plover-application-controls 1.2.1

Plover plugin to monitor and control the currently active window and switch between windows quickly

Plover Application Controls

Plover plugin to monitor and control the currently active window and switch between windows quickly.

Can also be used by other plugins to track the currently active window.

Installation:

Navigate to the installation directory for Plover and open a terminal / command prompt.

Run: <exe_name> -s plover_plugins install -e plover-application-controls

Restart Plover.

Configure > Plugins > Enable application_controls.

Meta Actions:

The {:application_name} meta outputs information about the currently active window. Argument can be app, class or title, or a combination of them with : as a separator. title should be consistent between platforms, whereas class and app will depend across platforms and specific user installations. To find an application's app or class, see meta actions. class is only available on some Linux systems. When a property is unknown UNKNOWN will be output.

The following example will output UNKNOWN:Navigator:Mozilla Firefox (output will vary between platforms and installations).

Example:

{
  "W*EUPB": "{:application_name:app:class:title}"
}

Commands:

The {PLOVER:application} can be used to change or control the currently active window. It takes a subcommand as its first argument, with further arguments separated by :.

For example, {PLOVER:application:move:100:0} will move the current window 100 pixels to the right.

Window Command	Description	Arguments
tab	Focuses the nth window in history	<n: int> [initial_sync: bool]
cycle	Cycles n places through most recent windows. Chained through consecutive strokes	<n: int> [initial_sync: bool]
stop_cycle	Terminates a cycle chain. See cycling behaviour
sync_history	See syncing
close
minimize
maximize
restore
hide
show
activate
resize	Resize by a pixel offset	<x: int> <y: int>
resize_to	Resize to a set pixel size	<x: int> <y: int>
move	Move by a pixel offset	<x: int> <y: int>
move_to	Move to a set pixel location	<x: int> <y: int>
raise_window
lower_window
always_on_top		[value: bool]
always_on_bottom		[value: bool]
send_behind
accept_input		[value: bool]

Window Cycling Behaviour:

Keys given in brackets signify a modifier key being held for the key sequence within the brackets. Alt + Shift + (Tab + Tab) means holding Alt and Shift whilst hitting Tab twice.

Translated Strokes	Equivalent keyboard input
{PLOVER:application:tab:+1}	Alt + Tab
{PLOVER:application:tab:+2}	Alt + (Tab + Tab)
{PLOVER:application:tab:-2}	Alt + Shift + (Tab + Tab)
{PLOVER:application:tab:+1}/{PLOVER:application:tab:+1}	Alt + Tab,Alt + Tab
{PLOVER:application:cycle:+1}/{PLOVER:application:cycle:+1}	Alt + (Tab + Tab)
{PLOVER:application:cycle:+2}/{PLOVER:application:cycle:-1}	Alt + Tab
{PLOVER:application:cycle:+1}/normal translation/{PLOVER:application:cycle:+1}	Alt + Tab,normal translation,Alt + Tab
{PLOVER:application:cycle:+1}{PLOVER:application:stop_cycle}/{PLOVER:application:cycle:+1}	Alt + Tab,Alt + Tab

Syncing:

If a new window appears in the background at any point without being focussed, the plugin will not be aware of its existence until a sync has been performed. Thus, without a sync, it will be impossible to cycle to the window.

The {PLOVER:application:sync_history} command can be used to trigger a manual window sync. The initial_sync argument for the tab and cycle subcommands will trigger a sync if they are first in chain. For the tab subcommand, this means that a sync will always be performed before running the tab operation. For the cycle subcommand, this means that a sync will be performed before the first cycle stroke, but will not be performed for subsequently chained strokes.

Note: Syncs can be quite slow and may sometimes fail silently, causing Plover to hang entirely in rare cases. For this reason it is recommended to have a dedicated sync_history stroke to be used when a window cannot be found when cycling.