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mfp: I guess this makes me a weirdo (maybe even more so amongst Rubyists, which would often kill for a Mac — their third or fourth one) but I much prefer this to Exposé+Dock+Dashboard and all that eye candy (not that I’ve used it that much, but more than it took me to like wmii — maybe the learning curve is too steep? :-P).

I’m all hot in the collar over this as well. Totally lovestruck. They took all the right cues from Plan 9. I’ve been enjoying Mauricio’s script. Here’s a couple minor hacks.

PLEASE NOTE: Mauricio’s hacks (and mine) only work with the stable wmii-3 just released.

Resizing Hotkeys

I don’t ever swap two windows. So I used those hotkeys for pushing the edges of a window wider. For example, Alt+Control+k adds 48 pixels to the right side of a window. Now, if that window is up against the right-hand side of the screen, this’ll have no affect.

 on_key("#{MODKEY}-Control-#{UP}") { write "/view/sel/sel/geom", "+0 -48 +0 +48" }
 on_key("#{MODKEY}-Control-#{DOWN}") { write "/view/sel/sel/geom", "+0 +0 +0 +48" }
 on_key("#{MODKEY}-Control-#{RIGHT}") { write "/view/sel/sel/geom", "+0 +0 +48 +0" }
 on_key("#{MODKEY}-Control-#{LEFT}") { write "/view/sel/sel/geom", "-48 +0 +48 +0" }

No Numbers

I don’t use the numeric tags. I use about ten verbose tags and wmii-3 displays them in order in the bar. So I use the numeric keys to tab quickly between them. (Alt+1 is the first tag, Alt+2 is the second…) I got this from Suraj N. Kurapati (who also posted his Ruby wmiirc.

I’ve also added Alt+Shift+num which adds the tag at num position to the current window’s set of tags. And Alt+Control+num removes the tag at num position from the current window’s set.

 (0..9).each do |i|
 k = (i - 1) % 10
 on_key("#{MODKEY}-#{i}") do
 view(read('/tags').split[k] || i)
 end
 on_key("#{MODKEY}-Shift-#{i}") do
 key = read('/tags').split[k] || i
 oldtags = read("/view/sel/sel/tags").split(/\+/)
 write "/view/sel/sel/tags", (oldtags + [key]).uniq.join("+")
 end
 on_key("#{MODKEY}-Control-#{i}") do
 key = read('/tags').split[k] || i
 oldtags = read("/view/sel/sel/tags").split(/\+/)
 write "/view/sel/sel/tags", (oldtags - [key]).uniq.join("+")
 end
 end

Action Commands

Mauricio lets you setup some commands in your Ruby script which you can get to from the menu. For example, Alt+a google launches a search in your browser using the current cursor selection as the search terms. I’ve just extended this a bit by allowing the search terms right on the bar. So: Alt+a google houyhnhnms.

 on_key("#{MODKEY}-a") do
 internal_actions = {
 "browser" => lambda do |selection|
 selection ||= `wmiipsel`.strip
 case browser = ENV["BROWSER"]
 when nil: system "/etc/alternatives/x-www-browser '#{selection}' &" 
 else system "#{browser} '#{selection}' &" 
 end
 end,
 "google" => lambda do |*selection|
 require 'cgi'
 if selection
 selection = CGI.escape(selection.join(" "))
 else
 selection = CGI.escape(%!"#{`wmiipsel`.strip}"!)
 end
 url = "http://www.google.com/search?q=#{selection}" 
 case browser = ENV["BROWSER"]
 when nil: system "/etc/alternatives/x-www-browser '#{url}' &" 
 else system "#{browser} '#{url}' &" 
 end
 end
 }
 wmiimenu((action_list + internal_actions.keys).sort) do |choice|
 if internal_actions[choice]
 internal_actions[choice].call
 else
 choices = choice.split(/\s+/)
 if internal_actions[choices.first]
 internal_actions[choices.shift].call(*choices)
 end
 system("$HOME/.wmii-3/#{choice} &") if /^\s*$/ !~ choice
 end
 end
 end

For some other shell snippets: snippets. And, for more about tagging: tagging.