow keys like I'm used to and working well. I guess I was just confused that bstack switched from top to bottom with Mod+Tab. Reading your notes clearly explains things. Another PEBKAC.

Just noticed a problem that existed at one point in v2 where in monocle mode, having two windows open and seeing a long title from left tab writing past the end of the tab and into right tab.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2013-12-07 20:10:39)

Trilby · 2013-12-08 00:21:40

Yup, shortening titles is on the to do list still (ok, not actually on the list itself, but commented in code). And the keboard and chair are mine - I don't expect this to make much sense until I get proper documentation together as v3 does many things different from v2.

I've also just noticed a window focus/raising issue in monocle mode. It seems the focused window isn't always brought to the front when several windows are 'collapsed' into the single container. (edit: fixed)

Also, the most annoying current bug is an intermittent flash of all the bars. I'm pretty sure this is because I couldn't find a good way to have pseudo-transparency and double-buffering (the latter is absolutely necessary for smooth display), but a means to do this came to me yesterday ... it will take some rearrangement of things though, so it won't be on git for a while. (edit: fixed)

Last edited by Trilby (2013-12-08 21:00:43)

Greduan · 2013-12-11 18:37:45

Hey guys I'm back on Arch, finally! Dunno if you remember me but I hope you do.

I just tried installing Alopex from the alopex-git AUR package and it gives me the following error when I run makepkg:

==> Making package: alopex-git 2.298.83c9581-1 (Wed Dec 11 12:34:27 CST 2013)
==> Checking runtime dependencies...
==> Checking buildtime dependencies...
==> Retrieving sources...
  -> Updating alopex git repo...
Fetching origin
==> Validating source files with sha256sums...
    alopex ... Skipped
==> Extracting sources...
  -> Creating working copy of alopex git repo...
Cloning into 'alopex'...
done.
Branch makepkg set up to track remote branch version2 from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'makepkg'
==> Starting pkgver()...
==> Starting prepare()...
  -> Using config from /home/eduan/.config/alopex/config.h
  -> Check the default config.h for changes
==> Removing existing pkg/ directory...
==> Starting build()...
alopex.c: In function ‘configurenotify’:
alopex.c:212:6: error: ‘ignore_root_resize’ undeclared (first use in this function)
  if (ignore_root_resize) return;
      ^
alopex.c:212:6: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in
alopex.c: In function ‘toggle’:
alopex.c:499:26: error: ‘ignore_root_resize’ undeclared (first use in this function)
  else if (arg[0] == 'r') ignore_root_resize = !ignore_root_resize;
                          ^
Makefile:10: recipe for target 'alopex' failed
make: *** [alopex] Error 1
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...

I imagine it's probably that my config file is out of date but it doesn't seem to be the case when I read back through what I missed. I also get the same error if I use something like pacaur, so it doesn't to be that I'm missing a step or something similar...

Also looking forward to that new version. Might test it out once I'm in a comfortable environment again.

Last edited by Greduan (2013-12-11 19:39:07)

Trilby · 2013-12-11 20:58:08

Greduan wrote:

I imagine it's probably that my config file is out of date

That's exactly what it is. Add the new variable to your config, or merge it in from the config.h that comes with version 2.

Greduan · 2013-12-11 21:51:51

Got it. Missed that commit. Thanks!

I read about what's coming in version 3.x and I'm not sure if I missed it or you didn't mention it, but is there going to be support for a statusbar? I don't remember how it's called but you know, where stuff like the DropBox icon and stuff appear.

It's been a previously requested feature but I can't seem to find any post I made about it. Anyway I think you know what I mean.

Seeing how you seem to be doing a revamp to the whole interface, thought it was worth asking.

Last edited by Greduan (2013-12-11 22:00:14)

Greduan · 2013-12-11 23:21:33

Can I just say that Alopex is the greatest thing. I cannot believe I actually went months without it. It's so good!

Trilby · 2013-12-12 01:18:41

Thanks. There will three ways of having status information in version 3.

1) Use the built in status bars. These will be good for information display and notifications, but will not be suitable to tray applications.

2) Add space to the built in status bar(s) and just run a different system-tray or other tool in that space (this is the same as in version 2).

