Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

Wintervenom · 2011-05-05 00:45:43

Another developer has forked and merged [joeDeuce's] Musca fork and continued development.
I've written a PKGBUILD for it [here in the AUR].

He has also made some changes to the configuration syntax, noted in the [README].
Here is [his configuration] [and mine].

Last edited by Wintervenom (2011-05-06 00:16:30)

Army · 2011-05-05 09:02:47

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, I completely missed that package.

mhertz · 2011-05-05 23:50:40

Yeah, thanks for the heads-up!

While i'm glad to see musca getting some new development, then after checking out this new southerncross thing, then I must admit that I don't like in the direction it's headed...

I have never personally used the stacking feature of musca, but I still think its nice to have if I ever needed it for some app in the feature.

Then stuff like removing the border commands, that I really don't get! I mean, borders are nice most of the time, but whenever I want to fire up mplayer and watch a movie, then borders are really disruptive(try it!), and hence, the 'border flip' command where a nice keybind to momentarilly toggle the border on/off...

Other things like dedicate/catch-all, and dump/load, I also do not see why they have to go...

Then I checked out the ram usage with ps_mem.py, to see if the removals would have saved some ram, but with southerncross-git is was 639kb, whereas now back in musca it's 623kb!

Again, i'm glad to see some new action on the musca front, but with thesje agressive removals to an allready extremely lightweight app, then I politelly say thanks, but no thanks...

However, I hope Wintervenom will continue maintain his nice musca-mm project and backport bugfixes and "usefull" changes from southerncross into it, so that there does come some nice things out of this new development also for the "regular" musca(-mm) users!

Last edited by mhertz (2011-05-06 00:15:55)

gorilla · 2011-05-06 10:15:57

Thanks, that someone is continueing the development. Musca always was my favorite WM. I've tried a lot, but always came back to it. Now I give southerncross a try, but it seems, though Southerncross is starting and working a bit faster, that I'll keep musca until it's not working anymore. I miss the border commands already....

mhertz wrote:
However, I hope Wintervenom will continue maintain his nice musca-mm project and backport bugfixes and "usefull" changes from southerncross into it, so that there does come some nice things out of this new development also for the "regular" musca(-mm) users!

I totally agree with you.

Army · 2011-05-06 10:32:00

I must agree with mhertz, I'm very glad that people continue to work on musca (itself or forks), but I also don't like the direction of southerncross, especially the missing border option. Look's like i3 will be my wm for the near future, which of course is fine, but musca is like ... I just like it, that's all.

mhertz · 2011-05-06 14:46:09

Yeah, i3 is a nice wm! If I ever get a showstopping issue with musca(-mm), then I will switch to ratpoison. I'm not a fan of the prefix key system though, but that can be changed to normal behaviour with the top command.

For just in case that happens(=showstopping issue), then I have made a .ratpoisonrc which setups ratpoison exactly as my musca-mm is i.e. with the blue border, and everything controlled without prefixes and instead with Super_L("win key") + <somekey>...

Btw, I don't get why someone has set musca-mm-git to "outdated" ? There's no newer version out, as I wouldn't call southerncross for "normal" musca...

hellomynameisphil · 2011-05-06 15:50:51

mhertz wrote:

For just in case that happens(=showstopping issue), then I have made a .ratpoisonrc which setups ratpoison exactly as my musca-mm is i.e. with the blue border, and everything controlled without prefixes and instead with Super_L("win key") + <somekey>...

I would love to see your musca-like .ratpoisonrc.

Last edited by hellomynameisphil (2011-05-24 01:15:42)

mhertz · 2011-05-06 17:43:37

Hi there, phil!

It's currently just a quick config, since I still use musca and plan on continuing with that, so the config is by no means complete...

My main objective where just to get away from the prefix key and use musca style commands for everything I normally use i.e. most default musca keybinds...

