Eric's Desktop and Graphical Environment

This repository contains files used to setup a customized X11 environment suited to my tastes. The window manager, terminal emulator, application launcher and screen locker are all derived from suckless.org projects, but I have a number of different patches that I use to change existing behavior or add new features. Most of the patches are written by me, but those that are not include attribution information in the header of the file. All patches written by me are licensed under whatever license governs the project they apply to. Except where explicitly noted otherwise, everything else is licensed under the BSD 2-clause license.

Overview

The Makefile ties everything together and handles the patching and building of binaries. The default action is to build all binaries, fetching and patching external dependencies as needed. Once the binaries are built, they can be installed with make install. This will symlink into place binaries that do not require super-user privileges and copy those that do.

Files ending in *-config.h are typically the application options for suckless.org projects. These are automatically copied into place as config.h as part of the build process.

The "utilities" folder contains miscellaneous C applications typically consisting of a single source file. The compilation information is extracted from these files by searching for a comment starting with "Make:" in the C file and executing the following text as a Makefile recipe.

The "presentation" folder contains configuration files that affect the appearance of the graphical environment as a whole like themes and font settings.

The "patches" folder contains various patches prefixed with the project name and a number; the number determines the order in which the patches are applied with lowest numbered patches applied first.

The "scripts" folder contains various tools written in scripting languages like Python and Bash, and most of them are used for keyboard shortcuts.

Utilities

Black Walls

Sets the root window color and pixmap on all screens to a solid black rectangle. Unlike xsetroot, this utility also updates the _XROOTPMAP_ID and ESETROOT_PMAP_ID atoms so it works with compositors like xcompmgr and compton.

D.E.L.: Desktop Entry Launcher

DEL searches for Freedesktop Desktop Entries, generates a list of graphical commands and uses dmenu as a front-end so the user can select a command to execute.

Status Line

This program is used to set the X11 root window name which dwm uses as its status bar. It supports displaying clocks for multiple time zones, battery status and user-defined indicators that are read from a file.

Patches for dmenu

Password Prompt Option

File: dmenu-00-password-prompt-option.diff

Adds a new command line option ("-g") that turns dmenu into a password prompt.

Print Selection If Unambiguous

File: dmenu-00-print-if-unambiguous.diff

This patch adds a new command line option ("-a") that will make dmenu print the current selection and exit if the user input only matches one item.

User-defined Prompt Colors

File: dmenu-00-user-defined-prompt-colors.diff

With this patch, the prompt foreground can be specified with the "-pf" command line option, and the background can be specified with "-pb". A new entry must be added to the color definition array in the configuration header after applying this patch:

static const char *colors[SchemeLast][2] = {
    // ...
    [SchemePrompt] = { "#000000", "#ffffff" },
};

Patches for dwm

Better Borders

File: dwm-00-better-borders.diff

Disables borders on tiled windows when only one, non-floating window is visible.

Click to Focus

File: dwm-00-click-to-focus.diff

Modifies focus behavior so window focus is only changed when a mouse button is clicked. The focusonclick patch renders MODKEY mouse actions inoperable, but this patch does not suffer from the same problem.

This patch has been modified from its original version so that using the mouse scroll wheel on top of a window will not shift focus.

Configuration Macros

File: dwm-00-config-macros.diff

Copies most macros defined in dwm's config.def.h to dwm.c and adds some additional helpers. The user must still explicitly map "MODKEY" to their preferred window manager key e.g. #define MODKEY HyperKey.

Custom Rules Hook

File: dwm-00-custom-rules-hook.diff

Let's users to define more complex constraints than what the "rules" array allows; the user defines a function as void ruleshook(Client *c) in the configuration header that is executed at the end of "applyrules" for every window dwm manages. Two new properties, "class" and "instance", are added to the Client struct, and a global variable named "scanning" is also added which can be used to differentiate between windows that already exist when dwm is started from those that were created afterward. The value of "scanning" is 1 while dwm is initializing and 0 thereafter.

In the following example, windows that are created on unselected tags after dwm is started are marked urgent:

void ruleshook(Client *c)
{
    if (!ISVISIBLE(c) && !scanning) {
        seturgent(c);
    }
}

Hide Vacant Tags

File: dwm-00-hide-vacant-tags.diff

This patch prevents dwm from drawing tags with no clients (i.e. vacant) on the bar. It also makes sure that clicking a tag on the bar behaves accordingly by excluding vacant tags from the list of displayed tags. Empty rectangles would normally be drawn next to vacant tags, but this patch removes them since they are no longer necessary.

Ignore Floating Windows In Monocle Mode Count

File: dwm-00-ignore-floating-windows-in-monocle-count.diff

The number of windows shown in the monocle mode icon will not include floating windows with this patch applied.

