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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 ofonly 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-wmdoes 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 asxbindkeys).

A foreword:foo-wm should be considered unusable alpha software. I usefoo-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.

foo-wm: The window manager itself which can be thrown in.xinitrc. It is reccomeneded that you startfoo-wm with a keybindings manager, such as.xbindkeys, as it will be very diffucult to interact withfoo-wm's socket otherwise. The location and name of the socket, is to be specified insrc/config.h. If noSOCKET_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 withfoo-wm.foo-wm-c takes the syntax offoo-wm-c '/tmp/your-foo-socket.socket' 'ipc command'. Any language that provides a UNIX socket interface can be used to communicate withfoo-wm,foo-wm-c is just a simple C client for doing so. Additionally a ruby client for interacting withfoo-wm's socket can be found atscrips/client.rb

All operations infoo-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 otherClient orContainer Nodes
   • Has aLayout property which may be changed with thelayout IPC command

At any given time usingfoo-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

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 inFOO-DSL.md.

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

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

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 inTODO.md and send a pull request.