9.1 Making a workspace a strip, and tiles again ¶

Any of these, on the workspace you want:

• Super+m, then Strip: this workspace scrolls sideways (Viri), or tiled again (in Windows, or type strip)
• Super+Ctrl+Space, the layout keys, then s (or Space for the menu, then Strip: columns side by side that scroll sideways)
• vikix viri in a terminal (vikix viri on and vikix viri off say which)

Its windows keep the order they stood in: left to right, then top to bottom. The same again (or vikix viri off) makes it tiles, split as they were before it was a strip, each window back in its place. A window opened while it was a strip joins the split you’re in.

To have a workspace always start as a strip, a rule in ~/.stumpwm.d/rules.lisp (Rules for the desktop is their page):

(when-workspace 3 (command "vikix-viri on"))

9.2 Moving along it ¶

Super+h, Super+l

the column on the left, on the right; the strip scrolls when it has to

Super+j, Super+k

down and up, in a column of several windows

Super+Home, Super+End

the strip’s first column, and its last

Super+Shift+h, Super+Shift+l

move this column left or right along the strip

Super+Shift+j, Super+Shift+k

move this window down or up its column

Super+Tab

back to the window you were in before; again flips between the two

Super+o

every workspace drawn small, the strip among them, to pick a window

Super+g

the list of every window on every workspace, to go to one

A new window opens as a column of its own, just right of the one you’re in, and takes the focus. When you close one, the focus goes to the column that took its place.

The bar at the top shows where you are: the strip’s windows in order, the ones on the screen in brackets, the one you’re in picked out, as in A [B C] D. A column of two windows is written D/C. The window you’re in has the coloured border and title bar, as on tiles.

The strip scrolls only as far as it must to show the column you went to whole, so a neighbour may show in part. It also keeps a sliver of the next column in sight at each edge of the screen that has one, a couple of dozen pixels: you can tell at a glance that the strip goes on that way. At the strip’s ends there’s none, and the first and last column stand at the screen’s edge. It slides there, in about a tenth of a second.

9.3 Columns: how wide, and what’s in them ¶

Super+r

this column wider: half the screen, two thirds, all of it, then a third, and round again

Super+b

this column exactly as wide as the room the other columns on the screen leave

Super+[, Super+]

this window into the column on its left or right, under what’s there; pressed on a window that shares a column, out into a column of its own that way

Super+f

this window on the whole screen, and back

Super+Ctrl+y

title bars off and on, as on tiles

Super+b is for when the widths don’t add up: a column two thirds wide beside one of a half cuts one of them off. Pressed on a column, it gives that column what the others wholly on the screen leave, so that together they fill it and none is cut. Beside a pinned column it takes the rest of the screen.

A new column is half the screen wide. A column’s windows share its height evenly: an editor with a terminal under it, say, is Super+[ pressed on the terminal standing right of the editor.

• Heights: more for one, less for another
• Tabs: one window at a time

9.4 Pinning a column ¶

Some windows you want in sight whatever else you’re doing: a chat, a page you’re reading from, a terminal with a log running. On a strip they’d scroll away with the rest. Super+\ pins the column you’re in: it goes to the screen’s left edge and stays there, and the other columns scroll in the room beside it.

Super+\

pin this column; on the pinned column, let it go again

Super+h from the first of the others

into the pinned column

Super+l from the pinned column

to the column standing beside it now

One column is pinned at a time: pin another and it takes the place. The bar shows it first, with a bar after it: D | A [B C] E. It keeps its width (Super+r and the mouse change it as for any column, though it never takes more than two thirds of the screen), it can hold several windows (Super+[ from the column beside it), and nothing moves past it. A layout you save remembers which column was pinned. A column too wide for the room the pinned one leaves stands with its left edge at the pinned column and its right part past the screen’s edge; Super+b on it makes it fit the room exactly.

Two commands have no key of their own, for a key in user.lisp if you want one: vikix-move-end first and vikix-move-end last take the column you’re in to the start or the end of the strip.

