RosesWM

RosesWM is not actually a window manager. Instead it uses xbindkeys, wmctrl, xdotool, xwininfo, xprop, and zenity to implement tiling behaviour on top of a normal desktop environment like XFCE. Heavily inspired by wmii.

It is an experiment to see if it is possible to combine the polish and ease-of-use of a modern desktop environment, with the power of a tiling window manager.

Pros:

• You get all the polish and GUI that a modern desktop environment has to offer.
• The whole thing is written in ruby, no need to use C if you want to change things.
• Controllable through a UNIX socket, so most simple behaviour can be scripted in any language you like.

Cons:

• wmctrl/xdotool/xwininfo offer a lot, but in the end RosesWM has less control over window behaviour than an actual window manager.
• Due to the above, getting windows sized/positioned/aligned pixel perfect requires increasingly hacky solutions and won't always work. This was particularly problematic on GNOME but also occurs with KDE/XFCE.

Screenshot of RosesWM running on top of XFCE:

Running it

Note: this project is pretty rough around the edges. There is no configuration file, just a few constants in run.rb. During development I've been running it on xfce4. I don't know how well it does on other desktop environments.

To run:

• Clone this repository.
• Make sure the following tools are all linstalled: ruby, xbindkeys, wmctrl, xdotool, xwininfo, xprop, xrandr, and zenity.
• Set up ~/.xbindkeysrc and reload/restart xbindkeys. See an example at the bottom of this README.
• Disable/change any interfering keyboard combinations. In XFCE you'll want to search the settings for the word "key" and go to each menu. Last time I found at least four places with potentially interfering keyboard combinations.
• Optionally copy local_config.rb.example to local_config.rb (janky local hooks system).

Then cd to this repository and run ruby run.rb.

See the ~/.xbindkeysrc commands for some idea of how to use this. Other than that, you'll probably want to look at the wmii documentation, that's what pretty much all the functionality is based on. Supported wmii features:

• Columns, rows.
• Resizing columns.
• Default mode, maximized mode (no stacking, yet).
• Fullscreen mode.
• Tags but only numbered (no status bar to display the names in).

Todos

• bug: if there are 2 columns, and in the right column the bottom window is maximized, when you focus left and then right again, suddenly the top window has focus
• fix or re-record tests. Probably need to re-write the backtick override. Because we're now multihreaded it now needs to find inputs in the array and delete them, instead of going sequentially.
• when cleaning up closed windows, make sure to also clean up fullscreen-window state. Right now if you close a fullscreen window you get a broken state.
• when going back and forth between maximized columns, focus the previously selected instead of the top one
• when you close a window, the closest window should get focus (both vertical and horizontal)
• when the resolution changes, we currently do a full reset. Instead, keep track of old res, and upon change recalculate all sizes for all columns to be the same relative to the old res
• Resize windows vertically.
• triggering resizing command a few times in a row is a little slow, because it does a full redraw every time. Instead, have a thread that checks every 0.5s (or something) if it's time for a redraw, and does the redraw inside of the mutex. Then the command should just mark ready for redraw rather than doing it itself.
• Figure out a nice way to draw on the screen from ruby.
• Draw a status bar for numbered tags.
• Draw title bars and add stacking mode.
• Docs.
• Support more desktop environments.

Tests

If you set the CREATE_SCENARIOS constant to true in run.rb, a test scenario will be generated in the scenarios folder every time you run it. The scenario will contain the initial state of the window manager, every command that is run, and the input/output of each shell-out.

It's an extremely verbose format, so you probably only want to do this if you need a test case for a specific behaviour.

.xbindkeysrc example

"echo 'start_terminal' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + Return
"echo 'focus_left' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + h
"echo 'focus_down' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + j
"echo 'focus_up' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + k
"echo 'focus_right' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + l
"echo 'focus_1' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 1
"echo 'focus_2' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 2
"echo 'focus_3' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 3
"echo 'focus_4' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 4
"echo 'focus_5' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 5
"echo 'focus_6' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 6
"echo 'focus_7' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 7
"echo 'focus_8' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 8
"echo 'focus_9' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + 9
"echo 'toggle_maximized' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + m
"echo 'toggle_fullscreen' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + f
"echo 'focus_tile_or_float' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Alt+Mod2 + space
"echo 'move_left' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + h
"echo 'move_down' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm" 
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + j
"echo 'move_up' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + k
"echo 'move_right' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + l
"echo 'move_tile_or_float' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + space
"echo 'move_1' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 1
"echo 'move_2' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 2
"echo 'move_3' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 3
"echo 'move_4' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 4
"echo 'move_5' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 5
"echo 'move_6' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 6
"echo 'move_7' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 7
"echo 'move_8' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 8
"echo 'move_9' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + 9
"echo 'expand_left' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Control+Shift+Mod2+Mod4 + h
"echo 'expand_down' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Control+Shift+Mod2+Mod4 + j
"echo 'expand_up' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Control+Shift+Mod2+Mod4 + k
"echo 'expand_right' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Control+Shift+Mod2+Mod4 + l
"echo 'close_window' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + c
"echo 'force_redraw' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + r
"echo 'force_resize' |socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/roseswm"
  Shift+Alt+Mod2 + s