panel.py

panel.py is a replacement for the shell-based default panel.sh of herbstluftwm. It is a proof-of-concept script to test the idea of dynamic tag names.

Main Advantages

Dynamic tag names

The idea is to have each tag named after the windows the tag hosts, ie. your "desktop" running sup and mplayer is called mplayer+sup. There's a pleasant nicknack: if you set title in your VIM or NVIM config, you'll get tags called after the file you're currently editing!

Some benefits of this approach are apparent immediately:

• Simpler workspace navigation, especially for programming. You don't have to remember which tag has that helloworld.c file open, you just see it.
• No need to give your tags fixed names in autostart or to pay attention where you open your windows.
• Visual reminder of long running tasks and when they terminate. So when you run sudo pacman -Syu in tag 6, the tag name is called 6:pacman unless the upgrade is done. Or when you cp -r a lot of files, that cp will hang right there in the tag name as long as it's actually busy.
• Easy to extend to other apps. You may alter the code to have your inkscape windows called after the open files.

Modular architecture

Basically everything apart from the core panel functions itself are widgets. The class hierarchy was carefully chosen to make it easy to add new simple widgets and to make it possible to add arbitrarily complex ones.

Batteries included

Comes with the following widgets (much more planned):

• Clock (ClockWidget)
• Memory usage (MemoryWidget)
• Battery status (BatteryWidget, supports several batteries)
• MPC widget (MpcWidget, displays songs played by MPD)
• notmuch widget (NotmuchWidget, displays number of e-mails matching certain criteria)
• Herbstluft tags (TagsWidget) and focused window title (TitleWidget)
• Helpers to position things (SpacerWidget and StretcherWidget)

All widget codes (possibly with the exception of the tags widget) is trivial and easy to understand, so if you miss a widget, you may easily roll your own.

Easy to configure

To configure panel.py you only have to edit a single Python source file (called run.py), which does all the configuration. Voilá.

See Configuration below.

Configuration

Simple. Maybe byte too simple at the moment. Look at run.py:

tags = TagsWidget(panel)
clock = ClockWidget(panel, '<normal>{t.day}<inactive>.{t.month}.{t.year} <normal>{t.hour:02d}:{t.minute:02d}')
mem = MemoryWidget(panel, '<normal>{used} <inactive>({available})')
battery = BatteryWidget(panel, '<normal>{b[0][percent]} <inactive>({b[0][time]})')
hello_world = TextWidget(panel, "<inactive>This is a <normal>very cocky<inactive> panel.py")
stretcher = StretcherWidget(panel)
spacer = SpacerWidget(panel, 15)

panel.register(tags)
panel.register(stretcher)
panel.register(hello_world)
panel.register(stretcher)
panel.register(mem)
panel.register(spacer)
panel.register(battery)
panel.register(spacer)
panel.register(clock)

panel.start()

How hard's that, huh? Those <style-name> tags are human-writable formatting markup (as opposed to the dzen2 markup, which is human-incompatible). The basic styles normal, active, inactive and urgent will always be defined automatically.

Project status

This is a new thing, so:

• No multiple screens support
• Code needs a bit of refactoring
• You may run into pecularities if your overall workspace setup is different from mine
• All suggestions and contributions are welcome
• ... but it's still worth trying out!

Screenshots

TODO

• SIGUSR1 should result in re-rendering of the panel, so that more polling can be removed.