Fork Note: This layer is based on CestDiego’s PR from syl20bnr/spacemacs#3321.
The time has arrived when one can finally use Emacs as a Window Manager, long ago the concepts of windows and frames made so much sense when one was working in a TTY, and basically that’s all the window management you got. In these modern times though, it sounds silly to have those names. But not Anymore!
Thanks to @ch11ng and his EXWM project we can now use Emacs as our window manager, and all those windows that didn’t make sense before, now can not only hold buffers, but X Windows, that means that you can spawn a Browser Window, or your music player, or anything.
I urge you to read the EXWM Wiki for a more in depth explanation and if you can contribute, please do so! The purpose of me making this layer is that I find it awesome and having nice defaults would make more people dive into it and the project would receive more attention and contributions which will only make it more awesome, so if you try it and like it, share it!
This is how it looks like:
To use this contribution,
- place this repository in one of Spacemacs’ layer directories (~/.emacs.d/private/local/exwm, ~/.spacemacs.d/private/exwm, or ~/.spacemacs.d/layers/exwm)
- add the layer in your
~/.spacemacs
(setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers '(exwm))This is most common among Ubuntu and derivative users:
LightDM, GDM, and other Display managers that need a session file will need you
to copy the desktop file I bundled with this layer to
/usr/local/xsessions/exwm.desktop, that’s what I used on my Ubuntu box, but
make sure the exwm-start script is in your PATH, you can put it in
/usr/local/bin/exwm-start and that should be enough, next time you log out,
select the EXWM session instead of the Ubuntu one and you should be alright.
If you use Arch, Gentoo, or any other Linux, most probably you’ll start your
configurations via a .xinitrc file, just append exwm-start to the end of
that file and you should be fine. I do recommend to check the EXWM Wiki for more
details.
If you are an OSX user, please report back on whether this works with xQuartz, always back up your data before attempting to try stuff like this.
As other window managers the s or Super key (Windows Key) is the one that
is the prefix to every action. We’ll use a lot of s.
I have, for convenience, disabled the use of C-x and C-c in X windows,
mainly because that’s something we could use for Cutting and Copying text, but if
you want you can enable it, this layer focuses on less Emacs-y bindings.
| Key Binding | Description |
|---|---|
C-q | Send next key pressed to the X window |
C-g | Universal GetMeOuttaHere Key from Emacs |
C-u | Universal Argument |
C-[0-9] | Universal Prefix for [0-9] |
SPC | Spacemacs Leader Key (in line mode) |
M-m | Spacemacs Leader Key (in line mode) |
s-SPC | Spacemacs Leader Key (in char and line mode) |
i | Switch to EXWM char mode |
s-[1 2 3 ... 8 9 0] | Switch to workspace [1 2 3 … 8 9 10] |
s-TAB | Switch to last workspace |
s-w | Workspace Switch Menu (kinda like micro-state) |
s-ESC | Reset window state (gets you out of char mode) |
s-r | App Launcher |
s-pause | Lock Screen |
s-u,U | Undo, Redo window configurations |
s-b | Select and switch to buffer |
s-q | Close current buffer |
s-h,j,k,l | Switch to left,lower,upper,right window |
s-H,J,K,L | Move window to far left,down,lower,upper,right |
M-s-h,j,k,l | Resizing (try them, it’s too hard to explain) |
s-[,] | Switch to prev,next workspace |
Since running programs is one of the more common task, some explicit support is
provided for that via the leader key SPC &.
For these commands as well as for s-r the working directory is set to the
value of user-home-directory for the started process.
| Key Binding | Description |
|---|---|
SPC & s | Ask for program to run in separate window below current window |
SPC & v | Ask for program to run in separate window to the right of current window. |
EXWM X windows come up in char mode per default. This means that all input is
redirected to the application per default, and only the s- keybindings work.
In line mode, only a select set of keys that work in other normal-mode buffers
work in line-mode EXWM buffers, because X applications could use any valid key
sequence for navigating, etc. Basically, only i and SPC are working as
expected.
Pressing i from normal mode gets you into insert mode and
simultaneously EXWM char mode, releasing all bindings except the ones starting with
s, or Super, effectively giving full control to the X window. To switch back
to line mode, use s-r.
Generally, whenever a EXWM window is created, it is displayed in char mode, with
spacemacs being in insert state. When changing to insert-state in EXWM mode,
char mode should be activated underneath. Likewise, when entering char mode,
insert state should be activated. When exiting char mode, either by use of
exwm-reset or exwm-input-grab-keyboard, the window should return to normal
state.
Switching to input-state/char mode:
- bind “i” to switch to char mode
- advice
exwm-input-release-keyboardso that insert state is activated when char mode is entered. - advice
exwm-input-grab-keyboardso that normal state is activated when control is given back to spacemacs.
Handling transient states from line mode: Transient states are not captured by EXWM’s intrinsic “currently-inputting-command” detection, and must be activated separately.
- add hook to all transient state activation functions that enable EXWM input pass-through behaviour
- add hook to all transient state deactivation functions that disable EXWM input pass-through
Handling transient states from char mode: This is a bit more tricky, since char mode has no input-tunneling behavior. There is an EXWM-internal mechanism to temporarily enable line mode, but that is an implementation detail and not exposed in the interface. Currently, whenever a transient state is entered, a hook is executed which activates line mode and performs like above.
To be predictable, the following behaviour should probably be implemented:
- add hook to all transient state activation functions that store which mode (char/line) was active during transient state activation
- inhibit manual switching to char/line mode, as that would mess up input to transient state
- switch to line mode
- proceed as described above
- add hook such that whenever the buffer is re-entered, the previous mode is restored. This is necessary because transient state command execution could have exited the window, and the next time the window is entered, the original mode should be restored. Alternatively, if that proves to be to messy, transient state activation could always be made to change the state back to normal state.
Update: The current handling could be more robust against Spacemacs’ input
state behavior. At some point™, it will probably make sense to abandon char
mode completely, and only use exwm-input-line-mode-passthrough to control
keyboard focus (see discussion in ch11ng/exwm#352).