Discovered Some Cool Stuff In Spectrwm and Qtile

So I found some cool things that you can do with Spectrwm and Qtile. In Spectrwm, the man page has some good documentation on customizing the bar. In Qtile, I read some of the python code and discovered a neat feature that I didn't know existed, and probably most Qtile users don't know about.
REFERENCED:
► github.com/conformal/spectrwm
► www.qtile.org/
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Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys!

[@seanbrec]

Hey DT! I recently switched over to qtile so your videos have been really helpful to me. I had a look at the qtile-cmd source and threw together a script that prints this information in a nicer format: gist.github.com/seanbreckenridge/b94254dc5b731a57c2e525de699887ad (theres a comment beneath it letting you know how to run) Its not in the correct order, but at least its a more readable/manipulatable output The only big change I made was changing the pprint.pprint call to a print call, and removing the argument parsing to force it to print keybinds. Ironically the pprint (pretty printer) was the one adding the newlines and making the output look bad. Notes: No way to know if this will break in the future, as this is using the the internals of qtile, and the way to currently access the qtile client isnt documented well github.com/qtile/qtile/issues/1409 This is an edited version of the qtile-cmd function, which can be found at /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/libqtile/scripts theres no easy way I can see to make this in the order which it appears in your config. Its possible one could load the config.py file, and read the order of the keys variable, and that match the command against the generated string command from the format, but its not something Im totally sure on how to do.

[@DistroTube]

A much nicer result. Much more readable: imgur.com/QJU1g8d Great job!

[@jeetadityachatterjee6995]

The benefit of not liking talking to people is that you read up a lot more before asking someone!

[@KevinBReynolds]

It's nice to know you're actually human and make the occasional error. Kudos for using that as a trigger for deeper diving and further discovery. And once again, thanks for sharing DT. You are and inspiration and example for us all.

[@brandonduvalbenn3400]

$ sudoedit will open files with the appropriate permissions, while still using your user's vim configuration.

[@thecashewtrader3328]

Bro tysm😊

[@csimatyi]

Hey DT! Great video as always. I just wanted to let you know that in spectrwm you can specify a 'backup' font for Unicode characters with the following line: bar_font_pua = For example: bar_font_pua = Font Awesome:size=9 sets your backup font to Font Awesome so that you don't have to add all those '+@fn=n's into your config/baraction script. Hope this helps! Peace! \w/

[@mthf5839]

wow this comment should really get more attention.

[@SEReamer09]

Jesus dude, thank you for explaining the "bar_action_expand" flag in the spectrwm.conf because I could not figure out why my markup chars weren't doing a damn thing.Was too spoiled with i3's config for changing the colors of values depending on their state and wanted to replicate that in spectrwm, so now I can. Keep going with the quality content, this channel has revealed a lot of interesting tweaks that encouraged me to make my setup more visually appealing instead of basic terminals with near-default settings.

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Derek. When I came to Linux long ago, discovering that there were man pages were a decisive factor in avoiding Wax Fruit and Borgware.

[@ecolombre]

Another interesting video again! Chapeau! You’re really pushing me to give qtile a much serious look that I ever did since this moment. Thank you DT.

[@son_et_lumiere9]

Looking forward for more videos on spectrwm Looks great, I'm thinking on give it a try

[@AlexandreZandaoDrummond]

Again a very good video! And looking into QTile code I found something I didn't find in the manual: in the LaunchBar widget If you pass an absolute path to a PNG file instead of program name ('thunderbird' and 'logout' in the manual example) it will show an icon instead of text

[@bobgrimes8618]

DT,you have the greatest wallpapers ever! I need to go to your github page and grab a few.

[@DistroTube]

git clone gitlab.com/dwt1/wallpapers.git

[@armynyus9123]

You rock. Learning about Xephyr only now - after learning C basics, by trial and error with dwm configs over startx cycles was no fun :-)

[@agh0x01]

re the Qtile hotkeys, there are some good utils to look up cheatsheets, some integrate with dmenu/rofi. Having cheat sheets a hotkey + search away is a great way to level up your fu.

[@conceptrat]

With that output from the qtile command for display keybindings is essentially something you'd pass to a custom script to reformat it his you'd like. Same as you did for SpectrWM with "baraction.sh". So something like "qtile-showkb.sh" and this would run the qtile-cmd pipe the output to AWK which can interpret that as the CSV, which is what that show keybindings command is producing. And then you can output your own customised version of it with Unicode border characters, shell colours or even render it to as a DocBook, PDF or HTML (via Surf) if you wanted something graphical.

[@samuelschwager]

Reading the man page separates the men from the boys.

[@hanshofman]

I saw your comments on Qtille command description and kb_display. Someone suggested to pipe the command in a python command give a decent formatted table on output. This command is: qtile cmd_obj -o cmd -f display_kb | python -c 'import sys; print(eval(sys.stdin.read()))' However, keyChord commands are missed, resulting in a long list of similar sub commands without then main command.

[@PascalThalmann]

man giving a video like that a thumb down is mental. honestly, its mental. great work as always Derek.

