5 This is yet another maintenance release fixing a few issues.
11 This is a maintenance release that fixes a few issues in the
24 This release features a few minor fixes to behavioural regressions
25 in the previous release, as well as some build configuration file
26 self-documentation improvements.
32 There are a few minor fixes in this RC, plus a major one related to
33 layout restore under a session manager.
39 This RC features various minor fixes, and some clarifications and
40 simplifications to the license, which people seem to have had trouble
47 It seems people are a bit slow, or only scaring them with a final
48 release makes them report issues. So, still no stable release but
49 a candidate, with many minor fixes and improvements wrt. important
50 omissions. The most important changes are better behaviour of the
51 unsplit operation, better handling of main window being closed
52 before a transient, and use of the workspace's working directory
53 for run query file name completion.
59 Another attempt at last "rc" release.
65 This release features a few minor fixes. If no major problems are
66 discovered, this is likely to be the last "rc" release before the
67 first and hopefully final "stable" release.
73 This fourth "rc" release fixes some minor bugs and omissions in
80 This third "rc" release again simply fixes some minor problems in
87 This is the second "rc" release, and contains primarily bug fixes
88 and other minor improvements.
94 This is the first "rc" or "(stable) release candidate" release of
95 Ion3. This means that there will not be any further major changes
96 to it. Bugs will be fixed, and as an exception to the general
97 feature freeze, some hooks may still be added, if deemed useful.
98 Translations may also be included. After no new bugs (that can not
99 be deemed features) have been found in this or following "rc"
100 releases, the stable Ion3 will be released.
102 Most of the changes in this release to the previous one already
103 are bug fixes, in addition to some general clean-up. Other notable
106 * Winprop matching improvements: it is possible to match against
107 `is_dockapp` and `is_transient` (booleans), and there's a hack
108 to support `class` and `instance` for dockapps too.
110 * The default configuration puts dockapps in the statusbar's
113 * The autoconf kludge has been removed, as I will have nothing
114 to do with it, and nobody else seems to support or maintain
117 * Tab numbers are displayed when releasing modifiers in the
120 Distributors should pay heed to the name policy notice in the
127 This may be the last "ds" release if Ion3; if all goes well, the next
128 release is likely to be an "rc". Some minor improvements will still
129 be done, and minor requests may be accepted, so be quick.
131 The most notable changes in this release from the previous one are:
133 * Transients and queries in too small frames are "unsqueezed" out
134 of them, unless disabled with `ioncore.set{ unsqueeze = false }`.
136 * Some changes in default `cfg_ion.lua`: instead of loading
137 various other files, just `cfg_default.lua` is loaded instead.
139 * `mod_tiling.untile` (available in the context menu) may be used
140 to decompose tilings into floating frames. (This is the approximate
141 opposite of `mod_tiling.mkbottom` and the "new tiling" context menu
144 * Improved context menus.
146 * Slightly improved defaults style, using the drawing engine's
147 added possibility of partial borders.
149 * Various fixes and other improvements, in particular in relation
156 * There's been changes in padding/spacing usage in styles. Frames
157 now surround stuff inside borders not with `spacing` pixels, but
158 with `padding_pixels`. Spacing is only used to space things within
159 the borders (all the tabs and the client window from each other).
160 Consequently, custom styles may need to be updated to reflect this,
161 by increasing the padding, possibly also altering/removing colour
162 (to set it to background colour).
164 * The use of drawing engine attributes has also changed, and strict
165 ordering of them in the styles is no longer necessary. Additionally,
166 much more attributes are supported, including the name of every
169 * Xinerama support is gone. In addition to being problematic as such,
170 it had bit-rotted, and I will not waste time fixing it.
172 * `ioncore.set` no longer supports the `default_ws_params` parameter
173 for configuring the default layout. It is replaced by
174 `ioncore.deflayout("default", { ... })`, which allows configuring
175 other layouts as well, known by `mod_query.query_workspace` (F9).
176 Some default layouts are configured in `cfg_layout.lua`.
178 * It is now possible to automatically create new workspaces for
179 windows with the `new_group` winprop.
185 There's nothing major in this release, primarily just some minor fixes
186 and tuning to the previous release, that it was time to release.
192 Mostly this release still fixes issues in the big 3ds-20061015 release,
193 but in addition there are some improvements in the query department:
195 * Query activation key now cycles completions (So e.g. the
196 in the context menu activated with META+M, this same key
197 can be used to cycle through the alternatives.) This does
198 not work for queries activated by submap bindings.
200 * Likewise, it is no longer necessary to specify the key to
201 use for cycling for `mod_menu.grabmenu`.
203 * Control+R can now be used for history completion in queries.
204 (Currently matching is done for full string up to 'point', but
205 this may be changed to substring match.)
207 * Note that the parametrisation of WEdln.complete has changed,
208 and the second cycle parameter must be 'next' now instead of
215 Fixes some (expected, but minor) issues in the previous release.
221 * WIonWS and WFloatWS and the corresponding modules are gone, and
222 your custom configuration files will be broken with regard to these.
223 However, a partial backwards compatibility hack exists for layout
226 The F9 and META-F9 bindings now by default create workspaces with
227 a tiled layout of two frames. To create an "empty" workspace,
228 corresponding to the old WFloatWS, use the context menu (META-M)
229 and choose "new-empty-workspace". It is also possible to change
232 * Note that if you restart from an old version to this new version of Ion,
233 transients will stop working as expected for already existing windows.
