5 Another attempt at last "rc" release.
11 This release features a few minor fixes. If no major problems are
12 discovered, this is likely to be the last "rc" release before the
13 first and hopefully final "stable" release.
19 This fourth "rc" release fixes some minor bugs and omissions in
26 This third "rc" release again simply fixes some minor problems in
33 This is the second "rc" release, and contains primarily bug fixes
34 and other minor improvements.
40 This is the first "rc" or "(stable) release candidate" release of
41 Ion3. This means that there will not be any further major changes
42 to it. Bugs will be fixed, and as an exception to the general
43 feature freeze, some hooks may still be added, if deemed useful.
44 Translations may also be included. After no new bugs (that can not
45 be deemed features) have been found in this or following "rc"
46 releases, the stable Ion3 will be released.
48 Most of the changes in this release to the previous one already
49 are bug fixes, in addition to some general clean-up. Other notable
52 * Winprop matching improvements: it is possible to match against
53 `is_dockapp` and `is_transient` (booleans), and there's a hack
54 to support `class` and `instance` for dockapps too.
56 * The default configuration puts dockapps in the statusbar's
59 * The autoconf kludge has been removed, as I will have nothing
60 to do with it, and nobody else seems to support or maintain
63 * Tab numbers are displayed when releasing modifiers in the
66 Distributors should pay heed to the name policy notice in the
73 This may be the last "ds" release if Ion3; if all goes well, the next
74 release is likely to be an "rc". Some minor improvements will still
75 be done, and minor requests may be accepted, so be quick.
77 The most notable changes in this release from the previous one are:
79 * Transients and queries in too small frames are "unsqueezed" out
80 of them, unless disabled with `ioncore.set{ unsqueeze = false }`.
82 * Some changes in default `cfg_ion.lua`: instead of loading
83 various other files, just `cfg_default.lua` is loaded instead.
85 * `mod_tiling.untile` (available in the context menu) may be used
86 to decompose tilings into floating frames. (This is the approximate
87 opposite of `mod_tiling.mkbottom` and the "new tiling" context menu
90 * Improved context menus.
92 * Slightly improved defaults style, using the drawing engine's
93 added possibility of partial borders.
95 * Various fixes and other improvements, in particular in relation
102 * There's been changes in padding/spacing usage in styles. Frames
103 now surround stuff inside borders not with `spacing` pixels, but
104 with `padding_pixels`. Spacing is only used to space things within
105 the borders (all the tabs and the client window from each other).
106 Consequently, custom styles may need to be updated to reflect this,
107 by increasing the padding, possibly also altering/removing colour
108 (to set it to background colour).
110 * The use of drawing engine attributes has also changed, and strict
111 ordering of them in the styles is no longer necessary. Additionally,
112 much more attributes are supported, including the name of every
115 * Xinerama support is gone. In addition to being problematic as such,
116 it had bit-rotted, and I will not waste time fixing it.
118 * `ioncore.set` no longer supports the `default_ws_params` parameter
119 for configuring the default layout. It is replaced by
120 `ioncore.deflayout("default", { ... })`, which allows configuring
121 other layouts as well, known by `mod_query.query_workspace` (F9).
122 Some default layouts are configured in `cfg_layout.lua`.
124 * It is now possible to automatically create new workspaces for
125 windows with the `new_group` winprop.
131 There's nothing major in this release, primarily just some minor fixes
132 and tuning to the previous release, that it was time to release.
138 Mostly this release still fixes issues in the big 3ds-20061015 release,
139 but in addition there are some improvements in the query department:
141 * Query activation key now cycles completions (So e.g. the
142 in the context menu activated with META+M, this same key
143 can be used to cycle through the alternatives.) This does
144 not work for queries activated by submap bindings.
146 * Likewise, it is no longer necessary to specify the key to
147 use for cycling for `mod_menu.grabmenu`.
149 * Control+R can now be used for history completion in queries.
150 (Currently matching is done for full string up to 'point', but
151 this may be changed to substring match.)
153 * Note that the parametrisation of WEdln.complete has changed,
154 and the second cycle parameter must be 'next' now instead of
161 Fixes some (expected, but minor) issues in the previous release.
167 * WIonWS and WFloatWS and the corresponding modules are gone, and
168 your custom configuration files will be broken with regard to these.
169 However, a partial backwards compatibility hack exists for layout
172 The F9 and META-F9 bindings now by default create workspaces with
173 a tiled layout of two frames. To create an "empty" workspace,
174 corresponding to the old WFloatWS, use the context menu (META-M)
175 and choose "new-empty-workspace". It is also possible to change
178 * Note that if you restart from an old version to this new version of Ion,
179 transients will stop working as expected for already existing windows.
180 They will work for newly-created windows, however.
182 * There are a few new sets of binding (including one for `WClientWin`!),
183 and some old bindings may not work exactly as expected anymore. In
184 particular, those for switching to full-screen mode.
186 **It is probably best to start from scratch with your custom
189 * `WFrame.set_tabbar` is gone. If you absolutely want to get rid off
190 the tabs, you must change the frame's "mode" with `WFrame.set_mode`.
191 The mode "tiled-alt" has been intended for this, and the corresponding
192 "framed-tiled-alt" style defaults to `bar = "none"`.