3) Reserve some screen space that alopex will not manage (along any screen edge(s)) that can be filled by a different bar of your choice. This isn't implemented just yet, but it will be a very easy bit to add once I get around to it. Smoothing out the major show-stopper bugs is a higher priority right now.

For a lazy progress report, I've completely replaced v2 with v3 on my home computer and am about half and half on the work computer. This means I'm motivated to hack away at every bug I find. The biggest remaining one is error checking the "key chains" or commands. Right now many poorly formed command strings can lead to a complete hang in v3 - this is the only complete show-stopper that makes me advise against anyone really using v3 yet for anything other than sampling a preview. Once that is fixed, there are still many nice bits and pieces to put together, but nothing that should really hinder functionality. Oh, and of course docs are needed still.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-12-12 01:53:05)

Greduan · 2013-12-12 02:57:43

OK, it seems the options are still the same as with v2 I think. And yeah I'm looking for a tray for applications.

I would have no problem with making a big space and putting some kind of tray application there but I have one concern with that, what happens when the tray grows bigger than that space? It overlaps over Alopex stuff right? I don't like wasting space either so giving it a big area that would never get used isn't ideal either.

I still haven't tried v3 so I'm not sure how the GUI looks and how it would work with it...

Trilby · 2013-12-12 03:23:34

It would be pretty easy to add an optional spacer element to the status bar format. But this would require some way of getting size information from the tray application. I know nothing of trays, except that I used to eat lunches off of them.

Greduan · 2013-12-12 03:42:55

All right. Well I'll find a way. Maybe put it in a corner where it doesn't interfere with anything. Who knows.

bgc1954 · 2013-12-12 18:04:21

Trilby,

I noticed you worked on some sort of focusing issue in monocle mode in version 3. I was trying it out today and see that the h/l options which used to work for me switching in monocle mode now does nothing. Something else I need to do--or is it just you breaking things again as you're fixing others?

BTW, I really like the new looks--very smooth looking tabs, etc.

Edit: Also noticed focusing issues in gimp as can't export files as you can't change the file name in the window--greyed out instead of blue. More todo I guess.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2013-12-12 18:25:24)

Trilby · 2013-12-12 18:42:10

j/k focus the next/previous container, h/l focus the next/previous window within the container. But I may not have put the bit in the key bindings to handle monocle mode when the first container would otherwise only have one client window. If you only ever use monocle mode, you can set the config option under containers: "count = 999" so the first container will always hold all the windows. I will eventually have this account for monocle mode even when the first container only holds one client. Even then these are 'command mode' keys, so you'd have to press and release the mod key, then hit j or l (then either hit enter or wait until the delay passes - default delay is 500ms). You can make more "traditional" bindings by adding lines under bindings: " Super j = j"

The focus issue is known. Sadly there are three entirely different focus mechanisms used in X and all three have to be dealt with. For now, the dialog windows can be accessed if you Mod+mouse 1/3 to move/resize the window a bit - then they will properly get focus.

As for the "look and feel" you can see a couple options. If you don't have any config file in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alopex/ or $HOME/.config/alopex, then you can start alopex with "exec alopex icecap" or "exec alopex tundra" to see the first to included themes. Alternatively, you can "cp /usr/share/alopex/config.tundra ~/.config/alopex/config" to modify and use that theme. Of course that file will not be in /usr/share/ unless you've fully installed alopex v3, which I wouldn't really recommend just yet - it is also in the github repo under 'share'.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-12-12 18:47:20)

bgc1954 · 2013-12-12 19:31:37

Yes, I see 'command mode' with h/l works, although with a slight delay. It seems to be a keybinding issue as I had it working with Alt+Left/Right keys just a few days ago. The "count = 999" option does help me as I almost always only use monocle mode--either that or bstack. Thx

Edit: I noticed that my sdl games work now in fullscreen. Must have something to do with the counts at 999?

Edit: just noticed this was post #666. Good thing I'm not superstitious...gulp.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2013-12-12 19:45:42)

Trilby · 2013-12-13 00:54:46

bgc1954 wrote:

Edit: I noticed that my sdl games work now in fullscreen. Must have something to do with the counts at 999?

I hope not - they should have been working anyways. I thought I fixed that bug.

bgc1954 · 2013-12-13 01:27:42

You're right, Trilby, I was just updating arch on my netbook that is running alopex v3 and fullscreen sdl games work fine. I'll go back to default count on my desktop, tomorrow morning, and I'm sure you're correct that it's fixed.

