11 This release features a few minor fixes to behavioural regressions
12 in the previous release, as well as some build configuration file
13 self-documentation improvements.
19 There are a few minor fixes in this RC, plus a major one related to
20 layout restore under a session manager.
26 This RC features various minor fixes, and some clarifications and
27 simplifications to the license, which people seem to have had trouble
34 It seems people are a bit slow, or only scaring them with a final
35 release makes them report issues. So, still no stable release but
36 a candidate, with many minor fixes and improvements wrt. important
37 omissions. The most important changes are better behaviour of the
38 unsplit operation, better handling of main window being closed
39 before a transient, and use of the workspace's working directory
40 for run query file name completion.
46 Another attempt at last "rc" release.
52 This release features a few minor fixes. If no major problems are
53 discovered, this is likely to be the last "rc" release before the
54 first and hopefully final "stable" release.
60 This fourth "rc" release fixes some minor bugs and omissions in
67 This third "rc" release again simply fixes some minor problems in
74 This is the second "rc" release, and contains primarily bug fixes
75 and other minor improvements.
81 This is the first "rc" or "(stable) release candidate" release of
82 Ion3. This means that there will not be any further major changes
83 to it. Bugs will be fixed, and as an exception to the general
84 feature freeze, some hooks may still be added, if deemed useful.
85 Translations may also be included. After no new bugs (that can not
86 be deemed features) have been found in this or following "rc"
87 releases, the stable Ion3 will be released.
89 Most of the changes in this release to the previous one already
90 are bug fixes, in addition to some general clean-up. Other notable
93 * Winprop matching improvements: it is possible to match against
94 `is_dockapp` and `is_transient` (booleans), and there's a hack
95 to support `class` and `instance` for dockapps too.
97 * The default configuration puts dockapps in the statusbar's
100 * The autoconf kludge has been removed, as I will have nothing
101 to do with it, and nobody else seems to support or maintain
104 * Tab numbers are displayed when releasing modifiers in the
107 Distributors should pay heed to the name policy notice in the
114 This may be the last "ds" release if Ion3; if all goes well, the next
115 release is likely to be an "rc". Some minor improvements will still
116 be done, and minor requests may be accepted, so be quick.
118 The most notable changes in this release from the previous one are:
120 * Transients and queries in too small frames are "unsqueezed" out
121 of them, unless disabled with `ioncore.set{ unsqueeze = false }`.
123 * Some changes in default `cfg_ion.lua`: instead of loading
124 various other files, just `cfg_default.lua` is loaded instead.
126 * `mod_tiling.untile` (available in the context menu) may be used
127 to decompose tilings into floating frames. (This is the approximate
128 opposite of `mod_tiling.mkbottom` and the "new tiling" context menu
131 * Improved context menus.
133 * Slightly improved defaults style, using the drawing engine's
134 added possibility of partial borders.
136 * Various fixes and other improvements, in particular in relation
143 * There's been changes in padding/spacing usage in styles. Frames
144 now surround stuff inside borders not with `spacing` pixels, but
145 with `padding_pixels`. Spacing is only used to space things within
146 the borders (all the tabs and the client window from each other).
147 Consequently, custom styles may need to be updated to reflect this,
148 by increasing the padding, possibly also altering/removing colour
149 (to set it to background colour).
151 * The use of drawing engine attributes has also changed, and strict
152 ordering of them in the styles is no longer necessary. Additionally,
153 much more attributes are supported, including the name of every
156 * Xinerama support is gone. In addition to being problematic as such,
157 it had bit-rotted, and I will not waste time fixing it.
159 * `ioncore.set` no longer supports the `default_ws_params` parameter
160 for configuring the default layout. It is replaced by
161 `ioncore.deflayout("default", { ... })`, which allows configuring
162 other layouts as well, known by `mod_query.query_workspace` (F9).
163 Some default layouts are configured in `cfg_layout.lua`.
165 * It is now possible to automatically create new workspaces for
166 windows with the `new_group` winprop.
172 There's nothing major in this release, primarily just some minor fixes
173 and tuning to the previous release, that it was time to release.
179 Mostly this release still fixes issues in the big 3ds-20061015 release,
180 but in addition there are some improvements in the query department:
182 * Query activation key now cycles completions (So e.g. the
183 in the context menu activated with META+M, this same key
184 can be used to cycle through the alternatives.) This does
185 not work for queries activated by submap bindings.
187 * Likewise, it is no longer necessary to specify the key to
188 use for cycling for `mod_menu.grabmenu`.
190 * Control+R can now be used for history completion in queries.
191 (Currently matching is done for full string up to 'point', but
192 this may be changed to substring match.)
194 * Note that the parametrisation of WEdln.complete has changed,
195 and the second cycle parameter must be 'next' now instead of
202 Fixes some (expected, but minor) issues in the previous release.
208 * WIonWS and WFloatWS and the corresponding modules are gone, and
209 your custom configuration files will be broken with regard to these.