194 * The rather popular `detach.lua` script from the scripts repository
195 is obsoleted now, as Ion includes detach functionality in itself.
196 To detach a window, use META-K D in the default bindings. To tile
197 an existing frame from a workspace that doesn't have a tiling yet,
204 Some notable changes in this release include
206 * Lua 5.1 is now required.
208 * Framed transients on by default now. New binding contexts
209 "WFrame.toplevel" and "WMPlex.toplevel" were added to allow
210 for separate sets of bindings for nested transient frames and
211 top-level frames. Some of the bindings in the default binding
212 maps that are likely to be unwanted on transient frames were
213 moved to these contexts. Old custom bindings will continue to
214 work unless they modify the defaults by unbinding some of the
217 * Pressing Mod1+K K in the default bindings now switches to any
218 region with the "activity" flag set (indicated by the a box
219 at a corner of the screen), if there's one, before cycling to
220 previously active region. The same effect can be achieved in
221 your custom bindings with
223 ioncore.activity_goto() or ioncore.goto_previous()
229 This release mostly features minor bugfixes and other improvements. The most
230 visible non-bugfix changes are:
232 * Faster "fontset" filling kludge: only `-misc-fixed-*` fonts are tried. Ion
233 should now load faster in UTF-8 environments, and usually with no less
234 fonts in the fontset than before. (UTF-8 string drawing still does not
235 fully utilise these fonts under XFree86, but it does under XOrg.)
237 * Experimental auto-show-completions support, which is also on by default
238 now. In this mode the Tab key can be used to cycle forward through the
239 completions, and Shift+Tab backwards. Modify the settings seen in the
240 new `mod_query.lua` to get normal Tab-completion, or change the completion
243 * The release scripts do not run automatically autoconf anymore so maybe
244 a few more people would look into the README first.
250 The most visible changes in this release are:
252 * Mod1+space now toggles the scratchpad by default and Mod1+D the dock.
254 * The `ion-(ssh|man|view|edit)` wrapper scripts were removed and instead
255 the programs used can be configured in Ion's configuration files.
257 * `ioncore.exec(_on)` also support the `:cmd` notation for "run cmd in
258 xterm" familiar from the run query. The `::cmd` notation can be used
259 to ask for enter to be pressed even when the program quit succesfully.
261 * Those with custom configuration files should note that many exported toggle
262 functions were changed and renamed, and now accept a string parameter
263 incidating whether to toggle, set or unset the property.
265 - `WClientwin.set_fullsreen` (replaces `WClientWin.toggle_fullscreen`)
266 - `WRegion.set_tagged` (replaces `WRegion.tag/untag/toggle_tag`)
267 - `WFrame.set_tabbar` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_tabbar`)
268 - `WFrame.set_shaded` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_shade`)
269 - `WFloatFrame.set_sticky` (replaces `WFloatFrame.toggle_sticky`)
270 - `WMPlex.l2_set_hidden` (replaces `WMPlex.l2_hide/show`)
271 - `mod_sp.set_shown(_on)` (replaces `mod_sp.toggle(_on)`)
272 - `mod_dock.set_floating_shown_on` (replaces `mod_dock.toggle_floating_on`)
273 - `WRegion.set_activity` (replaces `WRegion.clear_activity` and
274 `WRegion.notify_activity`)
276 For example, `WRegion.set_tagged(_, 'toggle')` should be used in place of
277 `WRegion.toggle_tagged(_)` now.
279 Obviously there are some other changes and fixes too. See the changelog
280 for details as usual.
286 This is mostly a bug fix release, but also features improved
287 `mod_query.query_exec` (F3 key) completion support. Script writers should be
288 aware that As a side effect of one of these bug fixes, many hooks are now
289 called in "protected mode" and can not call any functions that modify the
290 internal state of Ion, except ioncore.defer.
296 The most important changes in this release are:
298 * So-called "placeholders". With the help of these the positions of
299 full-screen windows are remembered in their original frames, and don't
300 just get inserted after currently active window when returning from
301 full-screen mode. Under a session manager placeholders are also used
302 to remember the original order of windows.
304 * Improved `mod_statusbar` and `ion-statusd` communication, and colouring
305 of important/critical meters.
307 * A number of small fixes.
313 This monthly snapshot adds a few new and improved features.
315 * 'Grabbed menus' that have a single cycling key and activate selected
316 entry when all modifiers have been released. See
318 <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/scripts/wcirculate.lua>
322 * Potentially blocking status meters are now in a separate ion-statusd
323 program. Please write your additional status meters that do not monitor
324 the state of Ion itself for ion-statusd (and contribute them in the
325 Ion3 scripts repository at <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/>).
326 For help on writing such status meters, see e.g. source for
327 `statusd_load` in `ext_statusbar/ion-statusd`.
329 * Floating splits are now supported on plain tiled workspaces as well as
330 on pane workspaces. To create such a split, use the workspace context
331 menu (Mod1+M by default) or write your own bindings.
333 * Line editor now supports history search; Control+Up/Down only scrolls
334 through history entries with matching initial part.
336 * Arbitrary winprop matching criteria is supported. Lua scripts have
337 access to X properties.
339 Of course there are some other minor fixes and improvements as well.
345 This release finally includes a usable (yet still incomplete) version
346 of the `mod_panews` workspace module (that has also bored the name 'autows'
347 and 'rubberws' previously). The final outcome is not exactly what I
348 initially planned, as those plans turned out not to be that workable.
349 Instead, what `mod_panews` does is add to the basic tiled ionws approach
350 overlappable splits and automatically filled panes that are initially
351 empty. Each window is classified and assigned to the pane matching that
352 classification. (The default classifications are T(erminal), V(iewer)
353 and M(iscellaneous).)
355 For a better feel for it, try it out yourself and please give feedback.
356 The overlapping panes may be a bit confusing (this is one place where
357 true translucency might actually be useful and not just eyecandy) at
358 first, but you'll get used to them if you use the feature, and e.g.
359 the Gimp works quite splendidly with the toolboxes in the 'M' pane and
360 image windows in the 'V' pane -- although the simple initial size-based
361 classification heuristics don't always get it right and overriding
362 winprops (setting: `panews_classification`) should eventually added.
364 In addition to the new module, this release adds support for translations
365 of program messages and the manual page, regardless of whether such is
366 of any use in a program like Ion or not. (Currently Finnish and Czech
367 translations are available.) Of course there are some bug fixes and
368 other minor additions as well, and the `./configure` script is also back,
369 the abandonment of libtool being final now.
375 The first thing you'll notice when you start up this release of Ion is
376 that isn't reading your old configuration that. The next thing you
377 should notice is a neat layout-adapting statusbar at the bottom of the
378 screen. That's right, Ion now includes an `ext_statusbar` Lua script that
379 is enabled by default and displays date/time/load/mail count in a
382 So why is it not reading your configuration and save files? Firstly,
383 all of the `.lua` files were renamed to be indicative of their purpose.
384 Secondly, there have been so many changes that your old files would be
387 The `.lua` files are now named as follows:
389 cfg_*.lua Configuration file that the user may wish to edit
390 look_*.lua Drawing engine style file
391 saved_*.lua Save file
392 mod_*.lua Module stub loader
393 ext_*.lua A bigger Lua extension without a C counterpart
394 so that it is not a module
396 The configuration file for `mod_foobar` or `ext_foobar`, if it has one, is,
397 of course, `cfg_foobar.lua`. In the topic of file names, also note that
398 the default installation paths and binary names have changed to include
399 the component '3' to reflect the situation with many binary packages
402 You perhaps noticed above that modules have stub loaders now, so the
403 user has no need to use the `ioncore.load_module` routine. All extensions
404 and additional configuration files can now be loaded with 'dopath'
405 (used to be 'include'). Also, the `menulib`, `querylib`, and `ioncorelib`
406 Lua libraries are gone and instead their contents can be found in the same
407 `mod_whatever` namespace with the corresponding module (the "stub" loader
408 for these modules is a bit more than just a stub...). Some may also
409 want to know that for `mod_*` and `ext_*` only the compiled .lc files are
410 now installed, and not the source `.lua` files, thus removing redundant
411 files and making the installation slightly smaller.
413 There are few other changes to the contents of the configuration files
414 as well, so you're probably best off simply rewriting your modified
415 configuration files based on the new defaults. There quite likely won't
416 be any more _big_ changes to the configuration files before the release
417 of final Ion3, wherever that will be. (Most likely we won't see 3rc:s
418 yet this year.) However, some functions and variables are still likely
419 to be renamed or changed.
421 In addition to being renamed, the layout savefile of this Ion release
422 is incompatible with older releases. This is due to the changes made
423 to the `WIonWS` (and `WAutoWS`) split tree code to make it more modularly
424 extensible with the new kinds of nodes that `WAutoWS` requires.
426 The `mod_autows` module has infact been through many changes since the
427 last release, and I think I have the final form of it finally figured
428 out. However, it is still far from finished and unlikely to be ready
435 The major new features of this snapshot release are:
437 * `WMPlex` support for a sticky status display area to which `WIonWS`s
438 adjust properly. Modified to the dock module to support this method.
439 See the new `dock.lua` to set up the dock in the new embedded or old
440 floating manner (the API for the latter has also changed).
441 * Primitive session management support.
443 There are also some bug fixes and many minor improvements; see the ChangeLog
444 for details. Work on `mod_autows` has also started, but it isn't ready for
448 ### Note on ./configure:
450 ./configure does not exist for the moment as the source autoconf script
451 is not up-to-date. Ion no longer uses libtool/libltdl due to problems
452 with inter-module dependencies, and I have not asked Tom Payne to fix
453 the script yet, as this change may not be final (although that is most
454 likely the case; those without Linux-compatible libdl and a flexible
455 binary format such as ELF will just have to link statically against the
459 ### Notes on session management:
461 Ion loads `mod_sm` automatically when the SESSION_MANAGER environment
462 variable that should be set by the session manager is set, so there's
463 no need load it in `ion.lua`.
465 When session management is in use, all entries in the 'Session' menu
466 (previously 'Exit' menu) actually invoke the session manager to do the
467 task. 'Save' asks the SM save the whole session and 'Exit' (ioncore.shutdown)
468 asks it to shut down the session instead of just causing the WM to quite.
