Re: [STUMP] better windowlist

[Scott Jaderholm]

On Wed, Jun 03 2015,Stefan Huchler wrote:

> I use the windowlist function to switch between windows in stumpwm.
>
> But it is just not on par with even the normal buffer switch-to-buffer
> function/command in emacs, so I hope there is a way to make it better.

In case no one implements your feature requests in StumpWM proper, I'll
give you some ideas of how you could implement them in your own RC file.

> 1. when I use switch-to-buffer in emacs automaticly the last buffer is
> selected so with C-x b (default bindings) and <RET> I can fast switch
> between 2 buffers, would love to have that in stumpwm.

StumpWM doesn't, afaik, keep track of the previously selected window (it
does keep track of the previously selected frame), on a global or
per-group basis (windowlist is per group). You could add a function to
focus-window-hook that saves the previous window somewhere, but it would
have to keep track of it on a per group basis since windowlist would
need to know the previous window of the current group.

You could then redefine windowlist or select-window-from-menu to use
the previous window you stored instead of the current window.

I've included a globally-previous command below that that I use to
toggle between two windows.

> 2. emacs switch-to-buffer hides buffers that does not match the
> letters given in, makes seeing when you can type enter much easier.

I don't think that StumpWM's menu can do that. You can use dmenu to do
that though, and I provide code to use dmenu from StumpWM below.

> 3. emacs s-t-b resorts the buffers to what matches best your search
> string

switch-to-buffer doesn't do that. flx or helm will do that, maybe
icomplete does that. Ido does not resort, unless flx-ido is loaded.

> 4. I dont get why stumpwm opens buffers(in stump windows) in the
> position it was opened even it was not visible, makes more sense to
> open that "buffer" over the "buffer" I just have focused.

There is a command pull-window-select that behaves like that.

> 5. bonus points for a fuzzy (smex) search that is more powerful then a
> normal search to select a window with the name 'A - address@hidden@#$ - B'
> with A B search string when 'A - ' and ' - B' alone is not unique.

It's ido doing the fuzzy search, not smex itself, afaik.

The code below will allow you to use dmenu for menus in StumpWM instead
of the built-in menu UI. Note I don't use it, so I can't really support
it. There is a bug with it, but I forget what it is :)

If you use dmenu2, then you can enable fuzzy matching, but IIRC it
doesn't work when case insensitive option is set. You can also use
"space separated token" matching, so "A B" would match "A - address@hidden@#$
- B". You can enable vertical mode and non-matching lines will be
removed as you type.

(defun select-from-menu (screen table &optional prompt
                                        (initial-selection 0))
  "Prompt the user to select from a menu using dmenu on SCREEN. TABLE
can be a list of values or an alist. If it's an alist, the CAR of each
element is displayed in the menu. What is displayed as menu items must
be strings. Returns the selected element in TABLE or nil if aborted."

  (let* ((menu-options (mapcar #'menu-element-name table))
         ;; FIXME can't handle two items with same string representation
         (cmd (format nil "echo \"~{~A\\n~}\" | dmenu" menu-options))
         (selection-string (string-trim '(#\Newline)
                                        (run-shell-command cmd t)))
         (selection (find selection-string menu-options
                          :test (lambda (selection-string item)
                                  (string-equal selection-string
                                                (format nil "~A" item))))))
    (if (listp (car table))
        (assoc selection table)
        selection)))

;; And the globally-previous code

(defvar *globally-previous* '())
(defvar *globally-current* '())

(defun remember-focus-window-hook (new old)
  (setf *globally-previous* *globally-current*)
  (setf *globally-current* new))

(add-hook *focus-window-hook* 'remember-focus-window-hook)

(defcommand globally-previous () ()
  "Switch to the previous window (possibly from another group) that had focus"
  (let* 
      ((window *globally-previous*)
       (group (window-group window))
       (frame (window-frame window)))
    (when (not (= 0 (window-state window)))
      (gselect group)
      (focus-frame group frame)
      (focus-window window))))

Scott