Edit: Yup, fullscreen sdl games working fine on my desktop too.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2013-12-13 17:03:27)

Greduan · 2013-12-14 03:18:03

Trilby, here's a question about v3 of Alopex.

How much better will floating windows be? In other words, how much better will the stacking part of Alopex be? AFAIK in v2 it's not very fleshed out, I mean it's there but it's not very convenient to use (in my experience).

Will this improve or will it stay the same? Because sometimes I really appreciate the stacking model when I have a LOT of stuff open.

P.S.: I read some of my old posts and I noticed I said Apolex in a couple of them, several times. Sorry.

Trilby · 2013-12-14 04:29:54

Floating will be much worse. Alopex is not a floating/stacking window manager, and in version 3 I will not put any effort into trying to make it do everything badly: it will do tiling well.

Floating windows will be supported for the sole purpose of transient dialog or splash-type windows. (Only supported for this - it can be "hijacked" to a degree for other windows, but don't expect many features to make working with such windows easy).

Last edited by Trilby (2013-12-14 04:31:05)

Greduan · 2013-12-14 15:20:05

Gotcha. Expected as much, thought it was worth asking though.

bgc1954 · 2014-01-05 20:17:24

Trilby,

Just trying out things as I noticed on github you've been working on alopex, lately.

1. I copied over and changed my config and noticed that my keybindings weren't working properly. It seems that the config.icecap has the keybindings repeated so even if you change the top portion, you won't see the difference. Everything fine after I removed the extra lines in the config.

2. Just wondering if you're still working on the monocle mode. If I change mode = monocle in the config it doesn't seem to work (if I try to open a second terminal, it just seems to put the first terminal in fullscreen and I don't get a second terminal) If I change mode = bstack everything still seems ok. I know monocle mode works since I made a keybinding to switch between bstack and monocle and monocle mode, itself, works fine.

3. Is using a status.sh script supported? You pointed out earlier that color codes needed to be converted but that didn't seem to help. Either I'm doing something terribly wrong or likely I just need documentation as I can't seem to set the tabs, status so my long status output shows. If I got that working, I'd likely stick to ver3, mostly, as I really like the looks of it and it seems quite functional--for me anyway.

Trilby · 2014-01-05 20:23:25

I've pushed a few minor things - but I really haven't made nearly the progress I hoped to on this.

Over the next month or so it will be my focus though. A default mode option was added, but I haven't yet tested it at all - so I'm not all that surprised it doesn't work.

I've been a bit slow not only due to outside life issues popping up, but also I may have to do some serious rethinking of some of the tiling and drawing functions. I'm trying to get all the bits working together in my head before I dig back into the code.

EDIT: as for the status scripts - they should be working, but they are not documented. The script should output a series of lines. Lines can be broken into segments separated by '&', and '&' characters then should not be used within the segments. The first segment is put in place of the %1 in the status format entry. If there is more than one segment, you can add a %2 %3 etc.

What do you have in your status script?

Last edited by Trilby (2014-01-05 20:27:13)

bgc1954 · 2014-01-05 20:29:37

No problem. Just fighting the flu and looking for something to play with today--no energy for chores, etc...hmmm...that's just about like every other day

Look forward to your progress. Thanks.

Edit: lots of crap, apparently:

#! /bin/sh

while true; do

eval $(awk '/^cpu /{print "previdle=" $5 "; prevtotal=" $2+$3+$4+$5 }' /proc/stat); sleep 0.4
eval $(awk '/^cpu /{print "idle=" $5 "; total=" $2+$3+$4+$5 }' /proc/stat); intervaltotal=$((total-${prevtotal:-0}))
echo -n "{0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0}CPU:$((100*( (intervaltotal) - ($idle-${previdle:-0}) ) / (intervaltotal) ))%:"
echo -n "$(awk '/MHz/ {printf "%.0f", $4}' /proc/cpuinfo)Mz:"
echo -n "$(($(cat /sys/bus/pci/drivers/k8temp/0000\:00\:18.3/temp1_input) / 1000))C "
echo -n "GPU:$(nvidia-settings -q gpucoretemp -t)C "
echo -n "RAM:$(free -m | grep -i /cache | awk '{print$3}')Mb "
echo -n "/:$(df -h | sed -n 2p | awk '{print $3}') "
echo -n "/home:$(df -h /dev/sda6 | sed -n 2p | awk '{print $3}') "
date +'%b %d %l:%M%P'

sleep 5

done

Last edited by bgc1954 (2014-01-05 20:32:02)

