Save and restore your i3wm layout, spawning applications to start windows. Hopefully, a more convenient version of i3-save-tree.
Requires Python3 (but can happily coexist with Python2).
"Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection." David Wheeler
i3-clever-layout attempts to automate the saving and restoring of i3 layouts, together with (optionally) running the applications contained in a layout.
Working out which applications to run and where they should be placed in a layout is in general very hard. But for many use cases it is trivial; therefore, we solve this problem through configuration for the user's specific use case. The price of using such a framework approach is some loss of generality and ability to debug.
The user of i3-clever-layout must provide two commands:
- run_command which derives for each window a command to spawn it anew
- swallow_command which works out how to match up newly made windows to the slots that i3's append_layout command provides.
Each of these commands is fed a node from i3-msg -t get_tree on standard input.
An (unrealistically simplified) example using jq may be informative:
i3-clever-layout save --run-command 'jq .name' --swallow-command 'jq [{title:.name}]' test
i3-clever-layout restore test
This attempts to run a command with the same name as the window title to spawn a window, and places new windows with the same title as the current window in the slot, in the slot.
A real world example is included.
A default run- and swallow- command can be set using the config command
i3-clever-layout config swallow_command 'jq [{title:.name}]'
i3-clever-layout config run_command 'jq .name'
The --debug flag may be used to debug your swallow and run commands.
i3-clever-layout save - produces output that can be used with append_layout for debugging purposes. This output can also be inspected manually.
sudo apt-get install python3-pip # requires python 3
pip3 install --user git+https://github.com/talwrii/i3-clever-layout#egg=i3-clever-layout
See also: this reddit post.
i3 allows one to create complicated nested layouts and modify the size of windows in these layouts. There are also tools to navigate very complicated collections of windows like marks, workspaces, the application i3-easyfocus, and indeed the easy ability to define custom key-bindings.
However, this ability leads one to create complicated layouts (often for one-off tasks) which are lost when one restarts a machine. Developers have observed the value of saving and restoring these layouts and provided functionality for doing so. But given that working out how to create the windows in a layout is in general impossible, i3's tools are very much at the level of "general purpose library functions" rather than convenience tools.
i3-clever-layout attempts to extend i3's layout-saving functionality some way towards a convenience tool.
This tools in many ways extends and reimplements i3-save-tree. This was influenced by the authors familiarity with python and his beliefs about python's superior discoverability.
This tool is in many ways just a massive ball of glue, but "the last mile" of making tools convenient to use tends produce such code.
This tool may act as a stepping stone towards a more "do what I mean" layout saver and restorer. It seems unlikely that a single author could (or would be motivated) to create such a tool, but individuals may be motivated to solve their own problems and share the results if given the opportunity to do so.
One scenario would be that a a standard "do-what-I-mean" run_command and swallow_command was created (possibly one that had a number of configuration options) with users tweaking this command for their own use cases and sharing these improvements. It remains to be seen whether this is something that the world cares about.
- i3 provides "library level" functionality to save an restore desktops. i3-save-tree automates using these libraries somewhat, but requires manual steps that need to be used each time a layout is saved.
- i3-lm has similar, approach hard-coding the saving and restoring of a number of applications.
Due to the interactive nature of this tool tests are annoying to write.
There are no tests, but tox is used to check dependencies, installation and syntax errors.