There's currently some issues, which I haven't looked into if can be fixed, and that's the border first comes on, when actually opening an app in a frame i.e. If you start by spliting the screen up, then the frames are there, but you will first see the borders when actually opening the apps to fit them... (I don't actually mind that much, but just a FYI!)

Then the resizing sometimes adverts the right,left,up,down keys, depending on in which frame you are currently, just like you also get with the standard ratpoison resize mode(prefix+r).

Finally, I haven't yet made an actual overview of the current groups/windows yet, but cycling windows and groups are just like the musca defaults i.e. Super+C and Super+PgDn/PgUP...

Sorry for off-topic, btw...

startup_message off
set fwcolor blue
set bwcolor grey
exec rpws init 4 -a
definekey top s-Prior rpwsp
definekey top s-Next rpwsn
definekey top s-c next
definekey top s-Up focusup
definekey top s-Left focusleft
definekey top s-Down focusdown
definekey top s-Right focusright
definekey top s-v split
definekey top s-h hsplit
definekey top s-k delete
definekey top s-r remove
definekey top s-o only
definekey top s-u undo
definekey top s-x exec dmenu_run -b -i
definekey top s-S-Up exchangeup
definekey top s-S-Left exchangeleft
definekey top s-S-Down exchangedown
definekey top s-S-Right exchangeright
definekey top s-C-Right resize 20 0
definekey top s-C-Left resize -20 0
definekey top s-C-Up resize 0 20
definekey top s-C-Down resize 0 -20
definekey top s-1 exec urxvtc -rv +sb -sl 1000 -font 9x15 -ls
definekey top s-2 exec jumanji

Last edited by mhertz (2011-05-21 22:50:58)

gorilla · 2011-05-06 19:33:50

When I split the Window, I get the message "timed out" in southerncross. Never had this issue in musca...

mhertz · 2011-05-06 22:12:36

@Wintervenom

I've previously just used vanilla musca from [community], and just now changed over to your musca-mm-git package; and first and foremost, thanks alot for that, mate!

Second, i'm curious as to if musca-mm-git currently is purelly vanilla musca with Procyon's patch and nothing else(untill southerncross brings new improvements), or if you've changed other small subtle things additionally?

I'm asking because I noticed that during installation, then pacman stated 19kb installed vs. vanilla musca's 12kb? That patch didn't seem very big to me?

Finally, with "your" version, then I get alot of debug output from musca on vt1 i.e. 'musca.c 827 client_display skip', which vanilla musca didn't produce. Do you know why that is?

@Procyon

Thanks alot for your contributed patch!

I must admit that I didn't understand the informative instructions you listed under the patch, and so I would really appreciate if you could kindly tell me what these means? (sorry for being dence!) :

1. Don't hide windows below fullscreen
2. Manage fullscreen/hidden/normal (maybe some other need to be added but you don't want to manage everything)
3. Don't do anything special with fullscreen apps.

Second, and related to the above, then do you have noticed any drawbacks to using your patch?

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by mhertz (2011-05-06 22:20:21)

Procyon · 2011-05-07 00:07:42

I often had applications like virtualbox/wine/games(?)/mplayer(?) disappear. Musca by default doesn't manage fullscreen, so they could do whatever they want (like conky?) but this also means that once you switch away you can't get back at them. 1. means that even if they were managed some extra code in the layering was needed.

I don't know if it's because of the patch (I did ask for feedback about it) but one problem I had was that sometimes windows would spawn unmanaged (if you have borders on by default, you can notice it that a program/dialog box that normally has borders has none). Maybe some other things too. I don't remember exactly, I haven't used Musca since that time.

The code of the patch is really simple though (I'm really bad with C), just some lines moved and added a few entries to the big EWMH state checking "if-then-else".

mhertz · 2011-05-07 00:21:41

Sorry for being (again!)dence, but what do you mean by musca by default not managing fullscreen? I thought musca only unmanages windows with the name "panel" and ones defined with unmanage xxx...

I've never experienced that...

Thanks for your explenation, mate! I guess it's because i've never used stuff like wine and games etc.