234 They will work for newly-created windows, however.
236 * There are a few new sets of binding (including one for `WClientWin`!),
237 and some old bindings may not work exactly as expected anymore. In
238 particular, those for switching to full-screen mode.
240 **It is probably best to start from scratch with your custom
243 * `WFrame.set_tabbar` is gone. If you absolutely want to get rid off
244 the tabs, you must change the frame's "mode" with `WFrame.set_mode`.
245 The mode "tiled-alt" has been intended for this, and the corresponding
246 "framed-tiled-alt" style defaults to `bar = "none"`.
248 * The rather popular `detach.lua` script from the scripts repository
249 is obsoleted now, as Ion includes detach functionality in itself.
250 To detach a window, use META-K D in the default bindings. To tile
251 an existing frame from a workspace that doesn't have a tiling yet,
258 Some notable changes in this release include
260 * Lua 5.1 is now required.
262 * Framed transients on by default now. New binding contexts
263 "WFrame.toplevel" and "WMPlex.toplevel" were added to allow
264 for separate sets of bindings for nested transient frames and
265 top-level frames. Some of the bindings in the default binding
266 maps that are likely to be unwanted on transient frames were
267 moved to these contexts. Old custom bindings will continue to
268 work unless they modify the defaults by unbinding some of the
271 * Pressing Mod1+K K in the default bindings now switches to any
272 region with the "activity" flag set (indicated by the a box
273 at a corner of the screen), if there's one, before cycling to
274 previously active region. The same effect can be achieved in
275 your custom bindings with
277 ioncore.activity_goto() or ioncore.goto_previous()
283 This release mostly features minor bugfixes and other improvements. The most
284 visible non-bugfix changes are:
286 * Faster "fontset" filling kludge: only `-misc-fixed-*` fonts are tried. Ion
287 should now load faster in UTF-8 environments, and usually with no less
288 fonts in the fontset than before. (UTF-8 string drawing still does not
289 fully utilise these fonts under XFree86, but it does under XOrg.)
291 * Experimental auto-show-completions support, which is also on by default
292 now. In this mode the Tab key can be used to cycle forward through the
293 completions, and Shift+Tab backwards. Modify the settings seen in the
294 new `mod_query.lua` to get normal Tab-completion, or change the completion
297 * The release scripts do not run automatically autoconf anymore so maybe
298 a few more people would look into the README first.
304 The most visible changes in this release are:
306 * Mod1+space now toggles the scratchpad by default and Mod1+D the dock.
308 * The `ion-(ssh|man|view|edit)` wrapper scripts were removed and instead
309 the programs used can be configured in Ion's configuration files.
311 * `ioncore.exec(_on)` also support the `:cmd` notation for "run cmd in
312 xterm" familiar from the run query. The `::cmd` notation can be used
313 to ask for enter to be pressed even when the program quit succesfully.
315 * Those with custom configuration files should note that many exported toggle
316 functions were changed and renamed, and now accept a string parameter
317 incidating whether to toggle, set or unset the property.
319 - `WClientwin.set_fullsreen` (replaces `WClientWin.toggle_fullscreen`)
320 - `WRegion.set_tagged` (replaces `WRegion.tag/untag/toggle_tag`)
321 - `WFrame.set_tabbar` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_tabbar`)
322 - `WFrame.set_shaded` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_shade`)
323 - `WFloatFrame.set_sticky` (replaces `WFloatFrame.toggle_sticky`)
324 - `WMPlex.l2_set_hidden` (replaces `WMPlex.l2_hide/show`)
325 - `mod_sp.set_shown(_on)` (replaces `mod_sp.toggle(_on)`)
326 - `mod_dock.set_floating_shown_on` (replaces `mod_dock.toggle_floating_on`)
327 - `WRegion.set_activity` (replaces `WRegion.clear_activity` and
328 `WRegion.notify_activity`)
330 For example, `WRegion.set_tagged(_, 'toggle')` should be used in place of
331 `WRegion.toggle_tagged(_)` now.
333 Obviously there are some other changes and fixes too. See the changelog
334 for details as usual.
340 This is mostly a bug fix release, but also features improved
341 `mod_query.query_exec` (F3 key) completion support. Script writers should be
342 aware that As a side effect of one of these bug fixes, many hooks are now
343 called in "protected mode" and can not call any functions that modify the
344 internal state of Ion, except ioncore.defer.
350 The most important changes in this release are:
352 * So-called "placeholders". With the help of these the positions of
353 full-screen windows are remembered in their original frames, and don't
354 just get inserted after currently active window when returning from
355 full-screen mode. Under a session manager placeholders are also used
356 to remember the original order of windows.
358 * Improved `mod_statusbar` and `ion-statusd` communication, and colouring
359 of important/critical meters.
361 * A number of small fixes.
367 This monthly snapshot adds a few new and improved features.
369 * 'Grabbed menus' that have a single cycling key and activate selected
370 entry when all modifiers have been released. See
372 <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/scripts/wcirculate.lua>
376 * Potentially blocking status meters are now in a separate ion-statusd
377 program. Please write your additional status meters that do not monitor
378 the state of Ion itself for ion-statusd (and contribute them in the
379 Ion3 scripts repository at <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/>).
380 For help on writing such status meters, see e.g. source for
381 `statusd_load` in `ext_statusbar/ion-statusd`.
383 * Floating splits are now supported on plain tiled workspaces as well as
384 on pane workspaces. To create such a split, use the workspace context
385 menu (Mod1+M by default) or write your own bindings.
387 * Line editor now supports history search; Control+Up/Down only scrolls
388 through history entries with matching initial part.
390 * Arbitrary winprop matching criteria is supported. Lua scripts have
391 access to X properties.
393 Of course there are some other minor fixes and improvements as well.
399 This release finally includes a usable (yet still incomplete) version
400 of the `mod_panews` workspace module (that has also bored the name 'autows'
401 and 'rubberws' previously). The final outcome is not exactly what I
402 initially planned, as those plans turned out not to be that workable.
403 Instead, what `mod_panews` does is add to the basic tiled ionws approach
404 overlappable splits and automatically filled panes that are initially
405 empty. Each window is classified and assigned to the pane matching that
406 classification. (The default classifications are T(erminal), V(iewer)
407 and M(iscellaneous).)
409 For a better feel for it, try it out yourself and please give feedback.
410 The overlapping panes may be a bit confusing (this is one place where
411 true translucency might actually be useful and not just eyecandy) at
412 first, but you'll get used to them if you use the feature, and e.g.
413 the Gimp works quite splendidly with the toolboxes in the 'M' pane and
414 image windows in the 'V' pane -- although the simple initial size-based
415 classification heuristics don't always get it right and overriding
416 winprops (setting: `panews_classification`) should eventually added.
418 In addition to the new module, this release adds support for translations
419 of program messages and the manual page, regardless of whether such is
420 of any use in a program like Ion or not. (Currently Finnish and Czech
421 translations are available.) Of course there are some bug fixes and
422 other minor additions as well, and the `./configure` script is also back,
423 the abandonment of libtool being final now.
429 The first thing you'll notice when you start up this release of Ion is
430 that isn't reading your old configuration that. The next thing you
431 should notice is a neat layout-adapting statusbar at the bottom of the
432 screen. That's right, Ion now includes an `ext_statusbar` Lua script that
433 is enabled by default and displays date/time/load/mail count in a
436 So why is it not reading your configuration and save files? Firstly,
437 all of the `.lua` files were renamed to be indicative of their purpose.
438 Secondly, there have been so many changes that your old files would be
441 The `.lua` files are now named as follows:
443 cfg_*.lua Configuration file that the user may wish to edit
444 look_*.lua Drawing engine style file
445 saved_*.lua Save file
446 mod_*.lua Module stub loader
447 ext_*.lua A bigger Lua extension without a C counterpart
448 so that it is not a module
450 The configuration file for `mod_foobar` or `ext_foobar`, if it has one, is,
451 of course, `cfg_foobar.lua`. In the topic of file names, also note that
452 the default installation paths and binary names have changed to include
453 the component '3' to reflect the situation with many binary packages
456 You perhaps noticed above that modules have stub loaders now, so the
457 user has no need to use the `ioncore.load_module` routine. All extensions
458 and additional configuration files can now be loaded with 'dopath'
459 (used to be 'include'). Also, the `menulib`, `querylib`, and `ioncorelib`
460 Lua libraries are gone and instead their contents can be found in the same
461 `mod_whatever` namespace with the corresponding module (the "stub" loader
462 for these modules is a bit more than just a stub...). Some may also
463 want to know that for `mod_*` and `ext_*` only the compiled .lc files are
464 now installed, and not the source `.lua` files, thus removing redundant
465 files and making the installation slightly smaller.
467 There are few other changes to the contents of the configuration files
468 as well, so you're probably best off simply rewriting your modified
469 configuration files based on the new defaults. There quite likely won't
470 be any more _big_ changes to the configuration files before the release
471 of final Ion3, wherever that will be. (Most likely we won't see 3rc:s
472 yet this year.) However, some functions and variables are still likely
473 to be renamed or changed.
475 In addition to being renamed, the layout savefile of this Ion release
476 is incompatible with older releases. This is due to the changes made
477 to the `WIonWS` (and `WAutoWS`) split tree code to make it more modularly
478 extensible with the new kinds of nodes that `WAutoWS` requires.
480 The `mod_autows` module has infact been through many changes since the
481 last release, and I think I have the final form of it finally figured
482 out. However, it is still far from finished and unlikely to be ready
489 The major new features of this snapshot release are:
491 * `WMPlex` support for a sticky status display area to which `WIonWS`s
492 adjust properly. Modified to the dock module to support this method.
493 See the new `dock.lua` to set up the dock in the new embedded or old
494 floating manner (the API for the latter has also changed).
495 * Primitive session management support.
497 There are also some bug fixes and many minor improvements; see the ChangeLog
498 for details. Work on `mod_autows` has also started, but it isn't ready for
502 ### Note on ./configure:
504 ./configure does not exist for the moment as the source autoconf script
505 is not up-to-date. Ion no longer uses libtool/libltdl due to problems
506 with inter-module dependencies, and I have not asked Tom Payne to fix
507 the script yet, as this change may not be final (although that is most
508 likely the case; those without Linux-compatible libdl and a flexible
509 binary format such as ELF will just have to link statically against the
513 ### Notes on session management:
515 Ion loads `mod_sm` automatically when the SESSION_MANAGER environment
516 variable that should be set by the session manager is set, so there's
517 no need load it in `ion.lua`.
519 When session management is in use, all entries in the 'Session' menu
520 (previously 'Exit' menu) actually invoke the session manager to do the
521 task. 'Save' asks the SM save the whole session and 'Exit' (ioncore.shutdown)
522 asks it to shut down the session instead of just causing the WM to quite.
523 To do the latter, use ioncore.resign.
525 Unfortunately, all session managers I have tried (from Debian/unstable),
526 are broken/incomplete in one way or another:
529 xsm: doesn't support any requests from applications. This makes Ion's
530 session menu complete unfunctional. The only way to restart/exit/save
531 state is through xsm's window.
534 gnome-session: This seems the most complete of the all the session managers
535 and works fine until it is requested to shut down the session, when it dumps
536 core and session state is lost if was not explicitly saved previously.
538 A `~/.gnome2/session` file to use with Ion follows:
544 0,RestartCommand=gnome-smproxy --sm-client-id default0
547 1,RestartCommand=/usr/local/ion-3/bin/ion -smclientid default1
550 ksmserver: Only supports a global shutdown request, so that Ion can not be
551 restarted or session state saved in the middle of a session.
557 This is the first development snapshot release of what is to be Ion3.
558 The most visible changes to Ion2 so far are:
560 * Default installation directory is `/usr/local/ion-3` while user
561 configuration files go in `~/.ion3`
563 * The `mod_sp` module was added. It creates an extra toggleable
564 "scratchpad" frame on each screen. Toggle is for now bound by default
565 to Mod1+section, which should be very conveniently located on most
566 Nordic keyboards (left of "1"), but you may have to change it. The
567 scratchpad should be nice for xconsole or similar monitors, xmessage
568 and other popups and just as temporary holding space for windows.
570 * All modules except the drawing engine are now called `mod_something`.
572 * Man-page complection supports a cache of known man-pages for faster
573 completion. See the README for instructions on setting up a cronjob
574 or manually generating the index if you want to use the feature.
575 Also `query_man_path` is no longer used. Instead we try the
576 `ION_MC_MANPATH` and `MANPATH` environment variables and the
579 * Exported functions are now separated into tables (namespaces)
580 instead of cluttering the globals table. Some frequently used
581 configuration functions are imported into the globals table, though.
582 Some functions have also been removed or renamed for simpler and
583 more consistent function set.
585 * New binding configuration mechanism. Dozens of `*_bindings` functions
586 were replaced with a single `[ioncorelib.]defbindings` function that
587 accepts a context parameter. Callbacks are specified as strings
588 (although passing functions still works) to make it easier for
589 external configuration programs to understand the configuration
590 files and perhaps remove some confusion among users who do not
591 care to read a tiny bit of Lua documentation and understand the
592 concept of anonymous functions.
594 * It is now also possible to retrieve a list of bindings with
595 `ioncorelib.getbindings`, for example, for self-documentation.
597 * Single move/resize mode bindings instead of separate for both
598 ionframe and floatframe.
600 There are also quite a few internal changes; see the ChangeLog for
601 details. No documentation tarball is available at the moment as the
602 documentation is out-of-date except for the function reference. If
603 you need the reference, just checkout the documentation from the
604 Subversion repository with
606 svn co http://tao.uab.es/ion/svn/ion-doc/trunk ion-doc-3ds
608 and build the documentation.
614 This release is finally what can be called "Ion 2 release candidate #1".
615 No more new features will be added to "Ion 2" after this release, and the
616 configuration interface has already been frozen for a while. I will wait a
617 couple of weeks for bug reports, and if nothing serious is found, the new
618 stable Ion should finally be released then.
620 The most notable changes since the previous release are:
622 * The dock module is included
623 * An optional autoconf script was added
624 * A few minor bugs were fixed
625 * Some incomplete features were polished, especially focus control on
627 * Changes in X keyboard map are supported now (so e.g. switching to
628 dvorak after Ion has started should update the bindings to match the
629 locations of symbols in the dvorak layout).
632 About the version numbering scheme:
634 Due to a demand of a version numbering scheme more indicative of the status
635 of the project, I was thinking of various different new version numbering
636 schemes for this release: ion-2rc1 (then 2r1, 3d1, etc.), ion-2-20040114-rc1,
637 ion-2.20040114rc1, ion-20040114-2rc1, etc.). It would've been nice if
638 simple lexicographical sorting could be used to order the packages, but
639 in the end I decided to stick with a scheme that is consistent with the
640 'ion-devel' package names:
642 project-branch_and_status-release_date
644 Therefore this release is 'ion-2rc-20040114', and the "stable" one will be
651 This is a big clean-up release. The most noticeable changes are that
652 '-devel' has been removed from path names, user configuration files go
653 in `~/.ion2/` and the main configuration file is 'ion.lua'. (The other
654 `ioncore-*.lua` files have also been renamed.) There have been no notable
655 changes in the configuration files themselves, so your old files will
656 work if you move them to the correct directory and rename the changed
657 files. (`mv ~/.ion-devel ~/.ion2; cd ~/.ion2; mv ioncore.lua ion.lua;`
660 This release also finally contains a working PWM binary. (The ioncore+
661 scripts scheme was replaced with separate binaries statically linked
662 to ioncore.a.) Floating workspaces now support edge snapping and
663 sticky windows, but some PWM features are probably still missing.
