Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

Army · 2009-11-29 22:29:20

Finally I'm giving musca a shot. As I told before somewhere in the forums, I'll look into musca first (used openbox before that). Felt really nice right from the beginning. Then I gave many other tilers a shot and none of them felt comparable. I think I especially like this manual tiling thing :-) But I still have to learn many things. At least now I'm quite happy to have my conky :-) Perfection is about to come :-)

skottish · 2009-11-29 23:50:26

EnvoyRising wrote:

skottish wrote:
I doesn't really matter either way, but I think that it may be better to start asking specific questions about musca in their own threads. I'm sure a number of you have remembered reading something somewhere in this thread and ended up scanning through hundreds of posts. I know that I've done it at least ten different times.
Hmmm. Noted for future reference. I guess I get around this issue by subscribing to threads, but I could see it being harder to search for the existence o a known issue.
Thanks Proxy, I'll try it.

As I said, it doesn't matter any either way. If everyone is happy with this setup, by all means continue using this thread.

Army · 2009-12-20 18:55:23

aerosuidae wrote:

Runiq wrote:
Is there a way to get rid of the focus border on fullscreen apps like mplayer, for example?
EDIT: Also, is there a way to enable focus-follows-mouse other than redefining things in musca.c?
No, for both
For mplayer, you could temporarily use `set border_focus black`. I'm considering implementing a full screen borderless option for stacking mode only.
Others have requested focus-follows-mouse, so it is on the todo list. All we really need to do is listen to EnterNotify and LeaveNotify events.

I have to come back to this, because it's the only thing I don't like with musca. I'd really like to have real fullscreen for mplayer. Fullscreen works for e.g. evince and it's fine for me to do "pad 0 0 0 0" and "border off" to get a "real" fullscreen. This totally works. With OpenOffice it doesn't work, but that doesn't really bother me :-) But with mplayer, it doesn't work at all, neither in tiling, nor in stacking mode. In tiling mode, mplayer doesn't really switch to fullscreen when I press "f". Usually in fullscreen mode, I can e.g. zoom with "w" and "e", which is quite important when I watch TV with mplayer (it's the only app that works with my tv card). And I always see the background. Of course I could make a black background, switch off borders and do pad 0 0 0 0, but what I want to say is, that fullscreen doesn't work with mplayer. And this is really disturbing me :-( In stacking mode, mplayer only stays within the borders. I can resize the window, but this is no real fullscreen, there's no zooming with "w" and "e". Right now I start a second X with openbox to run mplayer in it, but that's just ok as a temporal solution.

So, aerosuidae, are you still developing musca? Do you still have this todo list?

Besides that, musca is brilliant, I tried it out after I read the tutorial and fell in love immediately :-)

Inxsible · 2009-12-24 05:02:42

Have you tried using Mod+o. to make mplayer your "only" frame ?

I made my firefox to be the only frame and then hit F11, to make FF fullscreen and it worked. Now I am not sure if mplayer does things differently to make fullscreen, so it may or may not work. vlc on the other hand works fine in fullscreen for all the movie watching that i do.

But all in all, if your mplayer/vlc frame is the only frame on the window, then it will definitely occupy the entire screen.

Mod+u brings it out of "only" mode again. So all it takes is a couple of keystrokes.

Try and see if it works out for you.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-12-24 05:03:02)

Army · 2009-12-24 13:53:23

Hi Inxsible, no this doesn't work. I know Mod+o, but still all apps stay within this blue colored box, they sort of think this is the whole screen. I really like this e.g. for latex beamer, horizontally split the screen, on the left vim with the latex document and on the right a fullscreened evince. But for apps like mplayer it's not really good..

I played a video with ffplay once, with this program fullscreen was possible. I guess vlc behaves equally, but I don't really like vlc, so that's no real option, mplayer is my video player for all files.

What I'd prefer right now is to configure Mod+f to toggle between "pad 0 0 0 0 && border off && black background" and "pad 0 0 0 16 && border on && background on (with feh)" Is this possible?

