You can switch in a direction!

BridgeWhen I posted yesterday’s squib, I really didn’t expect six people to say they’d use it. Someone plaintively left a message on the bug saying “Please make it possible for devilspie to add this feature!” Well, it is possible for devilspie or any other addon to add this feature, and for that reason it’s not a big difficulty to write it as an external script.  As an added bonus, it should work with Compiz or KWin or any other EWMH-aware window manager.

To play with the script:

  1. Download the current version from GNOME bug 152661.
  2. Put it in your path as metacity-direction.
  3. Install X11::Protocol by typing:
    sudo cpan X11::Protocol
  4. Open gconf-editor and set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_n, where n is any set of four unused values, to:
    metacity-direction e
    metacity-direction s
    metacity-direction w
    metacity-direction n
  5. Set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_n to an appropriate set of values, like “<Shift><Alt>Right”, etc.
  6. Enjoy.

The algorithm is supposed to be the same as fvwm’s, but if you have suggestions for tweaking it, let me know.  The program should also demonstrate how to do fun EWMH things from Perl.

Photo (c) Katie Sutton, cc-by-nc-sa.

Published by

Thomas Thurman

Mostly themes, triaging, and patch review.

One thought on “You can switch in a direction!”

  1. Cool, I’ll be trying it right now.

    I thought Devilspie only worked when windows were created. Is there a way to run a script when a window gets the focus or looses it? Is for an auto-hide functionality (like gnome-panel’s) I’d like to have.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.