Question: i3 with xmonad multiscreen behaviour

[caillou]

I just finished watching your video on tiling window managers. I have to say, this is one of the best presentations I have seen in a long time.

Now, in your talk you mentioned that you managed to have swapping workspaces in i3 in the same way xmonad does it.

Could you give me a hint at to how you achieved this? This would be the icing on the cake…

[HappyTetrahedron]

Hi! It's been a while, but I apparently accidentally disabled notifications for this repository.

This is the script I still use today (requires jshon to be installed):

#!/bin/bash

# get relevant info from i3-msg
WORKSPACEJSON="$(i3-msg -t get_workspaces)"

WORKSPACES="$(echo "$WORKSPACEJSON" | jshon -a -e name -u)"
MONITORS="$(echo "$WORKSPACEJSON" | jshon -a -e output -u)"
FOCUSED="$(echo "$WORKSPACEJSON" | jshon -a -e focused)"
VISIBLE="$(echo "$WORKSPACEJSON" | jshon -a -e visible)"

# FROMNR is the number of the currently focused workspace. TONR is the number of the workspace I want to switch to.
FROMNR="$(echo "$FOCUSED" | nl | grep true | awk '{print $1}')"
TONR="$(echo "$WORKSPACES" | awk '{print "__"$1}' | nl | grep "__$1" | awk '{print $1}')" # Since workspace names can be numbers, grep could accidentally find a line number, so workspace names are prefixed with __ to avoid that

# i3 names of the workspaces to switch. 
FROMNAME="$(echo "$WORKSPACES" | sed "$(echo $FROMNR)q;d")"
TONAME="$1"

# Monitors on which both workspaces reside
FROMMONI=$(echo "$MONITORS" | sed "$(echo $FROMNR)q;d")
TOMONI=$(echo "$MONITORS" | sed "$(echo $TONR)q;d")

# "true" if target workspace is currently visible, "false" otherwise
TOVISI=$(echo "$VISIBLE" | sed "$(echo $TONR)q;d")

# Target workspace doesn't exist yet, or is on same monitor as current
if [[ "$TONR" = "" ]] || [[ "$FROMMONI" = "$TOMONI" ]]
then
    i3-msg "workspace $TONAME" # simple WS switch as with default i3
else
    if [[ "$TOVISI" = "true" ]] # If target workspace is visible
    then
        i3-msg "move workspace to output $TOMONI" # the current WS is moved to replace it
    fi

    # Target workspace is first selected and then moved to current monitor.
    i3-msg "workspace $TONAME" 
    i3-msg "move workspace to output $FROMMONI"
    i3-msg "focus output $FROMMONI" 
fi

In my i3 config, I simply invoke this script using exec instead of doing the regular workspace switch (my script is called switchworkspace and added to the path):

# switch to workspace
bindsym $mod+1 exec switchworkspace 1
bindsym $mod+2 exec switchworkspace 2
bindsym $mod+3 exec switchworkspace 3
bindsym $mod+4 exec switchworkspace 4
bindsym $mod+5 exec switchworkspace 5
bindsym $mod+6 exec switchworkspace 6
bindsym $mod+7 exec switchworkspace 7
bindsym $mod+8 exec switchworkspace 8
bindsym $mod+9 exec switchworkspace 9
bindsym $mod+0 exec switchworkspace 10