210 However, a partial backwards compatibility hack exists for layout
213 The F9 and META-F9 bindings now by default create workspaces with
214 a tiled layout of two frames. To create an "empty" workspace,
215 corresponding to the old WFloatWS, use the context menu (META-M)
216 and choose "new-empty-workspace". It is also possible to change
219 * Note that if you restart from an old version to this new version of Ion,
220 transients will stop working as expected for already existing windows.
221 They will work for newly-created windows, however.
223 * There are a few new sets of binding (including one for `WClientWin`!),
224 and some old bindings may not work exactly as expected anymore. In
225 particular, those for switching to full-screen mode.
227 **It is probably best to start from scratch with your custom
230 * `WFrame.set_tabbar` is gone. If you absolutely want to get rid off
231 the tabs, you must change the frame's "mode" with `WFrame.set_mode`.
232 The mode "tiled-alt" has been intended for this, and the corresponding
233 "framed-tiled-alt" style defaults to `bar = "none"`.
235 * The rather popular `detach.lua` script from the scripts repository
236 is obsoleted now, as Ion includes detach functionality in itself.
237 To detach a window, use META-K D in the default bindings. To tile
238 an existing frame from a workspace that doesn't have a tiling yet,
245 Some notable changes in this release include
247 * Lua 5.1 is now required.
249 * Framed transients on by default now. New binding contexts
250 "WFrame.toplevel" and "WMPlex.toplevel" were added to allow
251 for separate sets of bindings for nested transient frames and
252 top-level frames. Some of the bindings in the default binding
253 maps that are likely to be unwanted on transient frames were
254 moved to these contexts. Old custom bindings will continue to
255 work unless they modify the defaults by unbinding some of the
258 * Pressing Mod1+K K in the default bindings now switches to any
259 region with the "activity" flag set (indicated by the a box
260 at a corner of the screen), if there's one, before cycling to
261 previously active region. The same effect can be achieved in
262 your custom bindings with
264 ioncore.activity_goto() or ioncore.goto_previous()
270 This release mostly features minor bugfixes and other improvements. The most
271 visible non-bugfix changes are:
273 * Faster "fontset" filling kludge: only `-misc-fixed-*` fonts are tried. Ion
274 should now load faster in UTF-8 environments, and usually with no less
275 fonts in the fontset than before. (UTF-8 string drawing still does not
276 fully utilise these fonts under XFree86, but it does under XOrg.)
278 * Experimental auto-show-completions support, which is also on by default
279 now. In this mode the Tab key can be used to cycle forward through the
280 completions, and Shift+Tab backwards. Modify the settings seen in the
281 new `mod_query.lua` to get normal Tab-completion, or change the completion
284 * The release scripts do not run automatically autoconf anymore so maybe
285 a few more people would look into the README first.
291 The most visible changes in this release are:
293 * Mod1+space now toggles the scratchpad by default and Mod1+D the dock.
295 * The `ion-(ssh|man|view|edit)` wrapper scripts were removed and instead
296 the programs used can be configured in Ion's configuration files.
298 * `ioncore.exec(_on)` also support the `:cmd` notation for "run cmd in
299 xterm" familiar from the run query. The `::cmd` notation can be used
300 to ask for enter to be pressed even when the program quit succesfully.
302 * Those with custom configuration files should note that many exported toggle
303 functions were changed and renamed, and now accept a string parameter
304 incidating whether to toggle, set or unset the property.
306 - `WClientwin.set_fullsreen` (replaces `WClientWin.toggle_fullscreen`)
307 - `WRegion.set_tagged` (replaces `WRegion.tag/untag/toggle_tag`)
308 - `WFrame.set_tabbar` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_tabbar`)
309 - `WFrame.set_shaded` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_shade`)
310 - `WFloatFrame.set_sticky` (replaces `WFloatFrame.toggle_sticky`)
311 - `WMPlex.l2_set_hidden` (replaces `WMPlex.l2_hide/show`)
312 - `mod_sp.set_shown(_on)` (replaces `mod_sp.toggle(_on)`)
313 - `mod_dock.set_floating_shown_on` (replaces `mod_dock.toggle_floating_on`)
314 - `WRegion.set_activity` (replaces `WRegion.clear_activity` and
315 `WRegion.notify_activity`)
317 For example, `WRegion.set_tagged(_, 'toggle')` should be used in place of
318 `WRegion.toggle_tagged(_)` now.
320 Obviously there are some other changes and fixes too. See the changelog
321 for details as usual.
327 This is mostly a bug fix release, but also features improved
328 `mod_query.query_exec` (F3 key) completion support. Script writers should be
329 aware that As a side effect of one of these bug fixes, many hooks are now
330 called in "protected mode" and can not call any functions that modify the
331 internal state of Ion, except ioncore.defer.
