perusio / i3-config-dynamic-tagging

An opinionated i3 config with dynamic tagging

i3 minimal configuration incorporating ideas from wmii

Introduction

For a long time I have used wmii but recently I have started working with more than 2 monitors so wmii is no longer the best option. It also seem to have died as a project, so it was time to move on. I tried i3 a long time ago and it sucked compared with wmii. But now is a great tilling window manager. It's multiscreen aware, something wmii is not.

There were however a few things that wmii has that i3 in it's vanilla version has not, namely:

• dynamic tagging: I hate having to memorize workspace numbers to know where a certain window is. Note that by default i3 tags all workspaces with numbers.

• dmenu runs at bottom and not at the top: I hate having to look up to select an item from dmenu for launching that application.

Fortunately i3 is configurable enough to set the wmii behaviors in place.

How it works

Among other customizations the dynamic tagging of windows and moving between the workspaces is achieved purely in BASH. No other language is required. It uses jq (the sed for JSON) to parce the workspace list (implemented as an array of Javascript objects). The dynamic tagging and movement relies on two simple shell scripts: i3-dtags-moveto.sh, i3-dtags.sh that pipe the output from i3-msg to jq and dmenu. Here is the relevant part of the i3 configuration.

## Rename workspace.
bindsym Mod4+r exec i3-input -F 'rename workspace to "%s"' -P 'New name: '

## Show all tags and allow user to select one though dmenu.
bindsym $mod+t exec $HOME/.i3/i3-dtags.sh -fn '$dfont'
## Show tags, and move the current window to the one selected using dmenu.
bindsym $mod+Shift+t exec $HOME/.i3/i3-dtags-moveto.sh -fn '$dfont'

$dfont is the font specification to be used by dmenu. There's also a binding to rename workspaces.

The full configuration is in config. Note that I use the excelent terminus font instead of the more flashing and eye straining modern fonts. It's extremely readable and easy going on the eyes.

Installation

1. Get the terminus font. On debian install the xfonts-terminus package.

2. Install jq. On debian install the jq package.

3. Clone the repository to your i3 home directory ~/.i3:

   git clone https://github.com/perusio/i3-config-dynamic-tagging.git ~/.i3
   

4. Reload i3 in place: the default key binding is: $mod+Shift+r, where $mod is the modifier key. By default is Mod1 (Alt) but it can be set to the super (windows) key Mod4. In that case adjust the rename command key binding. Otherwise it will conflict with the resize command.

5. Done.

License: 2-clause BSD

This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the new-style BSD license.

You should have received a copy of the BSD license along with this program. If not, see http://www.debian.org/misc/bsd.license.