Pipe IPC

File: dwm-00-pipe-ipc.diff

This patch adds support for interprocess communication to dwm via a named pipe. The path of the pipe is defined with static const char fifopath[] in the configuration header. The user must also define void fifohook(char *data), a function that accepts the null-terminated data sent over the pipe as its only argument. Three new macros are defined and can be seen in the following example hook:

void fifohook(char *data)
{
    Arg arg;
    Client *c;
    Monitor *m;
    char title[sizeof(((Client *)0)->name)];

    PARSING_LOOP (data) {
        // Close window with specified title
        if (argmatch("close %s", title)) {
            for (m = mons; m; m = m->next) {
                for (c = m->clients; c; c = c->next) {
                    if (!strcmp(c->name, title)) {
                        arg.v = (void *) c;
                        killclient(&arg);
                    }
                }
            }
        // Shut down dwm
        } else if (wordmatch("quit")) {
            running = 0;
        // Parsing failure
        } else {
            break;
        }
    }
}

The PARSING_LOOP macro defines the looping condition for parsing and instantiates variables used by the other macros. The argmatch macro is used to handle commands that expect arguments. It accepts a string literal that is a scanf(3) format specifier followed by pointers to locations used to store the parsed values. The "wordmatch" macro is for commands that accept no arguments. Both the "argmatch" and "wordmatch" macros return non-zero values if they were able to match the specified pattern or string.

Note: The "fifopath" variable supports using ~/ as a prefix to represent the user's home directory.

Regular Expression Rules

File: dwm-00-regex-rules.diff

Enables the use of regular expressions for window rules' "class", "title" and "instance" attributes.

Select Previous Window

File: dwm-00-select-previous-window.diff

Adds function that is used to select the most recently, previously focused window that is currently visible. To compile dwm with this patch, the command line option "-lrt" must be set and _POSIX_C_SOURCE must be greater than or equal to 199309 (cc ... -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=199309L ...).

Smaller Clickable Tag-Bar Area

File: dwm-00-smaller-clickable-tag-bar-area.diff

Makes clicks on the window title area register only if they happen in the top half. This patch was created to reduce the amount of accidental window closures caused by attempts to middle-mouse-click browser tabs.

System Tray

File: dwm-00-systray.diff

Implements a system tray for dwm. The following variables must be defined in the configuration header:

// -1: systray follows selected monitor
// X: pin systray to monitor X
static const unsigned int systraypinning = 0;

// Icon paddding
static const unsigned int systrayspacing = 2;

// 1: if pinning fails, display systray on the first monitor
// 0: display systray on the last monitor
static const int systraypinningfailfirst = 1;

// 0 means no systray
static const int showsystray = 1;

This patch has been modified from its original version to make the monitor numbers used for "systraypinning" consistent with the monitor numbers dwm uses internally; in the original version, "systraypinning" is indexed from 1 instead of 0.

Tag Rules

File: dwm-00-tag-rules.diff

Adds a new set of rules that can be used to temporarily override the layout, nmaster and mfact values when certain tags are active. The new rule structs have six properties:

• triggertags: This is a bitmask representing the tags that must be active for the rule to be triggered.
• exact: When when this is non-zero, only the tags listed in triggertags can be active for this rule to fire. When this is zero, the rule will trigger if the active tags are superset of the trigger tags.
• mnum: The monitor the rule applies to. When this value is less than zero, the rule will apply to tags on any monitor.
• minclients: Minimum number of tiled windows required for a rule to fire.
• maxclients: Maximum number of tiled windows allowed for a rule to fire. When there is maximum, this should be set to 0.
• layoutnum: Index of the layout in the "layouts" array to use when the rule is triggered. When the layout is changed, the layout symbol is not updated to reflect the ephemeral layout used by a tag rule fires. If this number is less than zero, the layout will not be changed.
• mfact: Value of mfact to be used when the rule is active. This can be set to -1 to leave mfact unchanged.

Here is an example definition of the new rules array:

static const TagRule tagrules[] = {
    // Tag              Exact   Monitor     Mn,Mx   nmaster     Layout No.  mfact
    // If tags 9 and 2 are active, switch to layout number 2.
    { TAG(9) | TAG(2),  1,      -1,          0, 0,  -1,         2,          -1 },
    // If tag 1 is active and there are at least two windows shown, switch
    // to layout 1 and set mfact to 0.5.
    { TAG(1),           0,      -1,          2, 0   -1,         1,          0.5 },
};

Rules are evaluated from 0...N, and no further rules are evaluated once a match is encountered.

Note: Although it would a little more efficient to integrate the code of "applyrules" into "arrangemon", this patch makes changes to "arrange" instead to reduce the likelihood of conflicting with other patches.

Urgent Tag Color

File: dwm-00-urgent-tag-color.diff

Allows customization of colors for tags containing urgent windows. A new color scheme should be defined in the "colors" array indexed with SchemeUrg:

static const char *colors[][3] = {
    // Scheme           Foreground  Background  Border
    // ...
    [SchemeUrg]     = { white,      red,        red    },
};

Visibility Removes Urgency

File: dwm-00-visibility-removes-urgency.diff

Removes urgency hint from any window that is visible. This will not reset most applications' internal urgency states which means things like tray icons may remain active even though a window's urgency hint has been removed.