337 The most important changes in this release are:
339 * So-called "placeholders". With the help of these the positions of
340 full-screen windows are remembered in their original frames, and don't
341 just get inserted after currently active window when returning from
342 full-screen mode. Under a session manager placeholders are also used
343 to remember the original order of windows.
345 * Improved `mod_statusbar` and `ion-statusd` communication, and colouring
346 of important/critical meters.
348 * A number of small fixes.
354 This monthly snapshot adds a few new and improved features.
356 * 'Grabbed menus' that have a single cycling key and activate selected
357 entry when all modifiers have been released. See
359 <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/scripts/wcirculate.lua>
363 * Potentially blocking status meters are now in a separate ion-statusd
364 program. Please write your additional status meters that do not monitor
365 the state of Ion itself for ion-statusd (and contribute them in the
366 Ion3 scripts repository at <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/>).
367 For help on writing such status meters, see e.g. source for
368 `statusd_load` in `ext_statusbar/ion-statusd`.
370 * Floating splits are now supported on plain tiled workspaces as well as
371 on pane workspaces. To create such a split, use the workspace context
372 menu (Mod1+M by default) or write your own bindings.
374 * Line editor now supports history search; Control+Up/Down only scrolls
375 through history entries with matching initial part.
377 * Arbitrary winprop matching criteria is supported. Lua scripts have
378 access to X properties.
380 Of course there are some other minor fixes and improvements as well.
386 This release finally includes a usable (yet still incomplete) version
387 of the `mod_panews` workspace module (that has also bored the name 'autows'
388 and 'rubberws' previously). The final outcome is not exactly what I
389 initially planned, as those plans turned out not to be that workable.
390 Instead, what `mod_panews` does is add to the basic tiled ionws approach
391 overlappable splits and automatically filled panes that are initially
392 empty. Each window is classified and assigned to the pane matching that
393 classification. (The default classifications are T(erminal), V(iewer)
394 and M(iscellaneous).)
396 For a better feel for it, try it out yourself and please give feedback.
397 The overlapping panes may be a bit confusing (this is one place where
398 true translucency might actually be useful and not just eyecandy) at
399 first, but you'll get used to them if you use the feature, and e.g.
400 the Gimp works quite splendidly with the toolboxes in the 'M' pane and
401 image windows in the 'V' pane -- although the simple initial size-based
402 classification heuristics don't always get it right and overriding
403 winprops (setting: `panews_classification`) should eventually added.
405 In addition to the new module, this release adds support for translations
406 of program messages and the manual page, regardless of whether such is
407 of any use in a program like Ion or not. (Currently Finnish and Czech
408 translations are available.) Of course there are some bug fixes and
409 other minor additions as well, and the `./configure` script is also back,
410 the abandonment of libtool being final now.
416 The first thing you'll notice when you start up this release of Ion is
417 that isn't reading your old configuration that. The next thing you
418 should notice is a neat layout-adapting statusbar at the bottom of the
419 screen. That's right, Ion now includes an `ext_statusbar` Lua script that
420 is enabled by default and displays date/time/load/mail count in a
423 So why is it not reading your configuration and save files? Firstly,
424 all of the `.lua` files were renamed to be indicative of their purpose.
425 Secondly, there have been so many changes that your old files would be
428 The `.lua` files are now named as follows:
430 cfg_*.lua Configuration file that the user may wish to edit
431 look_*.lua Drawing engine style file
432 saved_*.lua Save file
433 mod_*.lua Module stub loader
434 ext_*.lua A bigger Lua extension without a C counterpart
435 so that it is not a module
437 The configuration file for `mod_foobar` or `ext_foobar`, if it has one, is,
438 of course, `cfg_foobar.lua`. In the topic of file names, also note that
439 the default installation paths and binary names have changed to include
440 the component '3' to reflect the situation with many binary packages
443 You perhaps noticed above that modules have stub loaders now, so the
444 user has no need to use the `ioncore.load_module` routine. All extensions
445 and additional configuration files can now be loaded with 'dopath'
446 (used to be 'include'). Also, the `menulib`, `querylib`, and `ioncorelib`
447 Lua libraries are gone and instead their contents can be found in the same
448 `mod_whatever` namespace with the corresponding module (the "stub" loader
449 for these modules is a bit more than just a stub...). Some may also
450 want to know that for `mod_*` and `ext_*` only the compiled .lc files are
451 now installed, and not the source `.lua` files, thus removing redundant
452 files and making the installation slightly smaller.
454 There are few other changes to the contents of the configuration files
455 as well, so you're probably best off simply rewriting your modified
456 configuration files based on the new defaults. There quite likely won't
457 be any more _big_ changes to the configuration files before the release
458 of final Ion3, wherever that will be. (Most likely we won't see 3rc:s
459 yet this year.) However, some functions and variables are still likely
460 to be renamed or changed.
