Awesome

mxswm

mxswm is a MaXed Stacks Window Manager for X11. This window manager keeps windows in a number of stacks of same size and allows quick changing between the windows using keyboard. It has basic support for multiple monitors.

This is useful for people who hate micromanaging the position and size of windows using mouse.

If it is necessary to stack some windows vertically, you can use xvbox.

If it is necessary to manually manage position and size of some windows, run a separate window manager better suited for the job in Xephyr.

This window manager was originally created to be a simpler alternative for cocowm by the same author. Reaping the full benefit of cocowm requires a specialized command shell system, such as cocovt. However, a simple maximizing window manager like mxswm is fine enough for most purposes when working with programs that were designed for the full screen view, such as vtsh which is an alternative to cocovt.

At the moment mxswm mostly works, but is not flawless. Also, requires manual customization from mxswm.h for e.g. setting the fonts and borders. There is some initial support for runtime configuration through a Unix domain socket using 'mxswmctl' command.

Default key bindings

Stacks

• F1 Remove window stack
• F2 Add window stack
• F3 Toggle overriding maxwidth setting
• Win+Left Select stack on the left
• Win+Right Select stack on the right
• Shift+Win+Left Move current stack to the left
• Shift+Win+Right Move current stack to the right
• Win+S Toggle sticky status for stack
• Win+H Toggle hide other stacks (not counting sticky stacks)
• Win+Enter Run command in this stack

Clients

• Win+Tab Cycle to previous clients in any stack
• Menu Quickly focus previous client in any stack
• Win+f Focus client by name
• Win+Down Select client / raise selected client
• Win+Up Select client / raise selected client
• Win+q Delete client
• Win+k Destroy client forcibly (rarely needed / should not be used)
• Ctrl+Win+Left Move selected client to stack on the left
• Ctrl+Win+Right Move selected client to stack on the right
• Win+Space Rename current client's title (or reset to original)

Prompt

• BackSpace Delete character
• Esc Exit prompt without submitting

Statusbar

• Win+t Toggle display of root window title contents

Debugging

• Win+a Dump stack and client information to trace log
• Win+l Restart window manager (useful e.g. for testing .mxswmrc or after code modifications)
• Win+Shift+q Exit

Build

$ ./configure ~
$ make
$ make install

Runtime configuration

Set first stack's width to 200px:

$ mxswmctl stack 1 width 200

Dependencies

• Practically none on a standard Unix/Linux system that uses X11 Window System.

Debugging

Enable synchronized (slow) behavior that help in debugging X11 errors.

$ mxswm sync

By default mxswm does not have an error handler for X11 errors which makes mxswm crash when getting unexpected client behavior. This is so that the errors can be fixed from mxswm-side so that mxswm becomes robust and does not need error handler for these sort of things. Help is wanted in running mxswm with various client programs.

You can also add -DTRACE to CFLAGS in Makefile for getting debug messages. When reporting bugs, sending the -DTRACE output would be good.

Files

• ~/.mxswm_socket For runtime configuration using mxswmctl