devlog #4 - +10 usability!

we’re now shifting from the realm of “experimental” to “experimental but usable”. i’ve added a ton of new features recently and i’m really happy with how nwwm is coming together.

actually good tiling

i’ve added 2 new tiling layouts: monocle, and master/stack. monocle is the easiest to understand: all windows are the same size as the screen, and the currently focused window is brought to the front. master/stack is the traditional layout you see in wms like dwm, where there is a “master” window that takes up half of the screen and the rest split vertically (or “stack”) on the other half of the screen. i also added keybinds that switch between layouts

revamped keybind system

previously, the keybind system was just using raw x11 keycodes which were really annoying because they don’t match up with any other system (25 = w??) and are keymap-dependant. so, i switched to using xkbcommon and now keybinds are defined with more human-readable keysyms like KEY_w or KEY_Return.

i also implemented a small command runner system so now you can launch commands with keybinds. so far i’ve set Mod+Enter to launch kitty and ofc these will all be configurable through the config file

mysterious bugs

i spent ages trying to debug some weird behaviour where bound keys wouldn’t register as keypresses if no windows had been opened in nwwm yet. after a lot of trial and error, and a few ChatGPT therapy sessions, i discovered that my error was one letter: i had keyboard_mode in the global mouse grab (which i need for click to focus) set to GrabMode::Sync instead of GrabMode::Async (fml)

next steps

• more usability (moving windows, closing windows)
• better EWMH compliance
• support for temporary and permanent floating windows (i.e. tiled windows that you make float, and windows that only float like rofi)
• config file when?