9.5 The mouse ¶

Hold Super and turn the wheel over the strip

you walk along it, as Super+h and Super+l do

Turn the wheel over the bar’s window names

the same

Sweep two fingers sideways on the touchpad, over the strip

the same: the strip scrolls as a wide page would

Drag two fingers sideways on a touchscreen, over the strip

the strip goes with them, a column for each short stretch

Drag a window’s title bar (or hold Super and drag anywhere in it)

its column goes with the pointer, and stays where you let it go

Drag a column’s side edge (or hold Super and drag with the right button)

the column gets wider or narrower, a twentieth of the screen at a time

Drag the edge between two windows stacked in a column

the one grows and the other shrinks

Click a window’s name in the bar

you go to it

The touchpad’s two fingers are the quick way: swept sideways over a strip they walk along it, a column for each short stretch, the way everything else scrolls under them (as yours is set: fingers to the left go to the column on the left, or bring the one on the right where scrolling is "natural"). Up and down they scroll the program, as always, and a little drift sideways while you do walks nowhere. Three fingers do the same on any workspace, and up or down go through a column’s windows: vikix gestures says how they are set, and vikix gestures off stops them (The commands has the settings). A strip takes sideways scrolling for itself, so a program on one that scrolls sideways (a wide sheet, a long line) is scrolled with its scroll bar, or with Shift and the wheel; the setting below gives it back.

On a touchscreen (the Z13’s), two fingers dragged sideways over a strip take it with them: fingers to the left bring what’s on the right, a column for each 150 pixels (pan = 150 in ~/.config/vikix/gestures; pan = no leaves the screen alone). vikix gestures listens for it beside the touchpad’s sweep, and takes only that: one finger, a tap, fingers going up or down, three fingers, or anything over a tiled workspace reaches the program under them as if nothing were listening.

A width set by dragging can be any twentieth of the screen; Super+r then takes the column to the next of its four widths.

9.6 What’s different from tiles ¶

Most keys do on a strip what they do everywhere. A few belong to tiles, and say so when pressed on a strip rather than doing something surprising:

Super+b

The key for side by side: on a strip it makes this column fill the room the others leave (above). A strip has no splits: a new window gets a column, and Super+[ and Super+] stack.

Super+v

The key for one above the other: on a strip it makes this window taller in its column (above).

Super+u, Super+Shift+u

No layout undo: a strip keeps its order, and you move a column back.

Super+z

This column’s windows as tabs (above), where on tiles it keeps only one window on the workspace.

Super+Shift+o, Super+Ctrl+m

Grid mode and main and stack are ways of tiling.

Super+Shift+g

The window you pick comes onto the strip, as a column beside the one you’re in.

Super+m → Bring every window of another workspace here

They all come onto the strip as columns; from a strip onto a tiled workspace, they arrive tiled. None is left floating, but a dialog, or a window a rule of yours floats.

Super+Shift+1 … 9

A column is what moves on a strip, so the whole column goes to that workspace: a window alone in its column goes alone; one that shares it takes the others along. On another strip it arrives as the column it was (its width, tabs or stack, the heights); on a tiled workspace its windows are tiled. To send one window of several, take it out of the column first (Super+[ or Super+]).

Dialogs (a password box, a file chooser) float in the middle of the screen, as on tiles, and aren’t columns.

9.7 Settings ¶

In ~/.stumpwm.d/user.lisp, each a line; vikix eval '(loadrc)' applies the file (Making it yours has more on it):

(setf *viri-default-width* 2/3)   ; a new column's width: a part of the screen (1/2 as it comes)
(setf *viri-centre* t)            ; keep the column you're in in the middle of the screen
(setf *viri-peek* 0)              ; no sliver of the next column at the screen's edges (24 pixels as it comes)
(setf *viri-animate* nil)         ; jump instead of sliding
(setf *viri-animate-seconds* 0.2) ; or slide more slowly (0.12 as it comes)
(setf *viri-width-step* 1/10)     ; dragging an edge goes a tenth of the screen at a time
(setf *viri-scroll-clicks* 3)     ; two fingers walk along the strip sooner (6 as it comes; more is slower)
(setf *viri-scroll-walks* nil)    ; two fingers swept sideways scroll the program, not the strip

The slide needs a compositor, which Vikix runs (picom). Without one the strip jumps, since each step would make every program draw its window again.