462 In addition to being renamed, the layout savefile of this Ion release
463 is incompatible with older releases. This is due to the changes made
464 to the `WIonWS` (and `WAutoWS`) split tree code to make it more modularly
465 extensible with the new kinds of nodes that `WAutoWS` requires.
467 The `mod_autows` module has infact been through many changes since the
468 last release, and I think I have the final form of it finally figured
469 out. However, it is still far from finished and unlikely to be ready
476 The major new features of this snapshot release are:
478 * `WMPlex` support for a sticky status display area to which `WIonWS`s
479 adjust properly. Modified to the dock module to support this method.
480 See the new `dock.lua` to set up the dock in the new embedded or old
481 floating manner (the API for the latter has also changed).
482 * Primitive session management support.
484 There are also some bug fixes and many minor improvements; see the ChangeLog
485 for details. Work on `mod_autows` has also started, but it isn't ready for
489 ### Note on ./configure:
491 ./configure does not exist for the moment as the source autoconf script
492 is not up-to-date. Ion no longer uses libtool/libltdl due to problems
493 with inter-module dependencies, and I have not asked Tom Payne to fix
494 the script yet, as this change may not be final (although that is most
495 likely the case; those without Linux-compatible libdl and a flexible
496 binary format such as ELF will just have to link statically against the
500 ### Notes on session management:
502 Ion loads `mod_sm` automatically when the SESSION_MANAGER environment
503 variable that should be set by the session manager is set, so there's
504 no need load it in `ion.lua`.
506 When session management is in use, all entries in the 'Session' menu
507 (previously 'Exit' menu) actually invoke the session manager to do the
508 task. 'Save' asks the SM save the whole session and 'Exit' (ioncore.shutdown)
509 asks it to shut down the session instead of just causing the WM to quite.
510 To do the latter, use ioncore.resign.
512 Unfortunately, all session managers I have tried (from Debian/unstable),
513 are broken/incomplete in one way or another:
516 xsm: doesn't support any requests from applications. This makes Ion's
517 session menu complete unfunctional. The only way to restart/exit/save
518 state is through xsm's window.
521 gnome-session: This seems the most complete of the all the session managers
522 and works fine until it is requested to shut down the session, when it dumps
523 core and session state is lost if was not explicitly saved previously.
525 A `~/.gnome2/session` file to use with Ion follows:
531 0,RestartCommand=gnome-smproxy --sm-client-id default0
534 1,RestartCommand=/usr/local/ion-3/bin/ion -smclientid default1
537 ksmserver: Only supports a global shutdown request, so that Ion can not be
538 restarted or session state saved in the middle of a session.
544 This is the first development snapshot release of what is to be Ion3.
545 The most visible changes to Ion2 so far are:
547 * Default installation directory is `/usr/local/ion-3` while user
548 configuration files go in `~/.ion3`
550 * The `mod_sp` module was added. It creates an extra toggleable
551 "scratchpad" frame on each screen. Toggle is for now bound by default
552 to Mod1+section, which should be very conveniently located on most
553 Nordic keyboards (left of "1"), but you may have to change it. The
554 scratchpad should be nice for xconsole or similar monitors, xmessage
555 and other popups and just as temporary holding space for windows.
557 * All modules except the drawing engine are now called `mod_something`.
559 * Man-page complection supports a cache of known man-pages for faster
560 completion. See the README for instructions on setting up a cronjob
561 or manually generating the index if you want to use the feature.
562 Also `query_man_path` is no longer used. Instead we try the
563 `ION_MC_MANPATH` and `MANPATH` environment variables and the
566 * Exported functions are now separated into tables (namespaces)
567 instead of cluttering the globals table. Some frequently used
568 configuration functions are imported into the globals table, though.
569 Some functions have also been removed or renamed for simpler and
570 more consistent function set.
572 * New binding configuration mechanism. Dozens of `*_bindings` functions
573 were replaced with a single `[ioncorelib.]defbindings` function that
574 accepts a context parameter. Callbacks are specified as strings
575 (although passing functions still works) to make it easier for
576 external configuration programs to understand the configuration
577 files and perhaps remove some confusion among users who do not
578 care to read a tiny bit of Lua documentation and understand the
579 concept of anonymous functions.
581 * It is now also possible to retrieve a list of bindings with
582 `ioncorelib.getbindings`, for example, for self-documentation.
584 * Single move/resize mode bindings instead of separate for both
585 ionframe and floatframe.
587 There are also quite a few internal changes; see the ChangeLog for
588 details. No documentation tarball is available at the moment as the
589 documentation is out-of-date except for the function reference. If
590 you need the reference, just checkout the documentation from the
591 Subversion repository with
593 svn co http://tao.uab.es/ion/svn/ion-doc/trunk ion-doc-3ds
595 and build the documentation.