665 Some bugs were also fixed and users are now force-fed the manual page
666 the first time Ion is started. Transients can be toggled between
667 top/bottom of the main window with Mod1+K T. The SSH query uses
668 `~/.ssh/known_hosts` for completion instead of a manually defined list.
670 There may be a few additions (e.g. the dock) and bug fixes, of course,
671 before the stable release, but this release should pretty much be what
672 the new "stable" Ion should look like. Please upgrade to it to help
673 weed out the bugs. Note that you need to upgrade Lua to the 5.0.1
681 It's finally time for a new release on Ion's development branch. Most
682 likely this will also be the last "big" release before finally, after
683 almost two years, releasing a new "stable" version of Ion. A few bug
684 fix and code clean-up releases should appear in between, though.
686 The most important additions, changes and non-changes in this release
690 * A little less broken extended character set and string encoding
692 * Extended WM hints fullscreen request support
693 * Hopefully a little clarified configuration file layout
695 * And most important of all:
697 > Configuration files written for the previous release should
698 > still work this time!
700 (However, Ion will complain of old drawing engine styles.)
702 The menu module provides both drop-down menus (in the stock configuration
703 pressing Button3 on a tab should show a context menu) and query-like
704 "in-mplex" menus (F12: main menu at screen level; Mod1+M: the same context
705 menu as above at frame level).
707 What was done enhance support for strings (mostly window titles) in
708 languages that need more than 8-bit character sets is:
710 * Remove UTF8 restriction and support almost arbitrary multibyte
711 encodings instead. (Statefull encodings will not work and combining
712 characters can cause clutter. Both are a sign of bad encoding, IMHO.)
714 * The XCreateFontSet routine that is used to load fonts in the kind
715 of structure the X utf8 and multibyte routines want apparently wants
716 to be able to load glyphs for all character sets specified in the
717 locale and therefore often fails if only single font is specified.
718 Therefore a kludge was added that tries loading more fonts while
719 keeping the fonts' size the same. (The ",*" kludge could load huge
720 fonts). Unfortunately this has a noticeable effect in startup time :(.
722 * There is no longer a system.mk option to enable utf8 (now multibyte)
723 support, but must still specifically be enabled with the -i18n
724 command line switch, mostly thanks to troublesome utf-8 locales.
726 Because Xlib's UTF-8 string drawing code is broken and very unlikely to
727 be fixed, decent text output in an UTF-8 locale is still unlikely and
728 dependent on the fonts loaded in the system. The Xmb routines that are now
729 used always use an iso10646-1 font even if other fonts are loaded and the
730 unicode font does not contain a particular glyph to be drawn. The use of
731 the Xutf8 routines in an utf8 locale can be enabled with the
732 `CF_DE_USE_XUTF8` compile-time option. The advantage of this is that
733 these routines seem to choose the font to draw particular character in
734 most cases more sanely. The downside is that there are other more serious
735 problems with unknown characters.
737 All in all, even if I'd like to support a universal move to UTF-8, thanks
738 to Xlib brokenness I can't really recommend using UTF-8 locales with Ion
739 and the default drawing engine if there's a decent alternative encoding.
740 Most if not all other stateless encodings shouldn't have the problems
741 UTF-8 has. An alternative drawing engine that didn't use the Xlib i18n
742 string drawing routines might solve the troubles with utf-8 support.
746 If you have saved a custom system.mk, you'll need to set LUAC
747 point to the Lua compiler there as some of the share/ files
754 It's been a while since the previous release as I wanted to freeze the
755 Lua configuration/scripting interface for this release and therefore
756 finish work on a few things. Well, on my part the interface is frozen,
757 but I will still accept constructive complaints for a short time and
758 after that the implemented parts of the scripting interface will be
759 frozen. But in all likelihood, if no one has anything else to say, but
760 "it's ok", "it sucks", the interface will no longer change, only possibly
763 What's new for this release then?
765 * Drawing engine module support.
766 * OO-style exported functions. The old `class_fn` functions are now
767 `WClass.fn` (an ugly wrapper is provided in `compat.lua`).
768 * No more screen-specific configuration or savefiles.
769 * Session name (can be specified on command line) instead of display
770 name based savefiles. Also affects query history and not just workspace
772 * Bug fixes, most small and one bigger (almost complete rewrite of
773 the split resizing algorithm).
774 * Some documentation improvements.
776 Converting configuration files.
778 Old `.lua` colour schemes and workspace save files can be automatically
779 converted to a format suitable to be loaded by this latest release.
780 Other files will have to be ported manually. To convert colour schemes,
781 use the script `utils/lookconv.lua`. The usage is
783 lookconv.lua look-old.lua > look-new.lua
785 To convert workspaces savefiles, use the script `utils/saveconv.sh`.
788 saveconf.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-DISPLAY.*.lua \
789 > ~/.ion-devel/SESSIONNAME/workspaces.lua
791 `DISPLAY` here is the actual display part of `$DISPLAY`, probably just `:0`.
792 '*' stands for all screens (if you have only one screen you could do with
793 perhaps just `workspaces-:0.0.lua`). SESSIONNAME is the name of the session
794 where you want to use the converted savefiles. Default session name for
795 `DISPLAY` is `default-session-DISPLAY` with the colon in `DISPLAY` converted
796 to a dash. For most people this is `default-session--0`. In the simplest
797 case the whole command line is therefore
799 saveconv.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-:0.0.lua \
800 > ~/.ion-devel/default-session--0/workspaces.lua
802 The scripts may or may not work and are only provided as a potential
803 convenience that will not be maintained and will be removed eventually.
