howm: A vim like WM

[harveyhunt]

Hello everyone,

As my first C project, I decided to work on a new WM with features that I wanted in other WMs (I used i3 as my daily driver).

It is missing a few features, testing, documentation and EWMH compliance but the general idea is there. Pull requests and general feedback would be awesome.

It has features like operators, motions and commands. Think of it like vim for windows.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and whether it is worth continuing. Have a read of the text in config.h as well as the generated documentation at http://harveyhunt.github.io/howm (the docs need regenerating as I have done a lot of work recently).

howm is here

[machinebacon]

I get this one now and report back in a moment :) Thank you!!

[wuxmedia]

look interesting.... Are you not missing an obvious pun for the name here, like VimWM or VMWM?
Those two do look a bit odd actually.

[harveyhunt]

look interesting.... Are you not missing an obvious pun for the name here, like VimWM or VMWM?
Those two do look a bit odd actually.

I went for the subtle pun of something like "If you have used vim, you will feel at howm."

Haven't quite been brave enough to use that in the docs yet though... ;)

[pidsley]

Works well here. Nice work. I'm still getting used to the mode concept, even though I am a vim user.



Thank you for making "follow spawn" an option -- I intensely dislike tilers that don't focus a newly spawned tile. If I just spawned a tile, don't you think I might want to use it now?

Is there any way to query the current mode, so it could be added to a status bar, or is there already something like this available and I'm just missing it?

Another thing I don't see in the config is the ability to easily move a tile from the stack to the master area -- I see move current up and down, and those can be used to produce the desired result, but I'd like to be able to just swap any tile from the stack into the master.

Please don't take these questions as criticism -- this is really a nice piece of work, and you asked for feedback. ;)

[wuxmedia]

look interesting.... Are you not missing an obvious pun for the name here, like VimWM or VMWM?
Those two do look a bit odd actually.

I went for the subtle pun of something like "If you have used vim, you will feel at howm."

Haven't quite been brave enough to use that in the docs yet though... ;)

That is subtle - nice. 8)

Nice scrot pids.
uses vim like WM - uses nano to edit text. 8D

[rhowaldt]

not gonna make false promises: i wont try it, because i'm comfortzoning, BUT i'd like to express my admiration for the niceness of this thread.

excuse me for pointing this out Harvey, but i couldnt help but notice you havent yet made yourself an introductory thread. you have thereby broken the sacred rule of the Rostbraten Meisterschaft, rule Q (or "Ejaculator Prematorio", as we like to call it). the punishment for this is that you have to eat a cabbage, a part of a cabbage, or no cabbage at all, on a Saturday, during a hailstorm, while you are sexually aroused by something slightly inappropriate. you can pick any Saturday you like, be it in the past, present or future (obviously!).

well. good luck with that!

P.S. definitely go for more silly puns. that shit is awesome :)

[machinebacon]

Got it installed quickly, thanks to github :)

I can run howm (hehe nice!) but every newly spawned terminal just keeps waiting with a [] cursor and no PS1. I can make input but it seems the terminal is not initialized. Has it to do with the "sleep" in config.h?
But no -- when I enable (!) xbindkeys in .xinitrc, though, it works as expected, but doesn't catch Mod + Shift.

I play around with it now, I am sure this is me being a tard :)

[wuxmedia]

and for goodness sake get yourself an avatar, Harvey!
Is this you BTW: www.harveyhunt.com ?

[machinebacon]

^ This is so 1990s, even in 2009 :D

[harveyhunt]

Works well here. Nice work. I'm still getting used to the mode concept, even though I am a vim user.



Thank you for making "follow spawn" an option -- I intensely dislike tilers that don't focus a newly spawned tile. If I just spawned a tile, don't you think I might want to use it now?

Is there any way to query the current mode, so it could be added to a status bar, or is there already something like this available and I'm just missing it?

Another thing I don't see in the config is the ability to easily move a tile from the stack to the master area -- I see move current up and down, and those can be used to produce the desired result, but I'd like to be able to just swap any tile from the stack into the master.

Please don't take these questions as criticism -- this is really a nice piece of work, and you asked for feedback. ;)

Thanks for the great feedback, it is so weird seeing a scrot of this- I am used to running it in a tiny Xephyr window. :)

I misread your comment about making it "follow spawn" and was just checking the code to see why it wasn't.... :P

There is output that can be used for status bars. You can get the STDOUT of howm (STDERR is for logging) or just set LOGGING_LEVEL to LOG_NONE. Then only information about the current workspace will be displayed. Look at the function howm_info() to see what I mean.

I haven't gotten around to writing a script for a status bar yet. I am imagining the background colour changing when the mode is changed- like powerline or airline in vim.

I completely agree with you and that is on my todo list. I only implemented master windows a couple of days ago and am slowly moving house, so not got much time. :P I will try to get onto doing that later.