Last edited by Army (2009-12-24 13:53:59)

dejot · 2009-12-25 14:14:41

Army wrote:

What I'd prefer right now is to configure Mod+f to toggle between "pad 0 0 0 0 && border off && black background" and "pad 0 0 0 16 && border on && background on (with feh)" Is this possible?

Sure, you can easily write a script like the following to do this:

#!/bin/bash
if [ -e ~/.musca/fullscreen.pid ]; then
    musca -c "pad 0 0 0 16"
    musca -c "border on"
    # use feh to set background (eg "feh -bg-seamless wallpaper.png")
    rm ~/.musca/fullscreen.pid
else
    musca -c "pad 0 0 0 0"
    musca -c "border off"
    xsetroot -solid black
    touch ~/.musca/fullscreen.pid
fi

and then bind Mod+f to execute the script (eg "bind on Mod4+f exec ~/.musca/fullscreen" and dont forget to "chmod +x" the script

Something like that should do the trick for you...

Last edited by dejot (2009-12-25 14:36:21)

Inxsible · 2009-12-26 14:23:04

all I do for watching movies is simply start it by cvlc, and then move it to a brand new group, by Mod+Shift+(number which has not been used). This way the new group is just that -totally new. Thus it does not have any padding for conky etc.

So if I have 3 groups open, I will use Mod+4. You can also use a dedicated number for it. So if you always create 5 groups for your work, just keep using group 9. Then a simple Mod+b will toggle the borders off... I finish my movie...and then simply come back to my default group (or any other that you want to go to). Also I have set group_close_empty to be true, that way the group with the movie automatically gets dropped when the movie finishes or if I close it.

Just takes me 2 keystrokes and saves me all the hassle of building and running scripts.

P.S : Why do you need to change the wallpaper to black anyway? If you app is in fullscreen, why do you care if your wallpaper is there or not. I am not sure how mplayer works, but vlc fullscreen doesn't show you the wallpaper through it at all.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-12-26 14:29:52)

Army · 2009-12-26 16:41:56

Inxsible wrote:

P.S : Why do you need to change the wallpaper to black anyway? If you app is in fullscreen, why do you care if your wallpaper is there or not. I am not sure how mplayer works, but vlc fullscreen doesn't show you the wallpaper through it at all.

I think it's best to describe it with wallpapers ;-)

This is my desktop (right now fighting to rip my dvd "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" with handbrake ;-) )
26.12H4q7InPhXm0jRkG.png
When I play a movie, it looks like this
26.12aAwT2v8QJVMFfQv.png
(had to switch to x11 as output plugin for this screenshot, usually with xv there are no black borders around the movie)
As you can see, the wallpaper is still there and there's no way to cover the wallpaper. So I have to cover this conky line at the bottom with pad 0 0 0 0, switch to a black background and turn off the border.

Last edited by Army (2009-12-26 16:45:04)

Inxsible · 2009-12-26 17:00:08

mplayer fullscreen is weird. vlc fullscreen simply takes up the whole screen that is available. Have you tried putting your video screen on to a new group like I mentioned in my previous post?

Other than that, I guess you will have to create a script that does what you need. Something along the lines of what dejot suggested.

Army · 2009-12-26 18:12:19

Oh I forgot to mention, dejot's script is very good for me, actually I should have been able to create this myself ... Anyways, this solution is really fine for me so far, don't have to switch to Openbox anymore for videos.

Inxsible, you say mplayer fullscreen is weird? I know that programs really behave very differently, trying to watch a presenation made by openoffice-impress is a total disaster in musca, apps like ffplay and (I guess) vlc don't care about the window manager and apps like mplayer or evince see musca's blue border as the whole display and only maximize in this area.

Yes I always put mplayer to a new group! Just in case we misunderstand each other: I start the movie from within mc, then I do "Mod+m => add movie => move movie" Are we talking about the same thing? Then I go to this group and press Mod+f, which executes dejot's script. Could you maybe show me, how this behaves on your computer? Maybe with screenshots as well?

