devlog #2 - an actual window manager

x11 is an ancient beast, full of mismatched types (screen height is a u16, window height is a u32, window position is an i32, etc), difficult protocols, and more double colons than you can shake a stick at, but i’m working through it.

a (tiling) window manager

i started off by storing a list of open workspaces in the main wm struct, and each workspace has a list of open windows (and a tiling layout). then, i made the wm listen for DestroyNotify events and remove them from their respective workspaces. soon after marvelling at my creation i realised that i could only see one window at a time, so i worked on implementing a basic tiling algorithm. so far, all i have is columns (window_width = screen_width / num_of_windows) but i’m working on adding master-stack tiling (what dwm uses)

focus!

i also realised that it’s no use having multiple windows if you can only use type on one, so i made each window grab the left click, and then listen for ButtonPress events, focusing the clicked window.

next steps

• more tiling layouts
• cosmetic stuff (borders, gaps)
• keyboard shortcuts