py-rofi-bus 0.0.1

A DBus extension for rofi

This package provides a DBus foundation for rofi.

Current version is a proof-of-concept with a simple window switcher. The API will potentially change drastically.

Features

(These are all planned; 0.0.0 doesn’t really expose an API)

• Spawn and populate scripts/modi via py-rofi-bus

• Save information from scripts/modi

• Split massive scripts/modi into smaller components that pass state through py-rofi-hub

Setup

System Dependencies

• The rofi utility

• XCB Python bindings (preferably via xcffib)

Installation

$ pip install --user py-rofi-bus

Example

Overview

Because 0.0.0 is a POC, I didn’t provide entry_points, a robust CLI, unit files, or tests.

This demo was written to emulate alt+tab functionality on i3, which does not have the notion of “last used window.”

The following instructions assume you installed to the user site. If you didn’t (e.g. you’re in a virtualenv and don’t need to), this command will get your package library instead.

python -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print(get_python_lib())"

The DBus Server

The DBus server sets up the communication hub. It can be launched via

$ python "$(python -m site --user-site)/py-rofi-bus/dbus_server.py"

This process provides functions to track the active window, get a list of active windows, and switch to a specified window.

The Window Listener

The window listener sets up the XCB event monitoring. It can be launched via

$ python "$(python -m site --user-site)/py-rofi-bus/window_listener.py"

As before, it must remain active. It monitors the screen’s root window for changes in the active window, and reports those changes to the dbus server.

Rofi Window Replacement

With those two components in place, it’s possible to launch the provided modi.

$ rofi -modi window_example:"$(python -m site --user-site)/py-rofi-bus/rofi_window_script.py" -show window_example

This modi is almost identical to the stock window modi. However, using the dbus server, it sorts the windows by activity. When a window is activated, it’s pushed to the top of the stack.