xi/xiwm

simple window manager

xiwm

This is a simple window manager I hacked together in my free time. It is based on dwm's code, but the functionality is more influenced by openbox.

Features

• like dwm
  • extremely small (only ~1000 lines of C, roughly half of dwm)
  • supports tiling (see below for details)
  • configured by editing the source code
• like openbox
  • reads ~/.config/xiwm/environment and ~/.config/xiwm/autostart.sh
  • supports multiple desktops (instead of dwm's tags)
  • works with external panels/bars (I use lxpanel)
• no multi monitor support

Default key bindings

• A-C-t launch terminal
• W-r launch dmenu
• A-Tab focus next window
• A-S-Tab focus previous window
• A-l increase left column width
• A-h decrease left column width
• A-F4 close window
• A-S-q quit
• W-F1 go to desktop 1
• W-F2 go to desktop 2
• W-F3 go to desktop 3
• A-C-Right go to next desktop
• A-C-Left go to previous desktop
• A-S-Right move window to next desktop
• A-S-Left move window to previous desktop
• A-Down set window to floating mode
• A-Up maximize window
• A-Left move window to left column
• A-Right move window to right column

Layout concept

With floating window managers it is simple to control where an individual window is, it is hard to control general properties such as avoiding overlap. With tiling window managers it is simple to control exactly those general properties. The flipside is that it gets much harder to position an individual window.

I usually have all my windows maximized. Just sometimes I want to position two windows side by side. This works reasonably well with floating window managers, but I wanted to see if I could improve on that.

With xiwm, all windows start out maximized. However, you can position them on the left or right. When you focus one of the positioned windows, all of them are raised.

I am not sure yet if the positioning should influence the tab order. Still experimenting.