[@leighhorton2806]

hello I have qtile key functions working like you set up in the config file. I did not get a different background or tiles on screen however I am very impressed with qtile. Fine tuning is what I look forward to in future videos.

[@linuxdabbler]

The weight and justify features in the bar are a new feature introduced in 3.3 I believe.

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

Guess I have something to work on... Lol I must confess I have not had the time to look at the Man page but it has been on my mind to do so, just been caught up in life issues... LLAP

[@AtomToast]

You miss something in the man page so you decide to go and start reading source code to make up for it. I respect that

[@Egerieg]

I installed qtile on arch either yesterday or the day before and have been playing with it for a bit. The default config.py file that I got actually included descriptions for the keybindings.

[@wolfgangfalck1250]

Kudos for owning your mistake... great work

[@HeCodes2Much]

i3-ipc is also a thing for i3 too so can list commands with that too in terminal

[@AndersJackson]

Make a akw(1) command to split out the data and send it to a program that can show that. I also think you don't need the desc=, as it probably are the last argument. The name is used if you want to add the arguments in another order.

[@leighhorton2806]

Hi DT time for a qtile revist. I have tried i3 but now realsie qtile is by far the winner. I noticed ET is doing i3 so lets see a special on qtile getting started and qtile customisation. For starters the config.conf is so easy to write. On arch its is sweet.

[@adammontgomery7980]

Maybe it's a new feature but, you can generate a keyboard image with your bindings (scripts/gen-keybinding-img) in qtile

[@netrezv]

9:50 Ratpoison has it. It's C-t ? (or whatever your sequence binding is). Wmii also has it under wimenu.

[@RonnieNissan]

I had made a script with display_kb when I was running qtile, it would display the shortcuts in dmenu, and you could execute one when you chose it. I'll send it to you if I can find it.

[@thingsiplay]

I am in qtile since a few days and use the "desc" argument since day one, lol. I wondered whats the point of it, maybe if I wrote custom functions or scripts to read the description. But with the command to display all hotkeys, this does make sense now. I had to type it like this: qtile cmd-obj -o cmd -f display_kb Here are more commands you can use: docs.qtile.org/en/latest/manual/commands/shell/qtile-cmd.html You probably know this, but this comment is for potential new reader.

[@spyrosroum5986]

Just so you know, in python single and double quotes are the same. So if you did desc="Something something" is would work the same

[@eniojuniorschutt2828]

Could you make a video on how to make a statusbar with clickable tagnames in spectrWM, using dzen2+conky? I don't know if this setup will allow different colors, but, anyways, I am more interested in the clickable tagnames, just like the way it is in awesomeWM.

[@conceptrat]

@DistroTube Hey DT just a thought. In your "baraction.sh" wouldn't it be less confusing, and possibly more configurable, if you put the short codes for font setting and colours into the variable for each block. In other words inside the echo statements in each of the functions like cpu()?

[@agh0x01]

I may actually give spectrwm another try because the simple bar was offputting for me, but I am open to trying something new as I regularly get frustrated with i3

[@f23anone82]

Hey, can we see that dmenu-trading.sh? Btw, do you answer on comments here only or on LBRY as well?

[@PavelAShvedov]

You have 5 secs interval for bar data update, is it true, that if you change volume level, it will be changed in fact, but value on the bar panel will be updated when next loop iteration executes, and it may be 5 sec delay in some cases? Is it comfortable?

[@sambarr286]

Have you tried wayland at all? I'm interested in switching but the choices for compositors doesn't seem great at the moment

[@asdfkjhlk34]

Samuel Barr sway its amazing it’s like an improved i3

[@TangoFoxtrotWhiskey]

Thanks for the tip on vim as man viewer. I noticed in your dmenu config you had a dmenu-trading shell script. Is this for stock trading? What programs? Also, I find myself opening calculator for simple math I would do in the launcher on my work Mac, is there a way to do math in dmenu?

[@DistroTube]

I have a few stock trading programs on my computer, including thinkorswim and tastyworks. I don't use a dmenu calculator but it is easily achieved if you feel like writing a script that uses bc. Or you could find someone else's script. A quick search resulted in this: github.com/sumnerevans/menu-calc There is even an AUR package for that menu-calc script.

[@oscarrzga4615]

Check out a video about some calculator of Brodie Robertson

[@TangoFoxtrotWhiskey]

Thanks, I'll look into both. I am about to fund my tastyworks account after abandoning Robinhood, I had no idea they had an actual program.

[@DistroTube]

You can trade with TastyWorks in the browser if you have to, but yes...they have a desktop client and they make a Linux client. It's in the AUR.

[@TangoFoxtrotWhiskey]

Maybe all of these things being in the AUR will get me to go back to Arch. I'm waiting to see what Pop 20.04's tiling window manager Gnome extension is like to see if I want to go back to Pop Gnome or stay with Regolith, or maybe go back to Arch. I have a System76 laptop, so there is some benefit to at least starting with Pop, even if I use i3 rather than Gnome, for their firmware update and such. Thanks for all that you do.

[@fuseteam]

wait vim is your man page reader? oh boy 👀

[@dustinmorse8497]

Will Qtile fall back on the default config in your Qtile config folder?