601 This release is finally what can be called "Ion 2 release candidate #1".
602 No more new features will be added to "Ion 2" after this release, and the
603 configuration interface has already been frozen for a while. I will wait a
604 couple of weeks for bug reports, and if nothing serious is found, the new
605 stable Ion should finally be released then.
607 The most notable changes since the previous release are:
609 * The dock module is included
610 * An optional autoconf script was added
611 * A few minor bugs were fixed
612 * Some incomplete features were polished, especially focus control on
614 * Changes in X keyboard map are supported now (so e.g. switching to
615 dvorak after Ion has started should update the bindings to match the
616 locations of symbols in the dvorak layout).
619 About the version numbering scheme:
621 Due to a demand of a version numbering scheme more indicative of the status
622 of the project, I was thinking of various different new version numbering
623 schemes for this release: ion-2rc1 (then 2r1, 3d1, etc.), ion-2-20040114-rc1,
624 ion-2.20040114rc1, ion-20040114-2rc1, etc.). It would've been nice if
625 simple lexicographical sorting could be used to order the packages, but
626 in the end I decided to stick with a scheme that is consistent with the
627 'ion-devel' package names:
629 project-branch_and_status-release_date
631 Therefore this release is 'ion-2rc-20040114', and the "stable" one will be
638 This is a big clean-up release. The most noticeable changes are that
639 '-devel' has been removed from path names, user configuration files go
640 in `~/.ion2/` and the main configuration file is 'ion.lua'. (The other
641 `ioncore-*.lua` files have also been renamed.) There have been no notable
642 changes in the configuration files themselves, so your old files will
643 work if you move them to the correct directory and rename the changed
644 files. (`mv ~/.ion-devel ~/.ion2; cd ~/.ion2; mv ioncore.lua ion.lua;`
647 This release also finally contains a working PWM binary. (The ioncore+
648 scripts scheme was replaced with separate binaries statically linked
649 to ioncore.a.) Floating workspaces now support edge snapping and
650 sticky windows, but some PWM features are probably still missing.
652 Some bugs were also fixed and users are now force-fed the manual page
653 the first time Ion is started. Transients can be toggled between
654 top/bottom of the main window with Mod1+K T. The SSH query uses
655 `~/.ssh/known_hosts` for completion instead of a manually defined list.
657 There may be a few additions (e.g. the dock) and bug fixes, of course,
658 before the stable release, but this release should pretty much be what
659 the new "stable" Ion should look like. Please upgrade to it to help
660 weed out the bugs. Note that you need to upgrade Lua to the 5.0.1
668 It's finally time for a new release on Ion's development branch. Most
669 likely this will also be the last "big" release before finally, after
670 almost two years, releasing a new "stable" version of Ion. A few bug
671 fix and code clean-up releases should appear in between, though.
673 The most important additions, changes and non-changes in this release
677 * A little less broken extended character set and string encoding
679 * Extended WM hints fullscreen request support
680 * Hopefully a little clarified configuration file layout
682 * And most important of all:
684 > Configuration files written for the previous release should
685 > still work this time!
687 (However, Ion will complain of old drawing engine styles.)
689 The menu module provides both drop-down menus (in the stock configuration
690 pressing Button3 on a tab should show a context menu) and query-like
691 "in-mplex" menus (F12: main menu at screen level; Mod1+M: the same context
692 menu as above at frame level).
694 What was done enhance support for strings (mostly window titles) in
695 languages that need more than 8-bit character sets is:
697 * Remove UTF8 restriction and support almost arbitrary multibyte
698 encodings instead. (Statefull encodings will not work and combining
699 characters can cause clutter. Both are a sign of bad encoding, IMHO.)
701 * The XCreateFontSet routine that is used to load fonts in the kind
702 of structure the X utf8 and multibyte routines want apparently wants
703 to be able to load glyphs for all character sets specified in the
704 locale and therefore often fails if only single font is specified.
705 Therefore a kludge was added that tries loading more fonts while
706 keeping the fonts' size the same. (The ",*" kludge could load huge
707 fonts). Unfortunately this has a noticeable effect in startup time :(.
709 * There is no longer a system.mk option to enable utf8 (now multibyte)
710 support, but must still specifically be enabled with the -i18n
711 command line switch, mostly thanks to troublesome utf-8 locales.
713 Because Xlib's UTF-8 string drawing code is broken and very unlikely to
714 be fixed, decent text output in an UTF-8 locale is still unlikely and
715 dependent on the fonts loaded in the system. The Xmb routines that are now
716 used always use an iso10646-1 font even if other fonts are loaded and the
717 unicode font does not contain a particular glyph to be drawn. The use of
718 the Xutf8 routines in an utf8 locale can be enabled with the
719 `CF_DE_USE_XUTF8` compile-time option. The advantage of this is that
720 these routines seem to choose the font to draw particular character in
721 most cases more sanely. The downside is that there are other more serious
722 problems with unknown characters.
