foo-wm: Foo Window Manager

Foo Window Manager is a minimalistic window manager that does two things and two things only:

1. Provides a tree data structure in which you can organize windows.
2. Provides a socket for IPC along with a basic DSL for manipulating and traversing the tree.

As a results of only doing these two things, foo-wm most likely works a bit differently than other window managers you may be acquainted with. Mainly, strangest of all to the newcomer, foo-wm does not provide: workspaces or keybindings. The former can be emulated through foo-wm's tree and the latter can be provided through any X keybinding program (such as xbindkeys).

A foreword: foo-wm should be considered unusable alpha software. I use foo-wm on a daily basis, although that doesn't mean you should (unless you are interested in contributing). foo-wm doesn't have full support for many basic window managment functions (ICCCM/EWMH). Although, ICCCM/EWMH support is a top priority currently.

The Makefile will generate:

foo-wm: The window manager itself which can be thrown in .xinitrc. It is reccomeneded that you start foo-wm with a keybindings manager, such as .xbindkeys, as it will be very diffucult to interact with foo-wm's socket otherwise. The location and name of the socket, is to be specified in src/config.h. If no SOCKET_NAME, is specified then a name will be automatically generated based on the PID of the socket in the form of /tmp/foo-wm-pid.socket.

foo-wm-c: This is a simple and dumb command line client for interacting with foo-wm. foo-wm-c takes the syntax of foo-wm-c '/tmp/your-foo-socket.socket' 'ipc command'. Any language that provides a UNIX socket interface can be used to communicate with foo-wm, foo-wm-c is just a simple C client for doing so. Additionally a ruby client for interacting with foo-wm's socket can be found at scrips/client.rb

The Tree

All operations in foo-wm are related to manipulating and the traversal of the tree. All nodes within the tree are one of two types.

1. Client Nodes
   • Just a single X11 Window
2. Container Nodes
   • Holds one or more other Client or Container Nodes
   • Has a Layout property which may be changed with the layout IPC command

At any given time using foo-wm there are three essential nodes within the tree at play:

1. Root Node
   • The top of the tree
   • Issuing a zoom command with a negative delta approximates this node
2. Focus Node
   • The node which is currently manipulated on by using IPC commands
   • Issuing a zoom command with a positive delta approximates this node
3. View Node
   • The node which the screen is currently viewing

The FOO-DSL and the Zooming Nature

Now that you understand that all foo-wm does is maintain a tree of windows, now you'll want to know how to mainuplate the windows in the tree. For this, you simply send commands to foo-wm in the specifications provided in FOO-DSL.md.

For example, sending the zoom command through the provided command line client. foo-wm-c '/tmp/foo-wm.socket' 'zoom 2'

Inspiration

Inspirations include: DWM, monsterwm, catwm, dminiwm, i3, herbstluftwm, wmii, and tinywm

Contributing

Foo Window Manager is very much open to contribution. Please get in touch via email if you are interested or just take a stab at something in TODO.md and send a pull request.