iswitchwin - Fast Window Switcher for EWHM window managers
Martin Man <mman@martinman.net>
http://martinman.net/software/iswitchwin.html
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1. About iswitchwin
iswitchwin lets you easily switch between windows on your workspaces by typing (part of) the caption of the desired window. It has been inspired by iswitch-window.jl originally written by Topi Paavola <tjp@iki.fi> for Sawfish window manager. iswitchwin uses libwnck to control your window manager and has been primarily written for Metacity and Gnome environment. It should work with any EWHM compatibile window manager.
2. Using iswitchwin
First of all make iswitchwin accessible under a hotkey. The setup depends on your particular window manager. you can use the following commands to setup iswitchwin to be run on F12 keystroke under metacity.
$ gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 \ --type string F12
$ gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 \ --type string iswitchwin
This example assumes you are not using custom metacity commands, if you happen to do so, modify the example above to suit your needs.
When you start iswitchwin (either by a hotkey as indicated above, or simply by running the iswitchwin command) the list of all windows on all workspaces appears. You can use the arrow keys or mouse to choose the desired window and doubleclick or enter to select it.
You can also start typing the window title to search for a particular window. The list of available windows filters out windows that are not matching typed text.
You can select next matching window by pressing <Tab> or <Down> key and previous matching window by pressing <Shift><Tab> or <Up> key. You can activate currently selected window by pressing <Enter> key. You can cancel the iswitchwin by pressing the <Esc> key.
Note that closing the iswitchwin window does not actually exit the iswitchwin process. This is OK, because iswitchwin process registers itself at Session DBUS waiting for activation event. Next time you start iswitchwin it will simply contact this already running process and ask him to bring up the window. To actually exit the process, just use the 'killall iswitchwin' command.
3. Installing iswitchwin
Assuming you have decent Linux distribution with the following dependencies, the compilation should be a matter of plain
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
At the moment the following libraries (and their headers) are required:
- libglade2 from http://glade.gnome.org/
- libwnck from ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources
- dbus glib bindings from http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/dbus
In Debian and Ubuntu these dependencies are available via
# apt-get install libglade2-dev libwnck-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev
4. Reporting Bugs & Feature Requests
First of all plase consult TODO and BUGS, if the problem you see is not reported there, email me at iswitchwin@martinman.net with your comments.
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