Check for empty workspaces

[trueNAHO]

How to notify eww when a workspace focusses an empty tag without any windows?

The most related information from leftwm-state is:

 └ "workspaces"     <array of workspaces>
      └ "tags"        <array of tags for this workspace>
          ├ "index"     <index as int>
          ├ "mine"      <boolean is true, when the tag is owned by the active display>
          ├ "visible"   <boolean is true, when the tag active or is visible on another display>
          ├ "focused"   <boolean is true, when the focused window is on this tag>
          └ "busy"      <boolean is true, when the tag is not empty/has at least one window>

Tags with windows have their busy boolean set to true, while tags without windows have their busy boolean set to false. However, in leftwm version 0.4.2, if a tag has the mine boolean set to true, the busy boolean is always set to true, regardless of whether a window exists on that tag.

[VuiMuich]

That should not be the case, and I am quite positive that on my system it is working correct.

I've setup eww to replace the tag string with • for empty tags, so I would have noticed immediately when all tags report busy.

Is it possible that for some reason you have a window like the bar, or the wallpaper set as normal window type? That would cause normally empty tags to register as busy.

[trueNAHO]

when you focus an empty tag the window_title field should be "" but it still has the value of the last focused window

I don't find this the case The window title is unconditionally shown in my eww bar, and is "" correctly when I switch to an empty tag

My window_title also properly updates as stated before:

For example, let's consider two workspaces: one running a terminal with the leftwm-state command, and another workspace that is completely empty. Moving the cursor to the empty workspace, sets the window_title attribute to "".

The only bug I found is:

However, positioning the cursor on empty space such as padding between windows or the screen border on the non-empty workspace, does not update the window_title attribute.

[nemalex]

Do you use sloppy mouse focus?

[trueNAHO]

Do you use sloppy mouse focus?

I use the default configuration, but commented out the scratchpad entry and all entries in keybind. The settings related to "sloppy" seem to be:

    focus_behaviour: Sloppy,
    sloppy_mouse_follows_focus: true,

[nemalex]

I found that the focus behavior in this mode is a little funky sometimes
I didn't dig into the code why that is, but I'm planning to, at least, make some detailed bug reports
But this is outside this conversation

Regarding your original issue, checking if the window title is "" is the best approach I can think of to detect an empty tag
Here is a code snippet where I conditionally applying a class to a centerbox

(centerbox :class "${wmstate.window_title == "" ? "" : "exampleClass"}"

[trueNAHO]

checking if the window title is "" is the best approach I can think of to detect an empty tag Here is a code snippet where I conditionally applying a class to a centerbox

(centerbox :class "${wmstate.window_title == "" ? "" : "exampleClass"}"

This should properly detect focussing empty workspaces. However, in my specific use case, I want to open either one of two eww windows based on the presence of a window in the corresponding workspace. Consequently, each workspace will contain a dedicated eww window. Therefore, I do not think your proposed solution can handle several workspaces.

eww provides several approaches for toggling or hiding windows, but the challenge lies in determining when to activate those commands. This is precisely the moment when workspaces transition between being empty and non-empty.

If you are curious how both eww windows would look like

The initial eww window serves as a vertical status bar, while the second eww window is a rectangular shape positioned at the center of the workspace. The second window contains multiple sub-rectangles designed to display various specialized information.

The first window would look like:

The second window would look like: