I spent a while tonight reading up on
extended
window manager hints. It's not a very well thought-through standard, but
many window managers implement it nonetheless.
Tonight I added 7 new commands to xdotool (not yet in a release):
- get and set the number of desktops
- get and set the currently active desktop
- get and set the desktop for a specific window (set == move it to a new desktop)
- activate a window
The first 3 should be pretty straight forward. For fun, I told Gnome2 to create
50 workspaces, and it didn't barf. The taskbar pager looked a little funny as
it was sprawling with little desktop views, but it works :)
The last is window activation. It will jump you to the window and give it
focus. If the window is on a different desktop, it jumps to that desktop and
then activates the window. I've tested exactly that behavior (firefox lives on
a separate desktop or workspace) in Gnome2 and ion-3, and it works.
Example: Jump to firefox:
./xdotool windowactivate $(./xdotool search -title "Mozilla Firefox")
Example: Trying to do bad things in Gnome2
% ./xdotool set_num_desktops 5000
% ./xdotool get_num_desktops
36
Example: Move firefox to another desktop
# Find firefox's X Window ID
% MOZWIN=$(./xdotool search --title "Mozilla Firefox")
# Find the desktop containing firefox.
% ./xdotool get_desktop_for_window $MOZWIN
0
# How many desktops do we have?
% ./xdotool get_num_desktops
5
# Move firefox to desktop 3 (index starts at 0)
% ./xdotool set_desktop_for_window $MOZWIN 3
# Show me that firefox has moved to desktop 3
% ./xdotool get_desktop_for_window $MOZWIN
3
# Show me the current desktop
% ./xdotool get_desktop
0
# Activate firefox's window (taking us to Firefox's desktop)
% ./xdotool windowactivate $MOZWIN
# Show that we're now on the same desktop as firefox
% ./xdotool get_desktop
3
I'll put out a new release after I have a chance to tidy up the code a bit.