469 To do the latter, use ioncore.resign.
471 Unfortunately, all session managers I have tried (from Debian/unstable),
472 are broken/incomplete in one way or another:
475 xsm: doesn't support any requests from applications. This makes Ion's
476 session menu complete unfunctional. The only way to restart/exit/save
477 state is through xsm's window.
480 gnome-session: This seems the most complete of the all the session managers
481 and works fine until it is requested to shut down the session, when it dumps
482 core and session state is lost if was not explicitly saved previously.
484 A `~/.gnome2/session` file to use with Ion follows:
490 0,RestartCommand=gnome-smproxy --sm-client-id default0
493 1,RestartCommand=/usr/local/ion-3/bin/ion -smclientid default1
496 ksmserver: Only supports a global shutdown request, so that Ion can not be
497 restarted or session state saved in the middle of a session.
503 This is the first development snapshot release of what is to be Ion3.
504 The most visible changes to Ion2 so far are:
506 * Default installation directory is `/usr/local/ion-3` while user
507 configuration files go in `~/.ion3`
509 * The `mod_sp` module was added. It creates an extra toggleable
510 "scratchpad" frame on each screen. Toggle is for now bound by default
511 to Mod1+section, which should be very conveniently located on most
512 Nordic keyboards (left of "1"), but you may have to change it. The
513 scratchpad should be nice for xconsole or similar monitors, xmessage
514 and other popups and just as temporary holding space for windows.
516 * All modules except the drawing engine are now called `mod_something`.
518 * Man-page complection supports a cache of known man-pages for faster
519 completion. See the README for instructions on setting up a cronjob
520 or manually generating the index if you want to use the feature.
521 Also `query_man_path` is no longer used. Instead we try the
522 `ION_MC_MANPATH` and `MANPATH` environment variables and the
525 * Exported functions are now separated into tables (namespaces)
526 instead of cluttering the globals table. Some frequently used
527 configuration functions are imported into the globals table, though.
528 Some functions have also been removed or renamed for simpler and
529 more consistent function set.
531 * New binding configuration mechanism. Dozens of `*_bindings` functions
532 were replaced with a single `[ioncorelib.]defbindings` function that
533 accepts a context parameter. Callbacks are specified as strings
534 (although passing functions still works) to make it easier for
535 external configuration programs to understand the configuration
536 files and perhaps remove some confusion among users who do not
537 care to read a tiny bit of Lua documentation and understand the
538 concept of anonymous functions.
540 * It is now also possible to retrieve a list of bindings with
541 `ioncorelib.getbindings`, for example, for self-documentation.
543 * Single move/resize mode bindings instead of separate for both
544 ionframe and floatframe.
546 There are also quite a few internal changes; see the ChangeLog for
547 details. No documentation tarball is available at the moment as the
548 documentation is out-of-date except for the function reference. If
549 you need the reference, just checkout the documentation from the
550 Subversion repository with
552 svn co http://tao.uab.es/ion/svn/ion-doc/trunk ion-doc-3ds
554 and build the documentation.
560 This release is finally what can be called "Ion 2 release candidate #1".
561 No more new features will be added to "Ion 2" after this release, and the
562 configuration interface has already been frozen for a while. I will wait a
563 couple of weeks for bug reports, and if nothing serious is found, the new
564 stable Ion should finally be released then.
566 The most notable changes since the previous release are:
568 * The dock module is included
569 * An optional autoconf script was added
570 * A few minor bugs were fixed
571 * Some incomplete features were polished, especially focus control on
573 * Changes in X keyboard map are supported now (so e.g. switching to
574 dvorak after Ion has started should update the bindings to match the
575 locations of symbols in the dvorak layout).
578 About the version numbering scheme:
580 Due to a demand of a version numbering scheme more indicative of the status
581 of the project, I was thinking of various different new version numbering
582 schemes for this release: ion-2rc1 (then 2r1, 3d1, etc.), ion-2-20040114-rc1,
583 ion-2.20040114rc1, ion-20040114-2rc1, etc.). It would've been nice if
584 simple lexicographical sorting could be used to order the packages, but
585 in the end I decided to stick with a scheme that is consistent with the
586 'ion-devel' package names:
588 project-branch_and_status-release_date
590 Therefore this release is 'ion-2rc-20040114', and the "stable" one will be
597 This is a big clean-up release. The most noticeable changes are that
598 '-devel' has been removed from path names, user configuration files go
599 in `~/.ion2/` and the main configuration file is 'ion.lua'. (The other
600 `ioncore-*.lua` files have also been renamed.) There have been no notable
601 changes in the configuration files themselves, so your old files will
602 work if you move them to the correct directory and rename the changed
603 files. (`mv ~/.ion-devel ~/.ion2; cd ~/.ion2; mv ioncore.lua ion.lua;`
606 This release also finally contains a working PWM binary. (The ioncore+
607 scripts scheme was replaced with separate binaries statically linked
608 to ioncore.a.) Floating workspaces now support edge snapping and
609 sticky windows, but some PWM features are probably still missing.
611 Some bugs were also fixed and users are now force-fed the manual page
612 the first time Ion is started. Transients can be toggled between
613 top/bottom of the main window with Mod1+K T. The SSH query uses
614 `~/.ssh/known_hosts` for completion instead of a manually defined list.
