Dynamic Explosion Mental's Window Manager

nice screenshots here

Requirements

• Xlib header files.
• XCB header files for the swallow functionality.
• C99 compiler.

Optional

• pywal
  • if not installed it will set colors to a fallback one defined in config.h
• libxft 2.3.5 or later or libxft-bgra or
  • emojis are used in config.h, for a workaround just removing these should work.
• xwallpaper, dunst, glava, etc
  • There is a script that calls these programs, nothing will crash if not installed, please take a look and modify demwm_random_wall

Suggestions

• Refer to the man page online or in this repo
• To redirect error mesagges to a file exec demwm 2> "$HOME/.cache/demwm.log"
• edit demwm_random_wall to suit you
• If you are looking for Workspaces, then use dusk
• On xinitrc you should call demwm_random_wall or xrdb or any other program that sets the Xresources that demwm would read (without backgrounding it '&'). Example of a xinitrc:

  demwm_random_wall
  exec demwm

Features

• Gaps (vanitygaps)
• Xresources color reading, configurable in config.h. Syncs with pywal colors by default.
• Changing the schemes (colors) at run time
• More layouts
• Custom bar height
• Different color schemes: Normal, Selected, Title, Status, Layout, Urgent and Indicator schemes (underlines in tags)
• Different schemes for border instances
• Transparency while keeping the text opaque on the bar
• A beautiful looking config.h file (at least for my taste :)
• Toggleable 'hide-vacant' patch, which enables alternative tags on toggle
• Dynamic scratchpads: any window can be added or removed as a scratchpad
• Static scratchpads: defined in config.h and move between monitors
• Centered title only if there is space left
• Status text handling, like dwmblocks, but asynchronous (see below)
• Windows remember their tags, they all don't stack into the first tag when restarting
• Click to focus, removed the hover to focus functionality.
• Focus tiled windows and C them on top of floating if they have focus.
• Very simple yet efficient IPC system

Toggleable Features

Here are the "too bloated" features which doesn't affect the workflow, but sometimes are nice. These features are avaliable and optional via CPP (won't be compiled in if you don't need it).

Edit config.mk and uncomment the necesary lines to enable them.

Feature	Description
Icons	Window icons on the title bar, if the program has one to offer. requires imlib2
Tag Previews	Hover your mouse over a tag (you need to have it viewed first) and look the contents of it. requires imlib2
Systray	A system tray in the bar (e.g. nm-applet, pasystray ...).

demwm_random_wall

This is a little script chooses a random file from the img_dir directory variable, runs pywal with the chosen image and symlinks to bgloc. Then calls demwm xrdb to refresh the colors.

The script is copied/deleted to ${PREFIX}/bin by default (by make), PREFIX path can be changed in config.mk.

This script is not a dependecy and can be viewed as a script to demostrate demwm cli functionality.

Patches branch

My little collection of patches, which aren't necessarily applied to this.

Most of my modification aren't a patch. You can copy the url of the commit and then download it.

e.g.

curl -sL https://github.com/explosion-mental/demwm/commit/d8e4af59c570c4b8ef36ef8942c58ab89921900f > dwm-default-layouts-pertag.diff

Here are some that I converted into a patch:

• shift-tools (shift windows,tags or both either with an active client or not)
• integrated status text (TODO: add the poll version)
• gruvbox theme (for the bar)
• truecenteredtitle

What's Next?

Currently I don't wish more 'features' but I'm tweaking from time to time, here are some ideas:

Some little TODOS:

• tapresize corners
• toggle border
• depatch cfacts(?)
• Make systray background the same color as the bar
• toggleable pertag. This features a workflow in which you can have the such 'dynamic' window management of dwm and also have a pertag workflow. Can this be implememnted just like the hidevacant patch? meaning, with a simple flag variable. Maybe intead of a lot of if / else we just re-arrange (re-start / re-setup) the pertag variables to default one and somehow maintain them the same while pertag is active.
  • another idea. maybe just doing all the above but only for the layout..
• Make a window 'transient' like with a keybinding. Usecase for this will be to have a video playing (any window) in a 'non-intrusive' position, say the bottom right, and make it impossible to focus that window; initially thought only by keybinding (focusstack), but I'm open for make a flag to also ignore mouse buttons. - accomplished with sticky + alwaysontop
• add uncursor to Rules: basically if window with uncursor enabled, will make the cursor go into one corner of the screen when focused (or maybe use any coordinates other than the window cordinates). I will find this useful since I have gaps, which means no clicking in the window since there are gaps. Could prevent accidental clicks or make it more 'safe' (don't touch anything).
• use fork/exec/dup2 instead of popen in getcmd funcs (to remove delay).
• Make tag previews more solid and prevent from being shown in the preview of the preview...
• systray toggleable with #ifdef and #endif
• make hide vacant patch toggleable
• a better way of handling layouts at startup

Some wishing pains:

• new logo?
  • black and white
  • notice about the logo not being MIT
• wl-roots support.
• Write a proper manpage
• s/dwm/demwm/
• Rename the proyect
• pertag cursor position. Save the state of the cursor position between tags.
• change dwm_random_wall script to an actual function on C. Why? being a script is much easier to tweak. just call it with spawn { .v = dwm_random_wall }
• Can tcc (tiny C Compiler) be used along side with the alpha patch? lit #define a value.
• integrate dwmblocks into dwm with statuscmd patch. the statuscmd wasn't that helpful.
• Make gaps an option - per layouts yes. { "icon", layout, gaps }
• getenv("TERMINAL") Tbh the macro it's better option

Mayor improvements:

• xrdb patch finally working with pywal without restarting or recompiling (Mar 01 2021)
  • Implemented fallback colors in case any errors (Jan 27 2022)
    • Now it's configurable, not hardcoded to pywal (Jun 13 2022)
• Layouts at startup (Apr 04 2021)
  • A better way of handling this (per monitor) (Aug 08 2021)
• Gaps per tag instead of per monitor (Apr 04 2021)
• Better way of handling Pywal colors (Jun 21 2021)
• Window icons (Jul 22 2021)
  • Icons on swallowed - unswallowed windows (Jul 23 2021)
• Toggleable hide vacants tags (Jul 28 2021)
  • Now hidevacants activates alternative tags (Oct 15 2021)
    • Hidevacants multimonitor friendly (Jun 06 2022)
• System Tray (Aug 06 2021)
• Tag previews (Aug 10 2021)
• Borders colors and general colors now have different schemes (Oct 16 2021)
• status text (blocks) handled by dwm itself (Feb 12 2022)
  • Asynchronous block handling (Feb 25 2022)
  • Do not call poll if the bar is not in use (Apr 12 2022)
• Call dwm functions with xsetroot -name (Feb 21 2022)
• Windows remember their tags, useful when restarting (Feb 28 2022)
• Fixed some patches bugs that the compiler fixes (Mar 06 2022)
• Remember the selected tags when restarting (Mar 09 2022)
• uncursor window rule (Mar 18 2022)
• Static scratchpads automatically move between monitors (Jun 12 2022)