===================================================================
 DATE : 2021.01.20
 TIME : 15:00
AUTHOR : [email protected]
TITLE : I3 SCRATCHPAD AND VIM LIKE MARKS

===================================================================
I've been using linux a LONG time, and without a doubt the best
and most versatile graphical environment I have ever used is the
i3 tiling window manger. Technically I use a fork called i3-gaps,
but I will talk about that in another post one day. What makes
i3 the best (for me) is that it fits the way I work, is easily
customized, and that all the navigation can be done with the
keyboard. Two really cool features of i3 are the scratchpad and
vim like marks.

The scratchpad is a place you can send floating windows where
you can quickly retrieve them when needed. Think of it sort of
like minimizing a window--except that with i3 windows are not
minimized.  i3 is a tiling window manager and all windows are by
default opened in the largest dimensions possible. If a window
is the only window opened on a workspace, then it is maximized;
and if any more windows are opened on that workspace they are
tiled to take up half the space of the previously opened window
on that workspace. Any tiled window can be turned into a floating
window (and toggled back into a tiled window) with the following
keystroke (where the mod key is either set to the windows key or
the alt key, depending on your i3 config file--in my case I have
the mod key set to the windows key and mod1 set to the alt key):

~~~~~
mod+shift+space
~~~~~

mod+shift+space is a toggle, meaning repeating the keystroke will
disable floating for the window and return it to a tiling window.

Once a window is turned into a floating window it can be sent to
the scratchpad like this:

~~~~~
mod+shift+minus
~~~~~

Technically, you don't have to turn a window into a floating
window before you send it the scratchpad; i3 does that for you
when you send something to the scratchpad. mod+shift+minus will
send any window, whether it is tiled, tabbed, or floating to the
scratchpad; but any window that is retrieved from the scratchpad
is brought back as a floating window.

When a window is sent to the scratchpad it disappears. Like
I said, it is sort of like minimizing a window, except that
status bars in i3 show workspace numbers, not windows; that means
that there is no status bar indicator showing where that window
went. What good is a disappearing window if you can't bring it
back? Any window sent to the scratchpad can be retrieved like
this:

~~~~~
mod+minus
~~~~~

What makes this cool is that you can take any window that you
don't need right now, and set it aside, out of the way, until you
need it again, and then bring it right back to the front, where
and when you need it.  You can even configure programs to start in
a floating window that is sent straight to the scratchpad at start
up. I have my i3 config file set up to automatically start the RPN
calculator orpie, and a urxvt terminal window opened in a floating
window and sent to the scratchpad as soon as I start i3. In the
case of urxvt, my config file has this in it:

~~~~~
exec --no-startup-id urxvt -name scratchterm
for_window [instance="scratchterm"] move scratchpad
~~~~~

What if you decide that you no longer want a program to be in the
scratchpad? Simply retrieve it from the scratchpad (mod+minus),
and do a mod+shift+space to return it to a tiled window.

Once you have sent several windows to the scratchpad, you can
bring them back with a mod+minus; this will bring them back one
(and only one) at a time in a cycling sequence based on the order
that they were sent to the scratchpad. What that means is, if you
have eight windows in the scratchpad, you will have to repeat the
mod+minus keystroke until the one you are looking for cycles back
around.  This can become a little bit of a time waster, and that
is where vim like marks come in.

Why are they called vim like marks? Marks in vim allow you
to record your current position so that you can return to it
later. In i3 marks can be applied to windows that allow you
to directly jump to a specific window. In the case of windows
that don't reside in the scratchpad, going to a marked window
will switch to the appropriate workspace and focus the marked
window. That is cool enough all by itself, but combined with the
scratchpad, it gets even better.

I avoided using marks for a while, because I have i3 configured
to not draw window decorations (title bars and borders), and I
though this meant I couldn't use marks. I have since found out two
things, marks do not have to be drawn on window decorations to use
then, and i3 can even be configured to not show marks in window
decorations.

So, how do you use marks, and what makes using them so great
coupled with the scratchpad?  The way I use marks in i3 is by
using the i3-input tool to assign a mark to a window that can be
used to retrieve that specific window from the scratchpad. This
allows me to assign a keystroke to mark a window and another to
later go to that marked window whenever I choose.  Simply adding
the following to your i3 config file will do the trick:

~~~~~
# read 1 character and mark the current window with this character
bindsym $mod+m exec i3-input -F 'mark %s' -l 1 -P 'Mark: '

# read 1 character and go to the window with the character
bindsym $mod+g exec i3-input -F '[con_mark="%s"] focus' -l 1 -P 'Goto: '
~~~~~

With this, when I type mod+m the i3-input tool will open a
one line terminal to accept input, and I can mark the focused
window with a one character mark.  Then, I can send that
window to the scratchpad with all the other windows that are
already there. Later I can just type mod+g and then input the
one character mark I assigned, and boom, the marked window is
retrieved from the scratchpad. I didn't have to type mod+minus,
8 times to cycle through the scratchpad windows until I found it.

That's just the way I use the scratchpad with marks, and that just
scratches the surface (see what I did there?). You can configure
i3 to move containers and windows to a mark, use marks with a
window's class and title (or named instance like I used in the
urxvt example above) to jump to a specific window, and marks can
be be replaced removed and even toggled.

Scratching the itch where x marks the spot is something that
should never be typed in a phlog.

--norris

(o\_!_/o)

You are viewing proxied material from sdf.org. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.