Last edited by mhertz (2011-05-07 00:46:19)

Wintervenom · 2011-05-07 01:44:29

I am only the mere package descriptor-writer and maintainer for these forks; not the developers themselves.
joeDeuce had forked and patched Musca to Musca--, but, as someone mentioned above, only added Procyon's patch. Due to a lack of time and motivation, it never got any further changes, unfortunately. As for Southerncross, it looks promising. Perhaps it would be a good idea to start [submitting bug reports and feature requests] to it (including the above requests already mentioned above) so the author can know about them.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2011-05-07 01:46:51)

mhertz · 2011-05-07 12:23:10

Ahh, thanks for clearing that up, mate!

I had also wondered why "you" where naming yourself joeDeuce on github, instead of Wintervenom, lol!

CU, Martin.

mhertz · 2011-05-07 17:43:37

I was currious about the specific differences with musca-mm and regular musca, besides of course the procyon patch(the musca-mm git commit-history wasen't helpfull), and so I diffed musca-mm with vanilla musca bzr checkout, which I had patched with Procyon's patch and this is the result:

Only in musca/: .bzr
Only in musca--/: geany_run_script.sh
Only in musca--/: .git
Only in musca/: gpl.txt
diff -b musca//musca.c musca--//musca.c
3072,3074c3072,3074
<         if (is_netwmstate(ws->state, NetWMStateFullscreen)) ws->manage = 1;
<         if (is_netwmstate(ws->state, NetWMStateHidden)) ws->manage = 1;
<         if (ws->type == atoms[NetWMWindowTypeNormal]) ws->manage = 1;
---
>         if (is_netwmstate(ws->state, NetWMStateFullscreen)) ws->manage = 1; //+++
>         if (is_netwmstate(ws->state, NetWMStateHidden)) ws->manage = 1; //+++
>         if (ws->type == atoms[NetWMWindowTypeNormal]) ws->manage = 1; //+++

So, the difference is just that musca-mm features three additional comments in musca.c(with '//+++'), dosen't include gpl.txt, but additionally features geany_run_script.sh, but neither gpl.txt or geany_run_script.sh are used during the building anyway...

I just wanted to make _really_ sure

Anyway, i've figured out why I have all this extra debug output on vt1 and why musca-mm is bigger in filesize; and that's because musca-mm has defined in musca.c:

#define DEBUG 1
#define VERSION "dev"

And which musca-bzr also has, but I used to use the v0.9.24 package, which didn't had that defined i.e. 'DEBUG 0'(and 'VERSION 0.9.24'). The only difference to the bzr branch and v0.9.24, is this extra enabling of debug messages, since they are both rev.270 currently, and so I just used 0.9.24 since it was available prebuilt in [community]...

Last edited by mhertz (2011-05-07 22:30:32)

mhertz · 2011-05-07 21:26:24

I saw on joeDeuce's github public activity, that he is following southerncross development, so hopefully this means that he hasen't "retired" his fork, and is keeping an eye out for usefull stuff to backport...

Of course it could also mean that he is now using southerncross and isn't gonna maintain his musca-- branch anymore, I dunno, but I hope it's the former!

Last edited by mhertz (2011-05-07 22:37:14)

diabol · 2011-06-09 15:45:13

Hi all, been using musca for a while now and just love it <3
But I still have problems with audacious (which I currently unmanage, but thus it doesn't get keyboard focus which sucks).
So I've come up with the best idea ever in the history of me trying to get audacious and musca to play along: half-managed windows \o/
Or something along the lines of that which would allow the Winamp-like windows to sit shaded in their frames like they should and if they decide to be bigger than their frames they just get handled like popups (they "float").
Patch follows

thehodapp · 2011-06-10 05:07:01

I've got a question...I'm trying to get notify-send from libnotify to work, but when I run the command:

notify-send "hello"

nothing happens. I've tried multiple incarnations of the command but to no avail. Does this have to do with musca? Is there an alternative?

hellomynameisphil · 2011-06-10 05:24:27

thehodapp wrote:

I've got a question...I'm trying to get notify-send from libnotify to work, but when I run the command:
notify-send "hello"
nothing happens. I've tried multiple incarnations of the command but to no avail. Does this have to do with musca? Is there an alternative?