616 There may be a few additions (e.g. the dock) and bug fixes, of course,
617 before the stable release, but this release should pretty much be what
618 the new "stable" Ion should look like. Please upgrade to it to help
619 weed out the bugs. Note that you need to upgrade Lua to the 5.0.1
627 It's finally time for a new release on Ion's development branch. Most
628 likely this will also be the last "big" release before finally, after
629 almost two years, releasing a new "stable" version of Ion. A few bug
630 fix and code clean-up releases should appear in between, though.
632 The most important additions, changes and non-changes in this release
636 * A little less broken extended character set and string encoding
638 * Extended WM hints fullscreen request support
639 * Hopefully a little clarified configuration file layout
641 * And most important of all:
643 > Configuration files written for the previous release should
644 > still work this time!
646 (However, Ion will complain of old drawing engine styles.)
648 The menu module provides both drop-down menus (in the stock configuration
649 pressing Button3 on a tab should show a context menu) and query-like
650 "in-mplex" menus (F12: main menu at screen level; Mod1+M: the same context
651 menu as above at frame level).
653 What was done enhance support for strings (mostly window titles) in
654 languages that need more than 8-bit character sets is:
656 * Remove UTF8 restriction and support almost arbitrary multibyte
657 encodings instead. (Statefull encodings will not work and combining
658 characters can cause clutter. Both are a sign of bad encoding, IMHO.)
660 * The XCreateFontSet routine that is used to load fonts in the kind
661 of structure the X utf8 and multibyte routines want apparently wants
662 to be able to load glyphs for all character sets specified in the
663 locale and therefore often fails if only single font is specified.
664 Therefore a kludge was added that tries loading more fonts while
665 keeping the fonts' size the same. (The ",*" kludge could load huge
666 fonts). Unfortunately this has a noticeable effect in startup time :(.
668 * There is no longer a system.mk option to enable utf8 (now multibyte)
669 support, but must still specifically be enabled with the -i18n
670 command line switch, mostly thanks to troublesome utf-8 locales.
672 Because Xlib's UTF-8 string drawing code is broken and very unlikely to
673 be fixed, decent text output in an UTF-8 locale is still unlikely and
674 dependent on the fonts loaded in the system. The Xmb routines that are now
675 used always use an iso10646-1 font even if other fonts are loaded and the
676 unicode font does not contain a particular glyph to be drawn. The use of
677 the Xutf8 routines in an utf8 locale can be enabled with the
678 `CF_DE_USE_XUTF8` compile-time option. The advantage of this is that
679 these routines seem to choose the font to draw particular character in
680 most cases more sanely. The downside is that there are other more serious
681 problems with unknown characters.
683 All in all, even if I'd like to support a universal move to UTF-8, thanks
684 to Xlib brokenness I can't really recommend using UTF-8 locales with Ion
685 and the default drawing engine if there's a decent alternative encoding.
686 Most if not all other stateless encodings shouldn't have the problems
687 UTF-8 has. An alternative drawing engine that didn't use the Xlib i18n
688 string drawing routines might solve the troubles with utf-8 support.
692 If you have saved a custom system.mk, you'll need to set LUAC
693 point to the Lua compiler there as some of the share/ files
700 It's been a while since the previous release as I wanted to freeze the
701 Lua configuration/scripting interface for this release and therefore
702 finish work on a few things. Well, on my part the interface is frozen,
703 but I will still accept constructive complaints for a short time and
704 after that the implemented parts of the scripting interface will be
705 frozen. But in all likelihood, if no one has anything else to say, but
706 "it's ok", "it sucks", the interface will no longer change, only possibly
709 What's new for this release then?
711 * Drawing engine module support.
712 * OO-style exported functions. The old `class_fn` functions are now
713 `WClass.fn` (an ugly wrapper is provided in `compat.lua`).
714 * No more screen-specific configuration or savefiles.
715 * Session name (can be specified on command line) instead of display
716 name based savefiles. Also affects query history and not just workspace
718 * Bug fixes, most small and one bigger (almost complete rewrite of
719 the split resizing algorithm).
720 * Some documentation improvements.
722 Converting configuration files.
724 Old `.lua` colour schemes and workspace save files can be automatically
725 converted to a format suitable to be loaded by this latest release.
726 Other files will have to be ported manually. To convert colour schemes,
727 use the script `utils/lookconv.lua`. The usage is
729 lookconv.lua look-old.lua > look-new.lua
731 To convert workspaces savefiles, use the script `utils/saveconv.sh`.
734 saveconf.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-DISPLAY.*.lua \
735 > ~/.ion-devel/SESSIONNAME/workspaces.lua
737 `DISPLAY` here is the actual display part of `$DISPLAY`, probably just `:0`.
738 '*' stands for all screens (if you have only one screen you could do with
739 perhaps just `workspaces-:0.0.lua`). SESSIONNAME is the name of the session
740 where you want to use the converted savefiles. Default session name for
741 `DISPLAY` is `default-session-DISPLAY` with the colon in `DISPLAY` converted
742 to a dash. For most people this is `default-session--0`. In the simplest
743 case the whole command line is therefore
745 saveconv.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-:0.0.lua \
746 > ~/.ion-devel/default-session--0/workspaces.lua
748 The scripts may or may not work and are only provided as a potential
749 convenience that will not be maintained and will be removed eventually.