Trilby · 2014-01-29 14:54:40

Hey all,

I haven't done much to solve some of the problems that came up with version 3 as there were so many, and I realized a few of them stemmed from a couple poor design choices in the early stages. Most notably was the key-chain reading processes. That turned out to be a fun experiment, but it was just to buggy to let live for long.

I've completely redone a new version 3[1]. I've gotten rid of the live entry of key chains, but there is still a 'command language' made up of strings of keys (documentation coming soon). These can only be entered in the config to be bound to normal key bindings, or they can also be sent to the root window name where they'll be read and executed [2]. Monocle mode is fully functional (as are rstack and bstack) in the new code.

There is also a proper floating level like in v2. The creative approach I tried in the first version 3 (okay the new one might need to be called v4) was interesting, but it had some unpleasant side effects. Fullscreening isn't fully implemented yet, but the framework for it is all there - just hasn't been gotten around to yet.

I've also considered HG's suggestion of using a config parsing library, but I was not interested in libconfig (more dependencies, more code loaded into memory, and a config format I personally didn't see the elegance in). But then I realized we all have a config reading library which is almost certainly used already (thus the code is likely already cached in memory), the format will be familiar, and it is easy to use: X resource databases. So v3/4 uses a xresources style database file. This will be read from the same places the previous configs were stored (eg $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alopex/config), however for now the files are *temporarily* called configdb in order to allow for the happy coexistence of v3/4 with previous versions of alopex as the new version isn't quite ready for prime time yet.

Several bits are not yet implemented in v3/4, most notably is the status bar drawing functions. These will be mostly just pulled in from the previous code, but I'm going to review all of it before I pull it over from the previous versions. Also, there is skeleton code in place to add icons again, but they have not yet been added.

I'm about to push to new code to github without another branch, so aside from hunting through the git history to pull from the right commit, the existing 3.0 code will be gone (as it should be, failed experiment and all). The main reason for pushing this to git now is not for it to go into use just yet (though the daring are free to try it out), but rather it is to allow HG to get up to speed on the changes if he'd like to continue contributing to documentation and artwork.

More info will come here as progress comes.

NOTES:

[1] maybe it should be version 4, we'll see. It is very different (in code) from version 3, but as the previous v3 never really came to life on it's own I'm not sure if it should count. Maybe I'll call the new one v4 and just let v3 remain in the history book as a failed experiment.

[2] This will integrate well with interrobang or dmenu which can allow command entry and send the commands to the room window with `xsetroot -name "ALOPEX: <command string here>"`. The prefix of "ALOPEX:" is needed for every command string as a safety check in case any other tool tries to set the root window name. Anything in the root window name that does not start with "ALOPEX:" will be ignored.

Last edited by Trilby (2014-01-29 17:21:23)

Arch Linux

#651 2013-12-07 00:24:35

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#652 2013-12-07 05:31:55

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#653 2013-12-07 12:14:04

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#654 2013-12-07 20:10:19

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#655 2013-12-08 00:21:40

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#656 2013-12-11 18:37:45

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#657 2013-12-11 20:58:08

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#658 2013-12-11 21:51:51

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#659 2013-12-11 23:21:33

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#660 2013-12-12 01:18:41

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#661 2013-12-12 02:57:43

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#662 2013-12-12 03:23:34

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#663 2013-12-12 03:42:55

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#664 2013-12-12 18:04:21

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#665 2013-12-12 18:42:10

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#666 2013-12-12 19:31:37

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#667 2013-12-13 00:54:46

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#668 2013-12-13 01:27:42

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#669 2013-12-14 03:18:03

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#670 2013-12-14 04:29:54

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#671 2013-12-14 15:20:05

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#672 2014-01-05 20:17:24

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#673 2014-01-05 20:23:25

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#674 2014-01-05 20:29:37

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

#675 2014-01-29 14:54:40

Re: Alopex: a tiling tagging tabbed window manager with fur

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