Once again, thanks for the feedback. :)

[harveyhunt]

not gonna make false promises: i wont try it, because i'm comfortzoning, BUT i'd like to express my admiration for the niceness of this thread.

excuse me for pointing this out Harvey, but i couldnt help but notice you havent yet made yourself an introductory thread. you have thereby broken the sacred rule of the Rostbraten Meisterschaft, rule Q (or "Ejaculator Prematorio", as we like to call it). the punishment for this is that you have to eat a cabbage, a part of a cabbage, or no cabbage at all, on a Saturday, during a hailstorm, while you are sexually aroused by something slightly inappropriate. you can pick any Saturday you like, be it in the past, present or future (obviously!).

well. good luck with that!

P.S. definitely go for more silly puns. that shit is awesome :)

Oops, I had no idea that was the done thing around here- I guess I should have read the rules before posting, then I won't have to eat anymore cabbages. ;)

How about I write an introduction and you try this out in return. ;)

[harveyhunt]

First off, sorry I didn't squash all these comments into one, I forgot to do that. Should I edit them all into one and delete the others?

Got it installed quickly, thanks to github :)

I can run howm (hehe nice!) but every newly spawned terminal just keeps waiting with a [] cursor and no PS1. I can make input but it seems the terminal is not initialized. Has it to do with the "sleep" in config.h?
But no -- when I enable (!) xbindkeys in .xinitrc, though, it works as expected, but doesn't catch Mod + Shift.

I play around with it now, I am sure this is me being a tard :)

Haha, run howm is a nice pun- I can see more appearing.

Hmmm, is there still a sleep in the term_cmd? I removed that a few commits ago- perhaps you're using the master branch instead of develop? Once I have some more feedback I will move everything over to master- I am just a bit scared to do that. :P

Let me know which branch you're running and I will help out.

and for goodness sake get yourself an avatar, Harvey!
Is this you BTW: http://www.harveyhunt.com ?

Haha, that is a lovely website- I wish that was mine. I will do so soon. :)

I just found out today that howm is some sort of emacs module. :(

[machinebacon]

Thanks Harvey (never worry about how you quote, you are free!)

https://github.com/HarveyHunt/howm/tree/develop I got it from here, using 'git clone https://github.com/HarveyHunt/howm.git')

There is a sleep of 100 inside. I first thought that the problem happened because I use Mod1 instead of Mod4, is that possible?

Edit: strange, now I see that my local copy is not identical to what is on your github. Hm! I check again :)
Edit 2: okay, got the zip'ed one and that looks good. Probably I cloned the wrong branch. Sorry :)

[harveyhunt]

Another thing I don't see in the config is the ability to easily move a tile from the stack to the master area -- I see move current up and down, and those can be used to produce the desired result, but I'd like to be able to just swap any tile from the stack into the master.

I have just added this in the latest commit. :)

Don't forget to try out the operators and motions. As an example, open 3 clients on a workspace. Then hold the alt key and press:

q2c

Let me know what you think. ;)

Thanks Harvey (never worry about how you quote, you are free!)

https://github.com/HarveyHunt/howm/tree/develop I got it from here, using 'git clone https://github.com/HarveyHunt/howm.git')

There is a sleep of 100 inside. I first thought that the problem happened because I use Mod1 instead of Mod4, is that possible?

Edit: strange, now I see that my local copy is not identical to what is on your github. Hm! I check again :)

Ah, sleep was still in the master branch. You need to do:

git clone https://github.com/HarveyHunt/howm.git

git checkout develop

make

Let me know when it works.

[machinebacon]

Yes yes, followed your post and it works :) Thank you!

[harveyhunt]

I would also love to hear some feedback on keybinds- I am not sure if other people will like them.

[machinebacon]

Harvey, can you help me with one oddity I found (and I am sure this is something on my side). Whenever I press Mod-Shift-f (to switch to floating) it refuses to accept keybinds. In short:

- start howm
- press mod-return (twice, to have two terms)
- press mod-shift-f
- nothing happens, I can still enter text into the terminal but all other keybinds don't react.

[harveyhunt]

Harvey, can you help me with one oddity I found (and I am sure this is something on my side). Whenever I press Mod-Shift-f (to switch to floating) it refuses to accept keybinds. In short:

- start howm
- press mod-return (twice, to have two terms)
- press mod-shift-f
- nothing happens, I can still enter text into the terminal but all other keybinds don't react.

When you're in floating mode, commands only operate on floating windows. Do the following:

- Start howm
- Press Mod-Return
- Press Mod-Space (Toggles a window to floating)
- Press Mod-Shift-f to enter float mode
- Then use all of the float commands on that floating window.

Let me know how it goes. :)

[machinebacon]

Ah yes, now I got it. So one needs to leave float mode mod-esc to get back to normal mode in which stuff like new term or dmenu can be started. It all makes sense now! ;)

Okay I probably need an hour or so to fully grasp the idea ;) But you can be sure, this thing will get its own BBQ release (if you don't mind). Just tell me when you think it's ready, I'll spin it up then!