755 Quite a few bug fixes and one most likely unnoticeable improvement:
759 * Fixed pointer warping on screen change.
760 * A bug in grab handler calling code could crash Ion when leaving
761 keyboard resize mode manually.
762 * Resize display was showing incorrect values for keyboard resize.
766 * Client window last height request bookkeeping code had been lost
767 when configure request policy was changed. This caused transient
768 sizes to be calculated incorrectly.
769 * Return from full screen mode to floatws had been broken.
770 * As the number of dynamic functions has been getting bigger, the
771 functions are now sorted on first use and then binary-searched
772 instead of naive linear searching.
773 * Screen lookup had been broken for windows that are not properly
780 Just some bug fixes and minor behavioural changes and improvements in
787 This release fixes some small problems with the previous release and
788 adds a workaround kludge for the XFree86 textprop bug (it's been fixed
789 but no release with the fix is available) that could cause Opera to
790 crash Ion when UTF8 support was enabled. I also added the winprop
791 needed for galeon's find dialog to default `kludges.lua` and there's
792 some extra documentation and defaults for some systems in system.mk.
798 Most changes in this release centre around making Ion more tolerant
799 to broken configuration files; for details see the ChangeLog. There
800 are also changes in binding configuration as I already mentioned in
801 an earlier poting. Namely `common-frame-bindings.lua` is gone and the
802 bindings previously set there (into variables that the `*ws.lua`
803 files later referenced) were moved to `ioncore-bindings.lua` and are
804 set using the new functions `mplex_bindings` and `genframe_bindings`
805 are were added. Old modified configuration files should still work,
806 however, but if you use `make_active_leaf_fn`, you will need to
807 include `compat.lua` as the `global_bindings` that used this were
808 replaced by bindings in `mplex_bindings` and the function
809 `make_current_clientwin_fn`.
811 There are also some (minor) bug fixes and a few other improvements
812 worth a mention. In particular all regions are now given names of
813 the form `WFoobar<n>` by default and `DEFAULT_MOD.."F9"` was bound to
814 create a new workspace without asking for a name. This binding and
815 `QueryLib.query_workspace` use the workspace type defined in the
816 variable `default_ws_type` instead of being hardcoded to `WIonWS`.
818 All objects passed to Lua now have a unique userdata (a `WWatch`
819 cached in a weak table) so they can be used e.g. as indices to tables.
825 This release unifies some parts of `WScreen` and `WGenFrame`, which makes
826 screen-level queries possible. (Later the queries for small frames might
827 be changed to be shown at screen level.) The statusbar restriction from
828 ion-devel-20030531 was also removed by this some change and a few
829 non-fatal bugs have been fixed.
835 A bug was discovered:
839 * An off-by-one error in `extl_l1_finalize` caused references to some
840 Lua tables (including large completions) never to be released.
842 It could be that this bug was causing some other errors in Lua as well.
843 Sometimes QueryLib bindings failed because some function generators
844 returned nil although they shouldn't. Adding dummy lines (!) in those
845 functions fixed the problem and for some reason this patch also seemed
846 to remove those problems.
849 One more note: as `ioncorelib.lua` and `querylib.lua` are now installed
850 in `$SHAREDIR`, you must remove the old files in `$ETCDIR` if installing
851 over a previous release or else there will be errors. You should also
852 not use any possible old copies you have in `~/.ion-devel/`. (One of the
853 reasons for moving these to `$SHAREDIR` is to stop users from making
854 copies of them as they are not configuration files.)
860 As the subject line says, Ion-devel-20030531 was just released. The short
863 * The license was changed from the Clarified Artistic License to the
864 GNU Library/Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
865 * Screen, viewport and root window renames and other changes (see below).
866 * Some installation directory changes; the ion-* helper programs are now
867 installed either in `$SHAREDIR` or `$EXTRABINDIR` and QueryLib searches
868 for them on the script path (`~/.ion-devel/`, `$ETCDIR`, `$SHAREDIR`,
869 `$EXTRABINDIR`) instead of assuming them being on `$PATH`.
870 * Client windows are now in a separate namespace.
871 * Resize/maximize/shade changes: Shading should work on `WIonFrame`s too
872 and shade mode is automatic when the client area gets too small when
873 resizing. Maximize toggle restores frame to previous size if shaded
874 instead of maximizing. The move/resize mode bindings were changed again
875 to be more consistent and predictable: Left/Right/Up/Down and F/B/P/N
876 grow the frame in the specific direction, Shift+keys shrink and in
877 case of floating frames, `DEFAULT_MOD+keys` move
878 * Returning from full screen mode should work on `WFloatWS`s too.
879 * Lots of minor fixes, export additions and clean-up.
881 As usual, see the (long!) list of new ChangeLog entries at the end of
882 this message for details.
885 I've finally personally switched from the old "stable" 20020207 to using
886 the latest development release at home too and I must say that it is
887 finally starting to look good. There are still things to be written, but
888 unless you need "proven" stability, I see no reason to sticking to that
889 old release anymore. Unless, of course, if you find a problem that I have
890 not encountered or simply have no need for the new features and don't want
891 to port your configuration files.
