10ftwm

A lightweight window manager designed to be used with media centers and other "10 foot" devices.

10ftwm is a fairly new project, but it aims to simplify the management of fullscreen applications in environments where a keyboard might not be available (e.g. a home-theater PC). In its current (very rough) state, the program allows you to change windows using a gamepad (or whatever is in /dev/input/js0), keyboard, or IR remote control.

It also comes with a little on-screen-display that is toggled by pressing the home button on your gamepad, SHIFT+UP on your keyboard, or whatever button you defined with lirc.

Note: 10ftwm is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It was a fun little utility I wrote because I needed a WM for my HTPC, and was very useable for the ~3 years I had it running on my machine. If you're reading this now, the program is still fully functional, just bereft of most features that would make it useful. But if the use case is there (a WM that forces every app to be fullscreen and on its own "space" with built in lirc support) then this could be useful for you.

Requirements:

XCB and lirc are required libraries. 10ftwm only runs on Linux, sadly, because it uses Linux's joystick.h for controller input.

Build instructions:

gcc 10ftwm.c -Wall -std=c99 -ggdb -lxcb -llirc_client -o 10ftwm && ./10ftwm

...or just run the included makefile.

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Usage instructions:

Again, 10ftwm is still very early in development, but one can easily try it out with a program like Xephyr, or in a new x instance.

Usage: 10ftwm -d [DISPLAY NAME] -s [SCREEN NUMBER]

[DISPLAY NAME]: The display to open. Default is the contents of your $DISPLAY variable.

[SCREEN NUMBER]: The screen number to open. Default is 0.

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To launch with Xephyr just open a terminal and type:

xephyr -screen 1024x768 -br :1

Then run the included make file. For your convenience, I've included a test option in the makefile, just run:

make test

To launch through a plain old X server, first compile the program, then run:

xinit ./10ftwm -d:1 -- :1

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Configuration:

10ftwm can be configured through a handy file called 10ftwmrc placed in the same directory as the executable, or .10ftwmrc placed in the users $HOME folder ( ~/.10ftwmrc ). The file should contain simple key-value pairs:

key = value
key = value
(...) (ad infitum)

the currently support options are:

screen = int //The screen number to run on
display = string //The display name to run on
OSD_button = int //The gamepad button used to toggle the OSD
OSD_next_ws = int //The gamepad button used to switch to the next workspace
OSD_previous_ws = int
OSD_remove_window = int //The gamepad button used to kill a window
js_file = string //The file to open for the joystick file descriptor. Defaults to /dev/input/js0
lirc_config = string //The path to your lirc configuration file, defaults to ~/lircrc or /etc/lircrc
exec = string //Execute this program on launch.
exec = string //You may have as many exec statements as you'd like, they will be executed in order
(...) (ad infinitum)

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lirc:

10ftwm has lirc support, simply create a ~/.lircrc file (or pass one in the config file) and map your buttons of choice to:

• TOGGLE_OSD
• NEXT_WORKSPACE
• PREVIOUS_WORKSPACE
• REMOVE_WINDOW

for fine tuned control over 10ftwm. For those curious as to what buttons to use, you can use the "irw" utility to scan for button presses. Here's an example ~/.lircr file:

begin
	prog=mceusb
	button=KEY_OK
	config=TOGGLE_OSD
end
begin
	prog=mceusb
	button=KEY_RIGHT
	config=NEXT_WORKSPACE
end
begin
	prog=mceusb
	button=KEY_LEFT
	config=PREVIOUS_WORKSPACE
end