Orcsome is a scripting extension for NETWM compliant window managers. It can help a lot to customize your work environment.

Motivation

I'm old awesome_ user with two year experience. I like it not for tiling but for lua and ability to tune its behavior. But for a very long time some problems stay unsolved:

• Grey swing windows. I was hoping it will be fixed in java7 but no luck.
• Input focus for swing windows. Awesome treats such windows as inputless.
• Random focus problems. For example sometimes evince or opera save dialog are not take focus.

Simply put, awesome sucks as window manager.

I need a robust wm with long devel history, small, fast, candy and scriptable on normal language (hello fvwm). But there are a plenty of robust, small, fast and candy only wm's. There is no any scriptable.

So I decide to write tiny wm helper application which will be compatible with many window managers and allow to configure flexible workflows.

.. _awesome: http://awesome.naquadah.org/

Features

• Written on python. It means very hackable.

• Optimization, cpu and memory efficiency are top goals (cffi is used for xlib bindings).

• Extensive use of python syntax to provide easy and expressive eDSL in configuration script.

• Supports NETWM standards.

• Very thin wrapper around X. You can use existing xlib background.

Installation

From PyPI '''''''''

I'm regularly upload packages of new versions. So you can install orcsome with easy_install::

sudo easy_install orcsome

or pip_::

sudo pip install orcsome

From source '''''''''''

::

git clone --depth=1 git://github.com/baverman/orcsome.git cd orcsome python setup.py build sudo python setup.py install

If you often pull changes from master brunch I recommend you following recipe:

• First install orcsome in develop mode (remove any orcsome dirs in site-packages before that)::

  sudo python setup.py develop

• Then, if you want use latest version from master branch simply do::

  cd cloned/orcsome/dir git pull

ArchLinux '''''''''

There is orcsome package in AUR.

.. _pip: http://pip.openplans.org/

Documentation <http://pythonhosted.org/orcsome/>_

Quick start '''''''''''

The most common functionality needed is to bind hot keys to spawn or raise applications.

Edit ~/.config/orcsome/rc.py::

from orcsome import get_wm from orcsome.actions import *

wm = get_wm()

wm.on_key('Shift+Mod+r')( restart)

wm.on_key('Ctrl+Alt+p')( spawn_or_raise('urxvtc -name ncmpcpp -e ncmpcpp', name='ncmpcpp'))

wm.on_key('Mod+n')( spawn_or_raise('urxvtc -name mutt -e mutt', name='mutt'))

wm.on_key('Mod+k')( spawn_or_raise('urxvtc -name rtorrent -e rtorrent-screen', name='rtorrent'))

And start orcsome. That's all.

TODO

• Tests
• Python3 port
• API to configure window geometry
• Layouts (tiling)
• Multiple screens

Contacts

You can create issues on github <https://github.com/baverman/orcsome/issues>_.

Or mail directly to bobrov at vl dot ru.