894 On screens, viewports, root windows and problems with the new
897 The objects previously called "screens" are now called "root windows"
898 and what were called "viewports" are called "screens" to better reflect
899 what the user sees. (When Xinerama is not used there's no difference
900 between a root window and a screen, but when Xinerama is used a root
901 window may be split over multiple screens.)
903 This release also creates so-called virtual root windows for each
904 Xinerama screen when there are more than one. This is to better separate
905 the windows on different screens and thus emulate normal multihead, the
906 main difference being that windows can be moved between screens.
907 Especially the virtual roots are there to keep the windows that are on
908 a floatws on the right screen.
910 Virtual root windows will, however, break a few apps:
912 * Mozilla -remote won't work because of its crappy method for looking
913 up existing windows that can't handle multiple levels of WM windows.
914 Nested workspaces have the same problem. There is, however, a simple
915 solution to this problem: gnome-moz-remote. It seems to use a saner
916 method for looking up an existing Gecko browser and also works with
917 at least Phoenix/MozillaFirebird and Galeon.
919 These two are problems only if you use floatws:s (other problems with
920 which virtual root windows are intended to solve):
922 * The background-setting apps I am aware of will require a following
923 'xrefresh' for the changes to be updated to the (transparent) virtual
924 roots. Background setting apps that support the `_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS`
925 property (which, I think, was meant for root window-sized WS
926 backgrounds) could be used to set a separate background for each
927 Xinerama screen, though. I am not aware of any such app.
928 * Some apps' resize and move features will behave erratically on those
929 Xinerama screens not at (0, 0) on the root window. This is again
930 because the apps are assuming there's at most one WM window between
931 them and the root and are requesting windows' positions incorrectly.
932 The ICCCM is quite vague on this and I think _all_ apps that I have
933 tried are doing it wrong but the way e.g. XMMS does it certainly is
934 not an interpretation of the ICCCM. The apps that now behave correctly
935 request position for the outermost WM window. Nested workspaces have
938 There is one more temporary problem:
940 * Status bar modules (and the dock module's statusbar mode) will be
941 *temporarily* broken when virtual roots are _not_ used. This will be
942 fixed later when parts of screen and frame code are unified (it should
943 then be possible to run Ion without any workspace modules and have
944 queries attached to screens). In the meanwhile, if you don't care about
945 the above-mentioned problems and want a statusbar (which probably needs
946 to be ported to this release), you can defined `CF_ALWAYS_VIRTUAL_ROOT`
953 There are quite a few small fixes and minor enhancements invisible to
954 the user in this release. The splitting functions were renamed to be
955 more consistent and there are a couple of enhancements in the Lua code
956 query that should make it much more usable. First, tab-completion can
957 now descend into tables and complete subexpressions. Secondly, the local
958 variable `_` in addition to 'arg[1]' is set to point to the the frame in
959 which the query is executing.
961 I have also written some new documentation that is now available from
968 The most notable change in this release is that the `target_id` system
969 was removed and instead client window status is also saved over
970 restarts in the saves/workspaces-* files. (It shouldn't be too hard
971 to hook a session management module over this.) Thanks to this
972 modification, floatframes can also save their status now. Note
973 that if you restart from older version of Ion to this one, client
974 window layout will be messed up.
976 There are also a few bug fixes and code to save and load line editor
983 There are lots of minor improvements in this release, see the
984 new ChangeLog entries for details.
990 Some minor feature enhancements and a few fixes in this new release:
992 The file system scanning completions are now put in the background
993 by receiving the data from external programs through pipes and select()
994 for data in the main event loop. This way long taking completions don't
995 block Ion from processing other events and NFS problems shouldn't hang
998 Basic window stacking management support code was added. Transients
999 on floatws:s should now be stacked above their parents. If you don't
1000 want to change your modified binding configurations at this point and
1001 need the functions `floatframe_raise/lower`, include `compat.lua`.
1007 This release again fixes some minor problems and enhances a few
1008 features. Most of the enhancements are related to UTF8 support and
1009 the floatws module. If UTF8 support is enabled, Ion now tries to
1010 load the "fixed" font at startup after setting up locales. If locales
1011 aren't properly set up, this probably fails and Ion will reset locale
1012 back to "POSIX" as this might make fonts loadable although support for
1013 non-ASCII characters will be crippled. It might now be safe for
1014 package maintainers to enable UTF8 support by default
1016 As apps seem to have switched to using `_NET_WM_NAME` for UTF8 titles
1017 and filling `WM_NAME` with crap, this property is also preferred over
1018 `WM_NAME` if set. Support for some other "extended" WM hints might be
1019 added in the future but I have no intentions of moking Ion NetWM-
1020 compliant. I might have thought of attempting to do so a few years
1021 ago when I last read the specification but it seems that since then
1022 they've filled it with lots of pointless bloat that may even be in
1023 opposition to Ion's goals. Take multi-parent transients, for example.
1025 Full error log is also displayed with xmessage on startup whether
1026 it is possible to continue or not.
1032 There was a bug in QueryLib written yesterday, therefore this release.
1038 I started converting the query code to Lua and discovered some rather
1039 silly bugs in the Lua interface so here's a new release with the new
1040 and improved query code included. The names of queries have changed
1041 (they're all in the table QueryLib defined in `querylib.lua` -- only
1042 `query_query` and a few temporary handlers are implemented in query.so)
1043 so your modified configuration files will be broken again :(.