724 All in all, even if I'd like to support a universal move to UTF-8, thanks
725 to Xlib brokenness I can't really recommend using UTF-8 locales with Ion
726 and the default drawing engine if there's a decent alternative encoding.
727 Most if not all other stateless encodings shouldn't have the problems
728 UTF-8 has. An alternative drawing engine that didn't use the Xlib i18n
729 string drawing routines might solve the troubles with utf-8 support.
733 If you have saved a custom system.mk, you'll need to set LUAC
734 point to the Lua compiler there as some of the share/ files
741 It's been a while since the previous release as I wanted to freeze the
742 Lua configuration/scripting interface for this release and therefore
743 finish work on a few things. Well, on my part the interface is frozen,
744 but I will still accept constructive complaints for a short time and
745 after that the implemented parts of the scripting interface will be
746 frozen. But in all likelihood, if no one has anything else to say, but
747 "it's ok", "it sucks", the interface will no longer change, only possibly
750 What's new for this release then?
752 * Drawing engine module support.
753 * OO-style exported functions. The old `class_fn` functions are now
754 `WClass.fn` (an ugly wrapper is provided in `compat.lua`).
755 * No more screen-specific configuration or savefiles.
756 * Session name (can be specified on command line) instead of display
757 name based savefiles. Also affects query history and not just workspace
759 * Bug fixes, most small and one bigger (almost complete rewrite of
760 the split resizing algorithm).
761 * Some documentation improvements.
763 Converting configuration files.
765 Old `.lua` colour schemes and workspace save files can be automatically
766 converted to a format suitable to be loaded by this latest release.
767 Other files will have to be ported manually. To convert colour schemes,
768 use the script `utils/lookconv.lua`. The usage is
770 lookconv.lua look-old.lua > look-new.lua
772 To convert workspaces savefiles, use the script `utils/saveconv.sh`.
775 saveconf.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-DISPLAY.*.lua \
776 > ~/.ion-devel/SESSIONNAME/workspaces.lua
778 `DISPLAY` here is the actual display part of `$DISPLAY`, probably just `:0`.
779 '*' stands for all screens (if you have only one screen you could do with
780 perhaps just `workspaces-:0.0.lua`). SESSIONNAME is the name of the session
781 where you want to use the converted savefiles. Default session name for
782 `DISPLAY` is `default-session-DISPLAY` with the colon in `DISPLAY` converted
783 to a dash. For most people this is `default-session--0`. In the simplest
784 case the whole command line is therefore
786 saveconv.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-:0.0.lua \
787 > ~/.ion-devel/default-session--0/workspaces.lua
789 The scripts may or may not work and are only provided as a potential
790 convenience that will not be maintained and will be removed eventually.
796 Quite a few bug fixes and one most likely unnoticeable improvement:
800 * Fixed pointer warping on screen change.
801 * A bug in grab handler calling code could crash Ion when leaving
802 keyboard resize mode manually.
803 * Resize display was showing incorrect values for keyboard resize.
807 * Client window last height request bookkeeping code had been lost
808 when configure request policy was changed. This caused transient
809 sizes to be calculated incorrectly.
810 * Return from full screen mode to floatws had been broken.
811 * As the number of dynamic functions has been getting bigger, the
812 functions are now sorted on first use and then binary-searched
813 instead of naive linear searching.
814 * Screen lookup had been broken for windows that are not properly
821 Just some bug fixes and minor behavioural changes and improvements in
828 This release fixes some small problems with the previous release and
829 adds a workaround kludge for the XFree86 textprop bug (it's been fixed
830 but no release with the fix is available) that could cause Opera to
831 crash Ion when UTF8 support was enabled. I also added the winprop
832 needed for galeon's find dialog to default `kludges.lua` and there's
833 some extra documentation and defaults for some systems in system.mk.
839 Most changes in this release centre around making Ion more tolerant
840 to broken configuration files; for details see the ChangeLog. There
841 are also changes in binding configuration as I already mentioned in
842 an earlier poting. Namely `common-frame-bindings.lua` is gone and the
843 bindings previously set there (into variables that the `*ws.lua`
844 files later referenced) were moved to `ioncore-bindings.lua` and are
845 set using the new functions `mplex_bindings` and `genframe_bindings`
846 are were added. Old modified configuration files should still work,
847 however, but if you use `make_active_leaf_fn`, you will need to
848 include `compat.lua` as the `global_bindings` that used this were
849 replaced by bindings in `mplex_bindings` and the function
850 `make_current_clientwin_fn`.