Is the notification-daemon running? I believe it is somewhere under /usr/lib/notification-daemon-1.0/ or similar. Not at my Arch machine right now, but it's somewhere around there and often needs to be started manually, especially when not running a DE.

You might also be interested in notipy in AUR as a lightweight alternative. I believe there is also a text-based notification system which can be piped to dzen or similar.

thehodapp · 2011-06-10 06:30:14

Ah I see. I need to pay more attention to the Arch wiki. I didn't realize I needed a daemon..eh. not too excited about installing gtk (probably will at some point anyway). notipy looks like it also depends on gtk.

I didn't realize dzen existed. That looks great! let me know if you find out what notification system it is.

Thank you very much!

gorilla · 2011-06-10 08:29:40

hellomynameisphil wrote:

I believe there is also a text-based notification system which can be piped to dzen or similar.

Haven't tried it yet: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=69814

hellomynameisphil · 2011-06-10 17:38:36

Just saw this today too. Not sure if it will work with musca.

http://www.reddit.com/r/xmonad/comments … nad_style/

thehodapp · 2011-06-10 19:46:47

well now I've got notifications. Thanks guys. Now I'm trying to make it so that Musca will notify me when I switch windows but I cannot get it to work at all...here's my best try so far:

bind on Mod4+0    exec echo "use Alpha\nsay 'Group Alpha'" | $MUSCA -i

works fine in a normal terminal but when I try the Mod4+0 key binding, it doesn't work...

mhertz · 2011-06-10 23:52:02

exec cannot run built-in terminal commands like echo...

I myself preffer to just use dzen2 directly in the keybinds and don't bother with the 'say' musca command...

By default, then musca has defined Mod4+PgUP/PgDn to goto next/previous group, and so I just modified these two keybinds to besides switching group, then also to show a notification of in which group im in and how many groups there are:

bind on Mod4+Next exec musca -c "use (next)" && echo $(musca -c "show groups" | tr "\n" " ") | dzen2 -p 3 -w 300 -x 535
bind on Mod4+Prior exec musca -c "use (prev)" && echo $(musca -c "show groups" | tr "\n" " ") | dzen2 -p 3 -w 300 -x 535

To get what you requested, and with dzen2 directly:

bind on Mod4+0 exec musca -c "use Alpha" && echo Group Alpha | dzen2 -p 3 -w 300 -x 535

gorilla · 2011-06-11 08:57:42

you can set musca's notification in musca_start. For example:

set notify echo `cat` | dzen2 -p 3 -w 300

I'm not shure if it pops up when changing groups since I don't use it...

Arch Linux

#526 2011-05-05 00:45:43

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#527 2011-05-05 09:02:47

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#528 2011-05-05 23:50:40

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#529 2011-05-06 10:15:57

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#530 2011-05-06 10:32:00

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#531 2011-05-06 14:46:09

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#532 2011-05-06 15:50:51

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#533 2011-05-06 17:43:37

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#534 2011-05-06 19:33:50

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#535 2011-05-06 22:12:36

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#536 2011-05-07 00:07:42

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#537 2011-05-07 00:21:41

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#538 2011-05-07 01:44:29

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#539 2011-05-07 12:23:10

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#540 2011-05-07 17:43:37

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#541 2011-05-07 21:26:24

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#542 2011-06-09 15:45:13

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#543 2011-06-10 05:07:01

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#544 2011-06-10 05:24:27

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#545 2011-06-10 06:30:14

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#546 2011-06-10 08:29:40

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#547 2011-06-10 17:38:36

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#548 2011-06-10 19:46:47

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#549 2011-06-10 23:52:02

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

#550 2011-06-11 08:57:42

Re: Musca (Tiling Window Manager)

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