809 Quite a few bug fixes and one most likely unnoticeable improvement:
813 * Fixed pointer warping on screen change.
814 * A bug in grab handler calling code could crash Ion when leaving
815 keyboard resize mode manually.
816 * Resize display was showing incorrect values for keyboard resize.
820 * Client window last height request bookkeeping code had been lost
821 when configure request policy was changed. This caused transient
822 sizes to be calculated incorrectly.
823 * Return from full screen mode to floatws had been broken.
824 * As the number of dynamic functions has been getting bigger, the
825 functions are now sorted on first use and then binary-searched
826 instead of naive linear searching.
827 * Screen lookup had been broken for windows that are not properly
834 Just some bug fixes and minor behavioural changes and improvements in
841 This release fixes some small problems with the previous release and
842 adds a workaround kludge for the XFree86 textprop bug (it's been fixed
843 but no release with the fix is available) that could cause Opera to
844 crash Ion when UTF8 support was enabled. I also added the winprop
845 needed for galeon's find dialog to default `kludges.lua` and there's
846 some extra documentation and defaults for some systems in system.mk.
852 Most changes in this release centre around making Ion more tolerant
853 to broken configuration files; for details see the ChangeLog. There
854 are also changes in binding configuration as I already mentioned in
855 an earlier poting. Namely `common-frame-bindings.lua` is gone and the
856 bindings previously set there (into variables that the `*ws.lua`
857 files later referenced) were moved to `ioncore-bindings.lua` and are
858 set using the new functions `mplex_bindings` and `genframe_bindings`
859 are were added. Old modified configuration files should still work,
860 however, but if you use `make_active_leaf_fn`, you will need to
861 include `compat.lua` as the `global_bindings` that used this were
862 replaced by bindings in `mplex_bindings` and the function
863 `make_current_clientwin_fn`.
865 There are also some (minor) bug fixes and a few other improvements
866 worth a mention. In particular all regions are now given names of
867 the form `WFoobar<n>` by default and `DEFAULT_MOD.."F9"` was bound to
868 create a new workspace without asking for a name. This binding and
869 `QueryLib.query_workspace` use the workspace type defined in the
870 variable `default_ws_type` instead of being hardcoded to `WIonWS`.
872 All objects passed to Lua now have a unique userdata (a `WWatch`
873 cached in a weak table) so they can be used e.g. as indices to tables.
879 This release unifies some parts of `WScreen` and `WGenFrame`, which makes
880 screen-level queries possible. (Later the queries for small frames might
881 be changed to be shown at screen level.) The statusbar restriction from
882 ion-devel-20030531 was also removed by this some change and a few
883 non-fatal bugs have been fixed.
889 A bug was discovered:
893 * An off-by-one error in `extl_l1_finalize` caused references to some
894 Lua tables (including large completions) never to be released.
896 It could be that this bug was causing some other errors in Lua as well.
897 Sometimes QueryLib bindings failed because some function generators
898 returned nil although they shouldn't. Adding dummy lines (!) in those
899 functions fixed the problem and for some reason this patch also seemed
900 to remove those problems.
903 One more note: as `ioncorelib.lua` and `querylib.lua` are now installed
904 in `$SHAREDIR`, you must remove the old files in `$ETCDIR` if installing
905 over a previous release or else there will be errors. You should also
906 not use any possible old copies you have in `~/.ion-devel/`. (One of the
907 reasons for moving these to `$SHAREDIR` is to stop users from making
908 copies of them as they are not configuration files.)
914 As the subject line says, Ion-devel-20030531 was just released. The short
917 * The license was changed from the Clarified Artistic License to the
918 GNU Library/Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
919 * Screen, viewport and root window renames and other changes (see below).
920 * Some installation directory changes; the ion-* helper programs are now
921 installed either in `$SHAREDIR` or `$EXTRABINDIR` and QueryLib searches
922 for them on the script path (`~/.ion-devel/`, `$ETCDIR`, `$SHAREDIR`,
923 `$EXTRABINDIR`) instead of assuming them being on `$PATH`.
924 * Client windows are now in a separate namespace.
925 * Resize/maximize/shade changes: Shading should work on `WIonFrame`s too
926 and shade mode is automatic when the client area gets too small when
927 resizing. Maximize toggle restores frame to previous size if shaded
928 instead of maximizing. The move/resize mode bindings were changed again
929 to be more consistent and predictable: Left/Right/Up/Down and F/B/P/N
930 grow the frame in the specific direction, Shift+keys shrink and in
931 case of floating frames, `DEFAULT_MOD+keys` move
932 * Returning from full screen mode should work on `WFloatWS`s too.
933 * Lots of minor fixes, export additions and clean-up.
935 As usual, see the (long!) list of new ChangeLog entries at the end of
936 this message for details.
939 I've finally personally switched from the old "stable" 20020207 to using
940 the latest development release at home too and I must say that it is
941 finally starting to look good. There are still things to be written, but
942 unless you need "proven" stability, I see no reason to sticking to that
943 old release anymore. Unless, of course, if you find a problem that I have
944 not encountered or simply have no need for the new features and don't want
945 to port your configuration files.
948 On screens, viewports, root windows and problems with the new
951 The objects previously called "screens" are now called "root windows"
952 and what were called "viewports" are called "screens" to better reflect
953 what the user sees. (When Xinerama is not used there's no difference
954 between a root window and a screen, but when Xinerama is used a root
955 window may be split over multiple screens.)
957 This release also creates so-called virtual root windows for each
958 Xinerama screen when there are more than one. This is to better separate
959 the windows on different screens and thus emulate normal multihead, the
960 main difference being that windows can be moved between screens.
961 Especially the virtual roots are there to keep the windows that are on
962 a floatws on the right screen.
964 Virtual root windows will, however, break a few apps:
966 * Mozilla -remote won't work because of its crappy method for looking
967 up existing windows that can't handle multiple levels of WM windows.
968 Nested workspaces have the same problem. There is, however, a simple
969 solution to this problem: gnome-moz-remote. It seems to use a saner
970 method for looking up an existing Gecko browser and also works with
971 at least Phoenix/MozillaFirebird and Galeon.
973 These two are problems only if you use floatws:s (other problems with
974 which virtual root windows are intended to solve):
976 * The background-setting apps I am aware of will require a following
977 'xrefresh' for the changes to be updated to the (transparent) virtual
978 roots. Background setting apps that support the `_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS`
979 property (which, I think, was meant for root window-sized WS
980 backgrounds) could be used to set a separate background for each
981 Xinerama screen, though. I am not aware of any such app.
982 * Some apps' resize and move features will behave erratically on those
983 Xinerama screens not at (0, 0) on the root window. This is again
984 because the apps are assuming there's at most one WM window between
985 them and the root and are requesting windows' positions incorrectly.
986 The ICCCM is quite vague on this and I think _all_ apps that I have
987 tried are doing it wrong but the way e.g. XMMS does it certainly is
988 not an interpretation of the ICCCM. The apps that now behave correctly
989 request position for the outermost WM window. Nested workspaces have
992 There is one more temporary problem:
994 * Status bar modules (and the dock module's statusbar mode) will be
995 *temporarily* broken when virtual roots are _not_ used. This will be
996 fixed later when parts of screen and frame code are unified (it should
997 then be possible to run Ion without any workspace modules and have
998 queries attached to screens). In the meanwhile, if you don't care about
999 the above-mentioned problems and want a statusbar (which probably needs
1000 to be ported to this release), you can defined `CF_ALWAYS_VIRTUAL_ROOT`
1007 There are quite a few small fixes and minor enhancements invisible to
1008 the user in this release. The splitting functions were renamed to be
1009 more consistent and there are a couple of enhancements in the Lua code
1010 query that should make it much more usable. First, tab-completion can
1011 now descend into tables and complete subexpressions. Secondly, the local
1012 variable `_` in addition to 'arg[1]' is set to point to the the frame in
1013 which the query is executing.
1015 I have also written some new documentation that is now available from
1022 The most notable change in this release is that the `target_id` system
1023 was removed and instead client window status is also saved over
1024 restarts in the saves/workspaces-* files. (It shouldn't be too hard
1025 to hook a session management module over this.) Thanks to this
1026 modification, floatframes can also save their status now. Note
1027 that if you restart from older version of Ion to this one, client
1028 window layout will be messed up.
1030 There are also a few bug fixes and code to save and load line editor
1037 There are lots of minor improvements in this release, see the
1038 new ChangeLog entries for details.
1044 Some minor feature enhancements and a few fixes in this new release:
1046 The file system scanning completions are now put in the background
1047 by receiving the data from external programs through pipes and select()
1048 for data in the main event loop. This way long taking completions don't
1049 block Ion from processing other events and NFS problems shouldn't hang
1052 Basic window stacking management support code was added. Transients
1053 on floatws:s should now be stacked above their parents. If you don't
1054 want to change your modified binding configurations at this point and
1055 need the functions `floatframe_raise/lower`, include `compat.lua`.
1061 This release again fixes some minor problems and enhances a few
1062 features. Most of the enhancements are related to UTF8 support and
1063 the floatws module. If UTF8 support is enabled, Ion now tries to
1064 load the "fixed" font at startup after setting up locales. If locales
1065 aren't properly set up, this probably fails and Ion will reset locale
1066 back to "POSIX" as this might make fonts loadable although support for
1067 non-ASCII characters will be crippled. It might now be safe for
1068 package maintainers to enable UTF8 support by default
1070 As apps seem to have switched to using `_NET_WM_NAME` for UTF8 titles
1071 and filling `WM_NAME` with crap, this property is also preferred over
1072 `WM_NAME` if set. Support for some other "extended" WM hints might be
1073 added in the future but I have no intentions of moking Ion NetWM-
1074 compliant. I might have thought of attempting to do so a few years
1075 ago when I last read the specification but it seems that since then
1076 they've filled it with lots of pointless bloat that may even be in
1077 opposition to Ion's goals. Take multi-parent transients, for example.
1079 Full error log is also displayed with xmessage on startup whether
1080 it is possible to continue or not.