852 There are also some (minor) bug fixes and a few other improvements
853 worth a mention. In particular all regions are now given names of
854 the form `WFoobar<n>` by default and `DEFAULT_MOD.."F9"` was bound to
855 create a new workspace without asking for a name. This binding and
856 `QueryLib.query_workspace` use the workspace type defined in the
857 variable `default_ws_type` instead of being hardcoded to `WIonWS`.
859 All objects passed to Lua now have a unique userdata (a `WWatch`
860 cached in a weak table) so they can be used e.g. as indices to tables.
866 This release unifies some parts of `WScreen` and `WGenFrame`, which makes
867 screen-level queries possible. (Later the queries for small frames might
868 be changed to be shown at screen level.) The statusbar restriction from
869 ion-devel-20030531 was also removed by this some change and a few
870 non-fatal bugs have been fixed.
876 A bug was discovered:
880 * An off-by-one error in `extl_l1_finalize` caused references to some
881 Lua tables (including large completions) never to be released.
883 It could be that this bug was causing some other errors in Lua as well.
884 Sometimes QueryLib bindings failed because some function generators
885 returned nil although they shouldn't. Adding dummy lines (!) in those
886 functions fixed the problem and for some reason this patch also seemed
887 to remove those problems.
890 One more note: as `ioncorelib.lua` and `querylib.lua` are now installed
891 in `$SHAREDIR`, you must remove the old files in `$ETCDIR` if installing
892 over a previous release or else there will be errors. You should also
893 not use any possible old copies you have in `~/.ion-devel/`. (One of the
894 reasons for moving these to `$SHAREDIR` is to stop users from making
895 copies of them as they are not configuration files.)
901 As the subject line says, Ion-devel-20030531 was just released. The short
904 * The license was changed from the Clarified Artistic License to the
905 GNU Library/Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
906 * Screen, viewport and root window renames and other changes (see below).
907 * Some installation directory changes; the ion-* helper programs are now
908 installed either in `$SHAREDIR` or `$EXTRABINDIR` and QueryLib searches
909 for them on the script path (`~/.ion-devel/`, `$ETCDIR`, `$SHAREDIR`,
910 `$EXTRABINDIR`) instead of assuming them being on `$PATH`.
911 * Client windows are now in a separate namespace.
912 * Resize/maximize/shade changes: Shading should work on `WIonFrame`s too
913 and shade mode is automatic when the client area gets too small when
914 resizing. Maximize toggle restores frame to previous size if shaded
915 instead of maximizing. The move/resize mode bindings were changed again
916 to be more consistent and predictable: Left/Right/Up/Down and F/B/P/N
917 grow the frame in the specific direction, Shift+keys shrink and in
918 case of floating frames, `DEFAULT_MOD+keys` move
919 * Returning from full screen mode should work on `WFloatWS`s too.
920 * Lots of minor fixes, export additions and clean-up.
922 As usual, see the (long!) list of new ChangeLog entries at the end of
923 this message for details.
926 I've finally personally switched from the old "stable" 20020207 to using
927 the latest development release at home too and I must say that it is
928 finally starting to look good. There are still things to be written, but
929 unless you need "proven" stability, I see no reason to sticking to that
930 old release anymore. Unless, of course, if you find a problem that I have
931 not encountered or simply have no need for the new features and don't want
932 to port your configuration files.
935 On screens, viewports, root windows and problems with the new
938 The objects previously called "screens" are now called "root windows"
939 and what were called "viewports" are called "screens" to better reflect
940 what the user sees. (When Xinerama is not used there's no difference
941 between a root window and a screen, but when Xinerama is used a root
942 window may be split over multiple screens.)
944 This release also creates so-called virtual root windows for each
945 Xinerama screen when there are more than one. This is to better separate
946 the windows on different screens and thus emulate normal multihead, the
947 main difference being that windows can be moved between screens.
948 Especially the virtual roots are there to keep the windows that are on
949 a floatws on the right screen.
951 Virtual root windows will, however, break a few apps:
953 * Mozilla -remote won't work because of its crappy method for looking
954 up existing windows that can't handle multiple levels of WM windows.
955 Nested workspaces have the same problem. There is, however, a simple
956 solution to this problem: gnome-moz-remote. It seems to use a saner
957 method for looking up an existing Gecko browser and also works with
958 at least Phoenix/MozillaFirebird and Galeon.
960 These two are problems only if you use floatws:s (other problems with
961 which virtual root windows are intended to solve):
963 * The background-setting apps I am aware of will require a following
964 'xrefresh' for the changes to be updated to the (transparent) virtual
965 roots. Background setting apps that support the `_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS`
966 property (which, I think, was meant for root window-sized WS
967 backgrounds) could be used to set a separate background for each
968 Xinerama screen, though. I am not aware of any such app.
969 * Some apps' resize and move features will behave erratically on those
970 Xinerama screens not at (0, 0) on the root window. This is again
971 because the apps are assuming there's at most one WM window between
972 them and the root and are requesting windows' positions incorrectly.