Window Attachment Priority

File: dwm-00-window-attachment-priority.diff

Adds an additional property named "priority" to window rule definitions. When a new window is managed by dwm, its position in the window list is determined by its priority: the higher the priority, the earlier in the list it is added. A default priority must be specified in configuration header like so:

static const int defaultpriority = 50;

When using the "zoom" function, a window cannot be zoomed above a window with a higher priority.

Window Title Environment Variable

File: dwm-00-window-title-env-variable.diff

This patch sets the environment variable "DWM_SELECTED_WINDOW_TITLE" to the title of the currently selected window when spawning a subprocess.

Center Floating Windows

File: dwm-10-center-floating-windows.diff

For whatever reason, some windows that should be centered are instead spawned in the top left corner at position (0, 0) relative to the dwm bar; this change centers these windows when they appear.

This patch must be applied after "dwm-00-window-attachment-priority.diff".

Restrict Mouse To Focused Monitor

File: dwm-10-restrict-mouse-to-focused-monitor.diff

This change adds the option to restrict the mouse to the focused monitor. When the mouse reaches the edge of the screen while restriction is enabled, the cursor will not be permitted to move to another monitor. This feature is controlled by the variable "restrictmouse" which should be defined in the configuration header i.e. static int restrictmouse = 1. When mouse restriction is enabled, the behavior of "focusmon" changes so that it warps the mouse to the newly focused monitor.

Status Bar On All Monitors

File: dwm-10-status-bar-on-all-monitors.diff

Show the status bar on all monitors -- focused or not, and always use "SchemeSel" (the selected-item color scheme) on the focused monitor's status bar for the window title area even when no windows are visible.

This patch depends on "dwm-00-systray.diff".

Patches for slock

P.A.M. Support

File: slock-00-pam-authentication.diff

This patch adds support for PAM to slock. Although it was originally based on a patch written by Jan Christoph Ebersbach, it has since been refactored. This patch notably differs from Jan's in the following ways:

• PAM is automatically used as the fallback when the user does not appear to have a hash on the local system.
• The function used to converse with PAM does not kill the screen locker if there is a memory allocation failure.
• C preprocessor guards have been added so slock can still be compiled when this patch is applied regardless of whether or not the PAM development libraries are available.

Other changes include:

• A new, intermediate color will be shown when slock is waiting on PAM. Its index is PAM_WAIT.
• With this patch, slock drops privileges using the return values of getuid(2) and getgid(2) instead of constants in "config.h".

To build slock with PAM support, add "-lpam" to the library flags and "-DHAVE_PAM_AUTH" to the C preprocessor flags.

Improved Modifier Handling

File: slock-10-improved-modifier-handling.diff

With this patch, modifier keys only cause the screen to display the failure color when they are released without pressing a complementary key.

This patch depends on "slock-00-pam-authentication.diff".

Support for Longer Passwords

File: slock-10-longer-password-buffer.diff

This patch enlarges the buffer used to store user input so slock can support longer passwords.

This patch depends on "slock-00-pam-authentication.diff".

Patches for st

Clear Selection When Ownership of X11 "PRIMARY" Buffer Is Lost

File: st-00-clear-selection-when-primary-ownership-lost.diff

If text is selected in another window and st loses ownership of the X11 "PRIMARY" buffer, clear any existing highlighted / selected lines.

Don't Preserve Bolding Under Cursor

File: st-00-dont-preserve-bolding-under-cursor.diff

When a character is emboldened, its color may not be the same as the non-bold version, so swapping the background color and foreground color will result in text's color becoming something other than the background color. This patch disables preservation of the bold attribute of the character under the cursor to resolve this.

Font Array Support

File: st-00-font-array-support.diff

Modifies st to support user-defined fallback fonts specified in a NULL terminated array defined as const char *fonts[]. This change also resolves an issue where fallback fonts were used in place of default fonts in an inconsistent manner which caused identical sets of text to sometimes use different fonts. In the following example, DejaVu Sans Mono is the primary font with two others specified as fallbacks:

const char *fonts[] = {
    "DejaVu Sans Mono",
    "VL Gothic",
    "WenQuanYi Micro Hei",
    NULL
};

Underscore Ascent Scale

File: st-01-underscore-ascent-scale.diff

With certain font configurations, underscores are drawn outside the character cell clipping area in st, a problem that also plagues other terminal emulators that use Xft:

• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=125749
• https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/underline-_-in-xterm-invisible-4175434364/
• http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.log.html#xterm_276

To work around this problem, this patch adds a new variable, static float underscoreascentscale, a scaling factor for font->ascent when a glyph is an underscore.

This patch depends on "st-00-font-array-support.diff".