Army · 2010-01-04 10:31:40

Ok I guess I know now what's the difference between your and my configuration. After putting

fstype=none

in ~/.mplayer/config, fullscreen works :-) (still have to do "border off" and "Pad 0 0 0 0", but that's totally fine)

Inxsible · 2010-01-07 21:47:42

Army wrote:

Ok I guess I know now what's the difference between your and my configuration. After putting
fstype=none
in ~/.mplayer/config, fullscreen works :-) (still have to do "border off" and "Pad 0 0 0 0", but that's totally fine)

Cool. I also have to do a border off. But my new groups don't have a padding (i haven't hooked pad on add), so that saves me the extra keystroke.

Best of all, after the movie is done, I simply let the group drop by moving to any other group. That way I don't have to "restore" the group - for eg. set the border again etc.

I absolutely love the dropping of unused groups which I had first found in wmii.

Last edited by Inxsible (2010-01-07 21:49:01)

Army · 2010-01-08 11:47:04

Inxsible wrote:

Cool. I also have to do a border off. But my new groups don't have a padding (i haven't hooked pad on add), so that saves me the extra keystroke.

Damn, THAT'S what you meant by "did you try it in a new group" :-D Now it makes a bit more sense ;-) Yes I have hooked pad on add..

Inxsible wrote:

Best of all, after the movie is done, I simply let the group drop by moving to any other group. That way I don't have to "restore" the group - for eg. set the border again etc.
I absolutely love the dropping of unused groups which I had first found in wmii.

That's something I also found to be quite useful. Makes all very clean :-)

Inxsible · 2010-01-08 19:22:37

Army wrote:

Inxsible wrote:
Cool. I also have to do a border off. But my new groups don't have a padding (i haven't hooked pad on add), so that saves me the extra keystroke.
Damn, THAT'S what you meant by "did you try it in a new group" :-D Now it makes a bit more sense ;-) Yes I have hooked pad on add..

Yup. I just have explicit padding when I create my groups in .musca_start. I guess there are pros and cons to both. One way, you don't have to pad every time you create a group, but if you already know how many groups you want, and also the fact that any new groups that you create will be temporary (like dropping them wmii style, after its usage), then I guess having explicit padding in musca_start makes more sense.

Army · 2010-01-09 00:11:24

Hey Inxsible, I don't really understand what you mean with "explicit padding" and "create my groups in .musca_start", could you show me an example, how you do this in .musca_start?

Inxsible · 2010-01-09 15:54:33

Army wrote:

Hey Inxsible, I don't really understand what you mean with "explicit padding" and "create my groups in .musca_start", could you show me an example, how you do this in .musca_start?

I have my conky and stalonetray at the bottom. So every time i create a new group, I also add in a line to pad it so that conky and stalonetray can be seen.

 
add work
pad 0 0 0 16

add music
pad 0 0 0 16

Last edited by Inxsible (2010-01-09 15:55:29)

milomouse · 2010-01-22 19:01:56

My main thing is having windows in the frame they're supposed to be (e.g., where I started them or moved them), so I have "set frame_display_hidden 0" because I don't like other windows just popping into view where they're not supposed to be. So, yes, this works for the most part. But whenever I "slide" a window to another frame I would like to have that previous frame "cycle local" so that when I move a window from <that> frame it will show what was hidden locally behind it. This way I don't have to focus back and manually "cycle local", and then focus over again. Is this a cache 22 with the manual show thing from "set frame_display_hidden 0"? I tried hooks and aliases but I can't seem to find a functioning chain for this.

Also, I think I may have seen this discussed before though can't recall, but whenever I "undo" (even with "set frame_display_hidden 0") the windows will cycle into different positions than before. I'm assuming they "cycle prev/next". Is there a way to change this behavior to "cycle local" or just remember where they were?

SIDE NOTE: I vote to bump the author's idea to mimic Ratpoison's "focus" hinting. Also, I'd like to request "focuslast". If there's anything like these then I'm sorry, I haven't read/discovered them yet. Thanks.

EDIT: So, I feel pretty stupid. It's supposed to be: "set frame_display_hidden 2", not 0. This answers my questions.

