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Store and restore desktops, geometries and shaded state of selected X11 windows

Project description

wm-win-tool

Store desktops, geometries, and shade states of X11 windows, selected by window title and class patterns, in order to restore their layouts later on.

The primary reason for this program to exist is Firefox, that fails to restore its session properly under usual X11 window managers (KF5 in my case).

Note, that the problem is well known, but unfortunately, little has been done in the last 13 years to solve this issue.

This is an attempt to solve it manually/externally, but might prove useful for other constellations as well.

Usage:

wm-win-tool [-hVvfbr] [-c class][-t title] store
wm-win-tool [-hVvfbr] [-c class][-t title] restore [arg]
wm-win-tool [-hVvb][-c class][-t title] winlist [max]
wm-win-tool [-hVv] storelist [max]
       -h, --help           this message
       -V, --version        print version and exit
       -v, --verbose        verbose mode (cumulative)
       -f, --force          force store
       -b, --bracket        use the bracket pattern
       -r, --regexp         class and title pattern are regexp
       -c, --class class    match window class
       -t, --title title    match window title

class and title are simple case sensitive wildcard pattern by default, that can be supplied multiple times to match a certain subset of windows. The regexp option switches to regular expression matching. Make sure to properly quote such arguments.

Note, that the selection parameters for store and restore should match.

restore will restore the window positions, matched by class or pattern, and arg is either a timestamp from store list, or a relative index (eg. -1 for the latest session store [default], -2 for the second latest...).

The bracket option just matches the part of the window title in square brackets. This is most useful in conjunction with Firefox and the Window Titler addon.

Example Usage

In order to save Firefox sessions: install the Window Titler addon and supply all windows with a unique name, that should appear in square brackets in front of the window title, that changes depending on which tab is actived.

Now saving a session is as easy as:

wm-win-tool -vb store

You can run this command as many times, as you want. As long as the session wasn't changed meanwhile, it won't store a new session (unless the --force option is supplied).

After reboot, you may wish to restore this session:

wm-win-tool -vb restore

é voila, the windows move to their original desktops, and have their former geometry and shaded state applied.

Install

with pip:

$ pip install wm-win-tool

from source:

$ wget https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/source/w/wm-win-tool/wm-win-tool-<version>.tar.gz
$ tar xvf wm-win-tool-<version>.tar.gz
$ cd wm-win-tool-<version>
$ python3 setup.py install

Dependencies

You need to make sure, that the command line programs wmctrl and xprop are installed. Check with your distributions package manager..

Consequently, wm-win-tool needs a proper DISPLAY/XAUTHORITY environment setup.

Final notes

The commands store and restore could be implicitly triggered, when executed via symlinks to wm-win-tool, eg:

$ cd <whatever>/bin
$ ln -s wm-win-tool wm-win-store
$ ln -s wm-win-tool wm-win-restore

These operation modes come with some hardcoded defaults: bracket and verbose for the most usual usage pattern. If that's not enough, a config file option might be useful (TBD).

The session data is saved in ~/local/share/wm-win-tool.

In pathological cases (where I count in for sure), it might be advantageous to exclude Firefox from the window manager session restore completely. kwin5 is configurable as such. When executing Firefox after reboot, it will open all session windows on your current desktop then. Run wm-win-restore and be done.

If you plan to run wm-win-store from crontab -e, keep in mind, that most cron implementations suffer from variable expansion issues. Here is an example, that should work with Vixie Cron:

#PATH=$HOME/bin:/bin:/usr/bin	# won't work
#XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority	# neither that

# store firefox window list
42 * * * * XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority DISPLAY=:0 wm-win-tool -b store

AUTHORITYis expanded from the shell in this case, which is necessary to operate properly. Depending on the way, you installed wm-win-tool, you might need to adjust the path to it as well. We also avoid using the symlink shortcut here due to its implicit verbosity level.

Some things are realized in a pretty oldschool way, eg. command line handling, but until the command line interface gets significantly more complex, I prefer to do it this way (since ages).

If you have other ideas, interesting applications, what ever, let me know.

Feedback welcome.

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