A rule can give a program’s window its width or its place as it opens: (width 2/3) and (join :left), in What a rule does. A strip’s columns, their widths and what’s stacked are kept by saved layouts too, and a project opened with vikix project open comes back as the strip you left.

9.8 When it isn’t right ¶

• A window lies over its neighbours, or a gap stays where one was. Press Super+Ctrl+y twice (title bars off and on again): the strip is laid out afresh. It shouldn’t happen, so it’s worth a report: vikix debug writes one.
• A program looks stale when you come back to it. Columns past the screen’s edge are moved there, not hidden, so programs keep drawing; one that pauses when it thinks nobody is looking may take a moment to catch up.
• Two fingers walk too fast, too slowly, or the wrong way. *viri-scroll-clicks* above is how far they go for a step. The way is your touchpad’s scrolling direction, the same as in every program; three fingers follow it too, unless natural in ~/.config/vikix/gestures says otherwise.
• You’d rather have the tiles back. vikix viri off. Nothing is lost: the windows, and the splits the workspace had before.

9.9 For the curious: how a strip works ¶

It is one file, config/stumpwm/vikix/viri.lisp, and less than it looks. StumpWM has two kinds of workspace built in: tiled ones, which own the windows’ places, and floating ones, which leave each window where it is put. A strip is a floating workspace (viri-group, a subclass of StumpWM’s float-group) in which Viri does the putting. StumpWM’s own code still focuses, raises and closes the windows; viri.lisp only takes over what a strip does differently: a window joining (group-add-window), leaving (group-delete-window), being focused (group-focus-window), and a press of the mouse (group-button-press).

What the strip remembers is small: a list of columns, each with its windows from top to bottom, its width as a part of the screen and the window focused in it last; and how far the strip is scrolled, in pixels from its left end. Everything on the screen follows from those. viri-place works out each window’s place and size from them, and viri-layout calls it whenever something changed.

This is what one press of Super+l sets off:

Three things in it are there because of how X and StumpWM work:

• The keys are not the strip’s own. StumpWM looks in its main key map before any workspace’s, and every Vikix key is in the main one. So Super+l runs vikix-focus, which walks the strip on a strip and moves between splits everywhere else. vikix-move, vikix-split and the others are made the same way.
• The slide is a loop, not a timer. viri-slide moves every column a little, eight times, with a short sleep between. A timer would want a fraction of a second as its delay, and StumpWM’s timers stop working when given one.
• The pointer is taken along. Vikix’s focus follows the mouse. When the strip moves under a pointer that stays still, X reports that the pointer has entered whichever window landed under it, and that window would take the focus back. So viri-keep-pointer moves the pointer to the focused window and drops those reports.

A window’s height in its column is a weight, 1 for an even share, kept by the window (*viri-weights*); viri-heights turns a column’s weights into pixels. Which columns are tabbed is noted the same way (*viri-tabbed*): viri-place gives each of a tabbed column’s windows the whole column and hides all but the one it shows, as a tile’s windows behind the one in front are hidden, and the title bar (vikix-titlebar-draw in windows.lisp) draws a cell for each. The pinned column is the strip’s first column in that list, noted in a table beside it (*viri-pinned*); viri-spans gives it the screen’s left edge wherever the strip is scrolled, and starts the others where it ends.

The drawn overview (Super+o) is overview.lisp; the strip gives it its columns as boxes through viri-overview-boxes. An AI agent sees a strip through the desktop tool of vikix mcp, which lists its columns left to right with their widths and which are on the screen (Working with AI).

The design, with what was planned and what building it changed, is plans/DESIGN-viri.md in the checkout.