FAQ (3967B)
1 General 2 ------- 3 4 Q: How do I split frames? 5 A: First make sure, that your clients are maximized (through click on 6 maximize button or invoking toggle-client-mode action). 7 Second make sure, that at least two clients are running within the 8 focussed frame. If so, just use one of the split-frame-* actions. 9 Btw. the opposite of split-frame-* is join-frame-*. 10 11 Q: It seems that the actions don't work? Nothing happens if I try to use 12 exec action? 13 A: Simply answer: you've to press RETURN after each action in input 14 mode. 15 16 Q: How can I directly select workspaces? 17 A: You can use select-workspace action, but you can also define some 18 shortcuts to select a specific workspace fast through chains. Just 19 define following lines in your $HOME/.wmi/actions.conf file: 20 chain.selws1.seq="select-workspace+workspace 1" 21 chain.selws1.keys=alt+1 22 chain.selws2.seq="select-workspace+workspace 2" 23 chain.selws2.keys=alt+1 24 This enables alt+1 and alt+2 for direct workspace selection. 25 26 Q: How could I determine all installed Xft fonts? 27 A: Use 'fc-list ""' command. 28 29 Q: How could WMI be minimalist if it has hundreds of actions and 30 is highly customizable? 31 A: Compared to other window managers WMI is minimalist because it 32 concentrates on basic internal actions which can be extended through 33 chains or wmiremote scripts, but wether supports menus and icons nor 34 built-in dialogs for various things which may be found in conventional 35 window managers. 36 But WMI is not as minimalist as evilwm, larswm or failsafewm. 37 38 Q: Why is WMI compared with vim? 39 A: When WMI was specified, the author was much oriented on the vi-like 40 approach of usage. First, it is designated to make it possible to control 41 everything from input mode, similiar to vim. But you can control 42 everything also via shortcuts, if you've configured any, also similiar 43 to vim mappings. Second, you've only one input mode where the statusbar 44 is located, this is similiar to vim. In opposite the emacs approach 45 is to provide input bars under each buffer. And third, the splitting 46 concept of WMI is pretty much oriented on the buffer splitting concept 47 of vim. 48 To sum up: The WMI input mode is for window manipulation, the vim 49 command mode is for file manipulation. 50 51 52 Configuration 53 ------------- 54 55 Q: The Xft fonts appear large, what can I do? 56 A: Have a look at 57 http://pdx.freedesktop.org/~fontconfig/fontconfig-user.html, this should 58 help you configure the fonts to a size and style you'd prefer. 59 60 Q: Ion is more powerful than WMI, because WMI lacks of Lua support. 61 A: Really? Who bars you from using Lua in conjunction with wmiremote? 62 63 Q: Why is Lua not used as Ion does? 64 A: I'm not against Lua in general, it's a simple Turing-complete 65 procedural language as many others. You may like it or not. 66 I think that the Lua integration in WMI would be adverse. 67 First, it's double-complexity, because the time you invest in learning 68 Lua could be invested to enhance your knowledge of C++ to implement 69 native window manager improvements. Second, it's a bottleneck, because 70 you're going to control fast native C++ code with interpreted Lua logic. 71 Third, Lua would be an additional build- and runtime dependency, but WMI 72 is designed to be a minimalist window manager. 73 If you really need Lua 'integration' anyway, just use it in 74 conjunction with wmiremote. 75 76 Q: How do I undefine the default key bindings? 77 A: Insert some dummy action to your actions.conf and bind the keys you 78 want to make avaliable for applications to it (eg. alt+q since some 79 browsers use that one to quit): 80 extern.dummy.cmd="" 81 extern.dummy.cmd=alt+q 82 in wmi-9 there will also be an action "toggle-all-keys" to undefine 83 all keys (useful for nested remote WMI sessions) 84 85 86 Development 87 ----------- 88 89 Q: Why X resource management isn't used for configuration files? 90 A: Several reasons: 91 - the self-made settings behavior is more simple 92 - iteration over user defined keys is no problem/very simple 93 - configuration is homogetic 94 - the self-made settings behavior performs better