1049 Be prepared to completely rewrite your configuration files once
1050 again: a new version of Ion-devel has been released that uses Lua
1051 <http://www.lua.org/> for all configuration. Version 5.0 of the
1052 language/library is required. Although scripting possibilities
1053 are now much better than before, there is one rather big drawback:
1054 Lua is not nearly as error-tolerant as Ion's old configuration
1055 parser so a syntax error in a file will cause the file not to be
1056 executed and may even cause Ion not to be able to start. More
1057 comments and documentation on scripting will follow at a later time.
1059 Libtool and libltdl are also now used to implement module support.
1060 Hopefully this will make compiling Ion easier on a wider range of
1061 platforms. (On the other hand, this could also induce new problems.)
1063 Finally, the preferred linking address for Ion's home page is now
1064 <http://www.iki.fi/tuomov/ion/>. The pages are still located at the
1065 old address, but this redirected address should be more permanent.
1071 Just some minor fixes, binary rename and better embedded workspace
1072 support in this release. I'm still contemplating whether to convert
1073 Ion to C++ and haven't written many things that I intended to as
1074 that decision will affect how those are implemented.
1076 To create an embedded workspaces in a frame, at the moment you have
1077 to modify the appropriate workspace save file (when Ion is not running!)
1078 by adding lines such as
1080 region "WFloatWS", "testiupotus" {
1083 inside the frame definition after the other options (flags, `target_id`;
1084 those options will be ignored if after any region definitions).
1086 One more thing to note: debugging infos are no longer automatically
1087 stripped from the ioncore binary or modules by 'make install' so that
1088 I don't have to explain how to get proper backtraces every time a bug
1089 is found. If you you are confident that you can send me proper backtraces
1090 when you find a bug (or maybe can fix it yourself), you can make the
1091 binary and the modules a _lot_ smaller by running 'strip' on them.
1097 The list of new ChangeLog entries is long this time, but I'm finally
1098 starting to get to what I started working on almost two years ago. Yes,
1099 there is *experimental* support for PWM-like "floating frame" workspaces.
1100 A lot of the functionality is still missing -- no need to complain of
1101 such at the time -- but the floatws.so module and basic functionality
1102 is there. Most notably perhaps a menu module is not yet implemented.
1103 (Porting the PWM menu code should a nice little task for whomever
1104 interested... *wink*.) To create some PWM workspaces, load the floatws.so
1105 module (should be loaded by default) and in `query_workspace` (F9)
1106 prefix workspace name with 'WFloatWS:' (or load the module before
1109 This release is also finally fully modularised: In addition to the
1110 ion core binary that can not function alone, there are the modules
1111 ionws.so, floatws.so and query.so. It is also possible statically
1112 compile the modules in the core binary if the system doesn't support
1115 There's also *experimental* UTF8 support that must be specifically
1116 enabled from system.mk. You must have XFree86 (4.x?) and C99 wide
1117 char support available (either libc directly or maybe libutf8+libiconv).
1118 Thanks to bugs (?) in some of the XFree86 Xutf8 functions, your locales
1119 must be properly set up or else X will stop drawing strings at non-ascii
1120 characters instead of ignoring them. See my earlier rants on the mailing
1121 list for reasons on not using the more standard Xmb functions.
1122 To actually see any special characters, you must load the necessary fonts
1123 by specifying a comma-separated list of fonts to the font and `tab_font`
1124 draw.conf options. Multiple font loading does not work when Xft support
1125 is enabled at the time being.
1127 There has been a lot of changes in the config files, again, and I can
1128 promise there's still more to come. See the ChangeLog for details.
1129 If you want to use your old workspaces configurations, move them to
1130 `~/.ion-devel/saves` and replace the strings "WFrame" and "WWorkspace"
1131 with "WIonFrame" and "WIonWS", respectively.
1137 I've made the bugfix release as promised. Get it from the usual place.
1143 There's a new major development release available from Ion web page.
1144 Not many changes are visible to the end user, though, but a lot was
1145 rewritten to be more flexible and simpler; see the ChangeLog for a
1146 full account. The older development release is also still available
1147 because this release can not be considered as stable after major
1148 changes to the code. The most visible changes are
1150 * Changes in binding configuration
1151 * A (mostly) working full screen mode toggle (see below)
1152 * The ability to switch workspaces while dragging tabs (experimental)
1153 * The ability to re-read draw.conf without restarting Ion
1157 Some notes on full screen mode toggle:
1159 * Ion doesn't detect programs trying to leave full screen mode--it
1160 should be possible to devise some method using window properties,
1162 * At least Opera unmaps the window also before changing the size to
1163 enter full screen mode, so Ion doesn't remember the last frame.
1164 * Mozilla sometimes has trouble entering full screen mode but when it
1165 succeeds, Ion remembers the last frame. However, if
1166 `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` is used to leave the full screen mode
1167 started from Mozilla, Mozilla doesn't know that the mode has been
1170 Clearly there should be some method of communication between Ion and the
1171 programs for full screen toggles to fully work. At the moment I suggest
1172 using `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` instead of the programs' native toggles
1173 unless the program has some special full screen mode and you really want