1086 There was a bug in QueryLib written yesterday, therefore this release.
1092 I started converting the query code to Lua and discovered some rather
1093 silly bugs in the Lua interface so here's a new release with the new
1094 and improved query code included. The names of queries have changed
1095 (they're all in the table QueryLib defined in `querylib.lua` -- only
1096 `query_query` and a few temporary handlers are implemented in query.so)
1097 so your modified configuration files will be broken again :(.
1103 Be prepared to completely rewrite your configuration files once
1104 again: a new version of Ion-devel has been released that uses Lua
1105 <http://www.lua.org/> for all configuration. Version 5.0 of the
1106 language/library is required. Although scripting possibilities
1107 are now much better than before, there is one rather big drawback:
1108 Lua is not nearly as error-tolerant as Ion's old configuration
1109 parser so a syntax error in a file will cause the file not to be
1110 executed and may even cause Ion not to be able to start. More
1111 comments and documentation on scripting will follow at a later time.
1113 Libtool and libltdl are also now used to implement module support.
1114 Hopefully this will make compiling Ion easier on a wider range of
1115 platforms. (On the other hand, this could also induce new problems.)
1117 Finally, the preferred linking address for Ion's home page is now
1118 <http://www.iki.fi/tuomov/ion/>. The pages are still located at the
1119 old address, but this redirected address should be more permanent.
1125 Just some minor fixes, binary rename and better embedded workspace
1126 support in this release. I'm still contemplating whether to convert
1127 Ion to C++ and haven't written many things that I intended to as
1128 that decision will affect how those are implemented.
1130 To create an embedded workspaces in a frame, at the moment you have
1131 to modify the appropriate workspace save file (when Ion is not running!)
1132 by adding lines such as
1134 region "WFloatWS", "testiupotus" {
1137 inside the frame definition after the other options (flags, `target_id`;
1138 those options will be ignored if after any region definitions).
1140 One more thing to note: debugging infos are no longer automatically
1141 stripped from the ioncore binary or modules by 'make install' so that
1142 I don't have to explain how to get proper backtraces every time a bug
1143 is found. If you you are confident that you can send me proper backtraces
1144 when you find a bug (or maybe can fix it yourself), you can make the
1145 binary and the modules a _lot_ smaller by running 'strip' on them.
1151 The list of new ChangeLog entries is long this time, but I'm finally
1152 starting to get to what I started working on almost two years ago. Yes,
1153 there is *experimental* support for PWM-like "floating frame" workspaces.
1154 A lot of the functionality is still missing -- no need to complain of
1155 such at the time -- but the floatws.so module and basic functionality
1156 is there. Most notably perhaps a menu module is not yet implemented.
1157 (Porting the PWM menu code should a nice little task for whomever
1158 interested... *wink*.) To create some PWM workspaces, load the floatws.so
1159 module (should be loaded by default) and in `query_workspace` (F9)
1160 prefix workspace name with 'WFloatWS:' (or load the module before
1163 This release is also finally fully modularised: In addition to the
1164 ion core binary that can not function alone, there are the modules
1165 ionws.so, floatws.so and query.so. It is also possible statically
1166 compile the modules in the core binary if the system doesn't support
1169 There's also *experimental* UTF8 support that must be specifically
1170 enabled from system.mk. You must have XFree86 (4.x?) and C99 wide
1171 char support available (either libc directly or maybe libutf8+libiconv).
1172 Thanks to bugs (?) in some of the XFree86 Xutf8 functions, your locales
1173 must be properly set up or else X will stop drawing strings at non-ascii
1174 characters instead of ignoring them. See my earlier rants on the mailing
1175 list for reasons on not using the more standard Xmb functions.
1176 To actually see any special characters, you must load the necessary fonts
1177 by specifying a comma-separated list of fonts to the font and `tab_font`
1178 draw.conf options. Multiple font loading does not work when Xft support
1179 is enabled at the time being.
1181 There has been a lot of changes in the config files, again, and I can
1182 promise there's still more to come. See the ChangeLog for details.
1183 If you want to use your old workspaces configurations, move them to
1184 `~/.ion-devel/saves` and replace the strings "WFrame" and "WWorkspace"
1185 with "WIonFrame" and "WIonWS", respectively.
1191 I've made the bugfix release as promised. Get it from the usual place.
1197 There's a new major development release available from Ion web page.
1198 Not many changes are visible to the end user, though, but a lot was
1199 rewritten to be more flexible and simpler; see the ChangeLog for a
1200 full account. The older development release is also still available
1201 because this release can not be considered as stable after major
1202 changes to the code. The most visible changes are
1204 * Changes in binding configuration
1205 * A (mostly) working full screen mode toggle (see below)
1206 * The ability to switch workspaces while dragging tabs (experimental)
1207 * The ability to re-read draw.conf without restarting Ion
1211 Some notes on full screen mode toggle:
1213 * Ion doesn't detect programs trying to leave full screen mode--it
1214 should be possible to devise some method using window properties,
1216 * At least Opera unmaps the window also before changing the size to
1217 enter full screen mode, so Ion doesn't remember the last frame.
1218 * Mozilla sometimes has trouble entering full screen mode but when it
1219 succeeds, Ion remembers the last frame. However, if
1220 `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` is used to leave the full screen mode
1221 started from Mozilla, Mozilla doesn't know that the mode has been
1224 Clearly there should be some method of communication between Ion and the
1225 programs for full screen toggles to fully work. At the moment I suggest
1226 using `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` instead of the programs' native toggles
1227 unless the program has some special full screen mode and you really want