Last edited by milomouse (2010-03-13 21:27:43)

JohannesSM64 · 2010-03-11 18:42:31

I've tried all kinds of tiling and I really find the ratpoison/musca way to make the most sense. It stays out of the way, it never feels like I'm fighting against how the WM wants the windows tiled, there are no restrictions on layout, and unlike wmii and i3, I can resize to my heart's content (as well as do anything) without the mouse. Ratpoison can't float anything though, which is why I love Musca. I've found a couple nasty bugs, but I've filed them, so they will hopefully be fixed.
However, there is one thing I value in a WM that I can't find out how to do in Musca. Urgency hint notifications, like dwm, wmii and i3 (as well as *box and the DEs) have. Any way to do it?

Rasi · 2010-03-11 19:19:38

JohannesSM64 wrote:

I've found a couple nasty bugs, but I've filed them, so they will hopefully be fixed.

As musca seems to be a pretty dead project, dont hold your breath

JohannesSM64 · 2010-03-12 07:13:49

Ah I should learn C and fork it

Army · 2010-03-12 09:53:11

Rasi wrote:

JohannesSM64 wrote:
I've found a couple nasty bugs, but I've filed them, so they will hopefully be fixed.
As musca seems to be a pretty dead project, dont hold your breath

Yeah seems so ... Makes me really sad, because working with Musca as my WM is really perfect, but the bugs really disturb me. If I had the time and knowledge, I'd love to continue this project, but ... I simply can't really code.

Sirsurthur · 2010-03-12 12:12:53

Army wrote:

Rasi wrote:
JohannesSM64 wrote:
I've found a couple nasty bugs, but I've filed them, so they will hopefully be fixed.
As musca seems to be a pretty dead project, dont hold your breath
Yeah seems so ... Makes me really sad, because working with Musca as my WM is really perfect, but the bugs really disturb me. If I had the time and knowledge, I'd love to continue this project, but ... I simply can't really code.

I agree with all of these above ... If this projet is really dead, I hope someone can continue it ...

JohannesSM64 · 2010-03-15 14:52:53

From what I just heard on IRC, Musca isn't really dead, just inactive. The main author is busy with work.

On another note, here's my config: http://github.com/JohannesSM64/Configs/ … usca_start

Last edited by JohannesSM64 (2010-03-15 17:31:46)

JohannesSM64 · 2010-04-01 16:02:56

Heh. I installed musca-bzr, and the frame cycling bug on undo was gone, making me think there had been new commits. But no, on next run, the bug was there again.. weird.

Last edited by JohannesSM64 (2010-04-04 18:32:30)

aerosuidae · 2010-04-23 01:03:40

JohannesSM64 wrote:

From what I just heard on IRC, Musca isn't really dead, just inactive. The main author is busy with work.

Correct. Unfortunately the time I can devote to Musca comes second to work and life in general. I use Musca every day, and bugs that affect me personally are the most likely to be fixed (it's not that I don't want to fix all the bugs people find, just I'm just restricted by the number of hours in a day!).

I do expect to release another rev of Musca at some stage but I can't promise just when that will be. This will be greatly sped up if anyone C-savvy wants to pitch in.

cheers all

Arch Linux

#426 2009-11-29 22:29:20

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#427 2009-11-29 23:50:26

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#428 2009-12-20 18:55:23

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#429 2009-12-24 05:02:42

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#430 2009-12-24 13:53:23

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#431 2009-12-25 14:14:41

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#432 2009-12-26 14:23:04

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#433 2009-12-26 16:41:56

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#434 2009-12-26 17:00:08

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#435 2009-12-26 18:12:19

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#436 2010-01-04 10:31:40

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#437 2010-01-07 21:47:42

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#438 2010-01-08 11:47:04

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#439 2010-01-08 19:22:37

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#440 2010-01-09 00:11:24

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#441 2010-01-09 15:54:33

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#442 2010-01-22 19:01:56

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#443 2010-03-11 18:42:31

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#444 2010-03-11 19:19:38

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#445 2010-03-12 07:13:49

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#446 2010-03-12 09:53:11

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#447 2010-03-12 12:12:53

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#448 2010-03-15 14:52:53

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#449 2010-04-01 16:02:56

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#450 2010-04-23 01:03:40

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

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