fvwm-window-search

Incremental window search & immediate switch to the selected window during the search. Uses a patched version of dmenu as a GUI.

$ gem install fvwm-window-search

• Should work w/ most EWMH-compliant stackings X11 window managers.
• Filter by window name/resource/class.
• Optionally list windows from the current desktop only.
• Preserve minimised/shaded window states.

Reqs

• Ruby 2.1+
• dnf install jansson-devel freetype-devel

Compilation

Type make. This clones the dmenu repo, patches & builds it. It doesn't interfere w/ a system-installed dmenu.

Usage

$ ./fvwm-window-search -h
Usage: fvwm-window-search [options]
    -c path                     an alternative path to conf.yaml
    -d                          list windows from the current desktop only
    -r                          switch to a window only when <Return> is pressed

To scroll in dmenu (using Up/Down/Home/End/PgUp/PgDown) without windows activation, hold Shift.

To customise dmenu or filtering, create a yaml file $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fvwm-window-search/conf.yaml, e.g.:

---
dmenu:
  fn: Monospace-12
  b: false
  selection_hook_activation_return_key_only: true
filter-out:
    name: ['System Monitor']
    resource: []
    class: []

Subkeys in dmenu are the usual CLOs for dmenu(1). selection_hook_activation_return_key_only is an equivalent of -r CLO.

filter-out key tells what windows should be ignored. Each value in a subkey is an array of regexes. See the defaults at the top of fvwm-window-search file.

Start-up time

As a task switcher, the program must not only run fast, but also start fast. I managed to get it under 70ms on my laptop, when you run ./fvwm-window-search directly from the repo.

This is not the case with rubygems! The latter generates a stub script that invokes ./fvwm-window-search file. This indirection may add ~140ms of additional delay.

License

MIT.