95 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
95 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
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External workspace bars
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=======================
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Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
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May 2010
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This document describes why the internal workspace bar is minimal and how an
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external workspace bar can be used. It explains the concepts using +i3-wsbar+
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as the reference implementation.
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== Internal and external bars
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The internal workspace bar of i3 is meant to be a reasonable default so that
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you can use i3 without having too much hassle when setting it up. It is quite
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simple and intended to stay this way. So, there is no way to display your own
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information in this bar (unlike dwm, wmii, awesome, …).
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We chose not to implement such a mechanism because that would be duplicating
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already existing functionality of tools such as dzen2, xmobar and similar.
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Instead, you should disable the internal bar and use an external workspace bar
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(which communicates with i3 through its IPC interface).
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== dock mode
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You typically want to see the same workspace bar on every workspace on a
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specific screen. Also, you don’t want to place the workspace bar somewhere
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in your layout by hand. This is where dock mode comes in: When a program sets
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the appropriate hint (_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DOCK), it will be managed in dock
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mode by i3. That means it will be placed at the bottom of the screen (while
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other edges of the screen are possible in the NetWM standard, this is not yet
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implemented in i3), it will not overlap any other window and it will be on
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every workspace for the specific screen it was placed on initially.
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== The IPC interface
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In the context of using an external workspace bar, the IPC interface needs to
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provide the bar program with the current workspaces and output (as in VGA-1,
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LVDS-1, …) configuration. In the other direction, the program has to be able
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to switch to specific workspaces.
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By default, the IPC interface is enabled and places its UNIX socket in
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+~/.i3/ipc.sock+.
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To learn more about the protocol which is used for IPC, see +docs/ipc+.
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== Output changes (on-the-fly)
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i3 implements the RandR API and can handle changing outputs quite well. So, an
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external workspace bar implementation needs to make sure that when you change
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the resolution of any of your screens (or enable/disable an output), the bars
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will be adjusted properly.
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== i3-wsbar, the reference implementation
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Please keep in mind that +i3-wsbar+ is just a reference implementation. It is
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shipped with i3 to have a reasonable default. Thus, +i3-wsbar+ is designed to
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work well with dzen2 and there are no plans to make it more generic.
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=== The big picture
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The most common reason to use an external workspace bar is to integrate system
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information such as what +i3status+ provides into the workspace bar (to save
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screen space). So, we have +i3status+ or a similar program, which only provides
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text output (formatted in some way). To display this text nicely on the screen,
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there are programs such as dzen2, xmobar and similar. We will stick to dzen2
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from here on. So, we have the output of i3status, which needs to go into dzen2
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somehow. But we also want to display the list of workspaces. +i3-wsbar+ takes
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input on stdin, combines it with a formatted workspace list and pipes it to
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dzen2.
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Please note that +i3-wsbar+ does not print its output to stdout. Instead, it
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launches the dzen2 instances on its own. This is necessary to handle changes
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in the available outputs (to place a new dzen2 on a new screen for example).
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image:wsbar.png["Overview",link="wsbar.png"]
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=== Running i3-wsbar
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The most simple usage of i3-wsbar looks like this:
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-------------------------------
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i3-wsbar -c "dzen2 -x %x -dock"
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-------------------------------
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The +%x+ in the command name will be replaced by the X position of the output
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for which this workspace bar is running. i3 will automatically place the
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workspace bar on the correct output when dzen2 is started in dock mode. The
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bar which you will see should look exactly like the internal bar of i3.
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To actually get a benefit, you want to give +i3-wsbar+ some input:
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------------------------------------------
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i3status | i3-wsbar -c "dzen2 -x %x -dock"
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------------------------------------------
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It is recommended to place the above command in your i3 configuration file
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to start it automatically with i3.
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