A grid-based floating window utility with collision detection and tags.
After enjoying the pleasures of other, more full-featured window managers for some time (eg. openbox), I've realised it would be more useful to have tartwm able to run alongside such a window manager. The more powerful WM can then handle pesky things like mouse focus and window decoration.
To this end, TartWM can be considered a simple but powerful tool for window arrangement. TartWM is not a static/dynamic tiler in the traditional sense.
Start TartWM with this at the end of your .xinitrc
exec tartwm -c path/to/config
TartWM will read a config file from stdin. Here's an example:
x 5
y 6
gap 8
top 16
This will create a 5×6 grid with 8px gaps and 16px of padding at the top edge of the
screen. The y option can be omitted for a 5×5 grid. There are bottom, left and
right options for the other screen edges.
TartWM is controlled entirely from the commandline and doesn't have any support for key or mouse binding. You should really use something like sxhkd.
TartWM does everything on a grid. Arguments to commands involving sizing and
movement (written as GRID below) are given in the following format:
[±]X [[±]Y]
Prepending each argument with + or - makes it a relative value, while
omitting these make it absolute. Cell indexing starts at 1. Supplying a value
of 0 for X or Y will leave that coordinate unchanged.
tartwm move [-w ID] [-e] GRID
Moves the focused or specified window. If the window is blocked by another in
the direction it's trying to go, the offending window is shoved along with it.
Supplying the -e flag means the window will keep going until it hits something
(eg. another window or the screen edge.)
Examples:
tartwm move +2
will move the active window 2 grid cells to the right.
tartwm move 1 1
will move the window to the top left cell. If something is already in the cell, the window won't move.
tartwm move -e 0 -1
will move the window upwards until it hits something. Repeating the call and
omitting the -e flag will shove the blocking window (if possible) along.
tartwm size [-w ID] [-e] [-d EDGE] GRID
Basically works the same way as moving the window. EDGE should be one (or more)
of NSEW. Supplying the -e flag will grow the window until it hits something.
Absolute values will attempt to set the window to that size, or at least the
maximum available size.
Examples:
tartwm size -e -d W +1
will grow the left edge of the window until it hits something.
tartwm size -d NE -1
will shrink the top and right edges of the window.
tartwm size 3 3
will attempt to set the window size to 3 cells wide and 3 cells tall. Only unhindered edges can grow.
tartwm anchor [-w ID]
Toggles anchoring of the active (or specified) window. Anchored windows can't be shoved or moved.
tartwm pack
Will make all visible windows occupy as much space as possible without overlapping. Try
using it after shrinking a window or if you forgot to resize using -c.
tartwm grid
Give all visible windows equal size and width and arrange them in the grid. Anchored windows will be ignored.
tartwm focus [-w ID] [-udlrp]
With -w, focuses the specified window (try it with dmenu and tartwm find).
With one of -udlr focuses a window directionally.
With -p focuses the previous window.
tartwm find [-p x,y] [-s string]
Searches for substring string in windows' titles and classes, returning the ID of
the most likely match. With flag -p, reports the ID of the window at coordinates
x,y. If both -p and -s are supplied, the substring acts as a filter, only
returning windows at x,y that contain string.
tartwm close [-w ID]
Closes the active (or specified) window, sending WM_DELETE.
Windows are assigned to tags, which can then be used to show/hide groups of windows. Windows can only belong to one tag, but multiple tags can be shown on screen at once. When resizing and moving, windows will only interact with other windows on their tag. By default, newly spawned windows are assigned to the first tag.
tartwm tag [-w ID] name
Assign the active (or specified) window to tag name.
tartwm toggle tag
Shows or hides all the windows assigned to tag.
tartwm solo tag
Will exclusively show windows assigned to tag and hide all others.
tartwm ls [-w ID]
Returns the title, tag and properties of all windows or with -w the specified
window.
tartwm save [-f file]
Saves the geometry of all windows (visible and hidden). If -f is supplied the
layout is saved to a file, otherwise it's just kept in memory.
tartwm restore [-f file]
Restores the saved geometry from memory or the supplied file.