[@sunaynanagpal]

Please tell me how to install joypixels font please i am running linux mint xfce

[@edvonrattlehead2135]

"This needs to be in table format" Just awk it, then pipe into less and display in a terminal i guess

[@DistroTube]

I had considered awk but check the pinned comment for a python solution that someone posted.

[@fuseteam]

i kinda managed to replicate spectrewm's resize in dwm :^3

[@11WicToR11]

it needs a little bash with rofi pick at the end (paste the output, i dont have qtile)

[@DistroTube]

Here's the output: pastebin.com/0sXsHRge

[@11WicToR11]

@@DistroTube pastebin.com/1Z9w34YV try this out ....this is honestly wrong way to solve this because its dummy text processing with problems with multiline outputs as explained in comments ...you should just go into that qtile code and change the way it prints it so that its easier to parse ...i made it so it works with what you gave me (it was fun little parsing exercise) and I guess you should be able to modify it to your liking ....you need to have rofi (or dmenu obviously but you need to modify script) installed and pipe output into it (like in example last line) ...i think this would be really dirty-looking in bash so python it is

[@11WicToR11]

@@DistroTube I use sxhkd and above every definition in config i have comment with single line of description ...then simple bash script with rofi gives me helper (that works both ways) on keypress. imgur.com/a/pbVy2eS

[@asterix908]

Its interesting you posted the video about printing keyboard shortcuts in qtile. I've been thinking about this feature as well, since I've been using awesome wm lately. Also looks like the issue has been raised with the qtile github, so hopefully it will get fixed in future. github.com/qtile/qtile/issues/1628

[@rochr4]

So, I just started ricing awesomewm, shall I drop it all and move Spectre wm? All jokes aside, basically U are hackerman so far, I could replicate all your videos on tmux so far, the point is: show us some notorious GUI app being managed and actually accomplish something in tiling wm in it, idk. Gimp? Surprise us please. Btw. Heavy gimp user here.

[@rochr4]

@@DistroTube so U got a special workspace for Gimp, set to monocle/ floating or are u tiling with Gimp? What I mean, show us some workflow, I got semi configured XFCE+ awesomewm, I just gimp on two monitors, with plugins such as g'mic, basically lots of windows pop up all the time and being honest it is totally demented over here.. I will figure it out of course, think of it as a new video idea, all U show is terminals, I am good with tiling terminals, I do it in drop down session of XFCE terminal and tmux, what I mean such a video could help normal GUI users get the idea) EOF: user reached limit of typed character's per day. (User kicked)

[@DistroTube]

I just open gimp fullscreen on one monitor. I never tile gimp.

[@gksudolol]

@@rochr4 You can launch gimp full-screen, on 1 workspace. Windows > single-window mode, no wm config tweaking or add-ons needed

[@DanielTateNZ]

Could write a script to clean up the whitespace and newline characters

[@DistroTube]

Oh, I'm sure it's possible. The manager.py file has all of the information that you'd want, it just needs to put into neat columns so that it doesn't look like a jumbled mess. I may look further into this at some point, if I feel like I need to work on a project. ;)

[@arkadiuszczader4498]

Hey DT, you inspired me to add description for Keys in default_config.py. The pull request successfully merged! github.com/qtile/qtile/pull/1630

[@DistroTube]

Awesome! I think that will really help new Qtile users.

[@TheDrunkenAlcoholic]

Actually formatting the output of display_kb shouldn't be too hard, doesn't need to be python if you are more comfortable and familiar with bash scripting, otherwise a small python script would be easy also(probably easier than bash script) just loop through each list item removing the white space and "/n"

[@Academic_nomad]

What T-shit was he wearing

[@mr_cupcakes1808]

RTFM is crucial because we're the most elitist group in IT. Also I don't use Arch BTW (neither UBUNTU tho).

[@NotAuthorized]

Check out github.com/regolith-linux/remontoire a keybinding viewer for i3 and other programs

[@justsomeguy8385]

RTFM doesn't mean read literally everything in the manual. People have shit to do. If I read the whole manual for every tool or library I used, I wouldn't have any time to get anything done.

[@tingzhou4149]

Awesome! Appreciate your effort. I'm very interested whether awesome wm/qutile can have consistent behavior across monitors/screens. I have scripts like bspc-swap, bspc-focus under github.com/ztlevi/Dotfiles/blob/master/desktop/bspwm/bin/bspc-focus#L1. They will try to behave in the current monitor first, and behave across monitors if failed.

[@rauli386]

I never read the manual, if I have to read the manual I change to windows. Users are not up to reading the manual

[@Th3Pr0ph3cy22]

Second then

[@reggybaxter8869]

Qtiles futile

[@usrname1105]

FiRsT

[@DistroTube]

cOnFiRmEd

[@0x1337feed]

wth just pronouce it “spectrum”

[@Microphunktv-jb3kj]

uh? isn't it Specter ? :> is spectrwm related to vimspectr theme? : P

[@polgzz]

It means "Spectr WindowManager", so I vote for DT's way to pronounce it