973 The ICCCM is quite vague on this and I think _all_ apps that I have
974 tried are doing it wrong but the way e.g. XMMS does it certainly is
975 not an interpretation of the ICCCM. The apps that now behave correctly
976 request position for the outermost WM window. Nested workspaces have
979 There is one more temporary problem:
981 * Status bar modules (and the dock module's statusbar mode) will be
982 *temporarily* broken when virtual roots are _not_ used. This will be
983 fixed later when parts of screen and frame code are unified (it should
984 then be possible to run Ion without any workspace modules and have
985 queries attached to screens). In the meanwhile, if you don't care about
986 the above-mentioned problems and want a statusbar (which probably needs
987 to be ported to this release), you can defined `CF_ALWAYS_VIRTUAL_ROOT`
994 There are quite a few small fixes and minor enhancements invisible to
995 the user in this release. The splitting functions were renamed to be
996 more consistent and there are a couple of enhancements in the Lua code
997 query that should make it much more usable. First, tab-completion can
998 now descend into tables and complete subexpressions. Secondly, the local
999 variable `_` in addition to 'arg[1]' is set to point to the the frame in
1000 which the query is executing.
1002 I have also written some new documentation that is now available from
1009 The most notable change in this release is that the `target_id` system
1010 was removed and instead client window status is also saved over
1011 restarts in the saves/workspaces-* files. (It shouldn't be too hard
1012 to hook a session management module over this.) Thanks to this
1013 modification, floatframes can also save their status now. Note
1014 that if you restart from older version of Ion to this one, client
1015 window layout will be messed up.
1017 There are also a few bug fixes and code to save and load line editor
1024 There are lots of minor improvements in this release, see the
1025 new ChangeLog entries for details.
1031 Some minor feature enhancements and a few fixes in this new release:
1033 The file system scanning completions are now put in the background
1034 by receiving the data from external programs through pipes and select()
1035 for data in the main event loop. This way long taking completions don't
1036 block Ion from processing other events and NFS problems shouldn't hang
1039 Basic window stacking management support code was added. Transients
1040 on floatws:s should now be stacked above their parents. If you don't
1041 want to change your modified binding configurations at this point and
1042 need the functions `floatframe_raise/lower`, include `compat.lua`.
1048 This release again fixes some minor problems and enhances a few
1049 features. Most of the enhancements are related to UTF8 support and
1050 the floatws module. If UTF8 support is enabled, Ion now tries to
1051 load the "fixed" font at startup after setting up locales. If locales
1052 aren't properly set up, this probably fails and Ion will reset locale
1053 back to "POSIX" as this might make fonts loadable although support for
1054 non-ASCII characters will be crippled. It might now be safe for
1055 package maintainers to enable UTF8 support by default
1057 As apps seem to have switched to using `_NET_WM_NAME` for UTF8 titles
1058 and filling `WM_NAME` with crap, this property is also preferred over
1059 `WM_NAME` if set. Support for some other "extended" WM hints might be
1060 added in the future but I have no intentions of moking Ion NetWM-
1061 compliant. I might have thought of attempting to do so a few years
1062 ago when I last read the specification but it seems that since then
1063 they've filled it with lots of pointless bloat that may even be in
1064 opposition to Ion's goals. Take multi-parent transients, for example.
1066 Full error log is also displayed with xmessage on startup whether
1067 it is possible to continue or not.
1073 There was a bug in QueryLib written yesterday, therefore this release.
1079 I started converting the query code to Lua and discovered some rather
1080 silly bugs in the Lua interface so here's a new release with the new
1081 and improved query code included. The names of queries have changed
1082 (they're all in the table QueryLib defined in `querylib.lua` -- only
1083 `query_query` and a few temporary handlers are implemented in query.so)
1084 so your modified configuration files will be broken again :(.
1090 Be prepared to completely rewrite your configuration files once
1091 again: a new version of Ion-devel has been released that uses Lua
1092 <http://www.lua.org/> for all configuration. Version 5.0 of the
1093 language/library is required. Although scripting possibilities
1094 are now much better than before, there is one rather big drawback:
1095 Lua is not nearly as error-tolerant as Ion's old configuration
1096 parser so a syntax error in a file will cause the file not to be
1097 executed and may even cause Ion not to be able to start. More
1098 comments and documentation on scripting will follow at a later time.
1100 Libtool and libltdl are also now used to implement module support.
1101 Hopefully this will make compiling Ion easier on a wider range of
1102 platforms. (On the other hand, this could also induce new problems.)
1104 Finally, the preferred linking address for Ion's home page is now
1105 <http://www.iki.fi/tuomov/ion/>. The pages are still located at the
1106 old address, but this redirected address should be more permanent.
1112 Just some minor fixes, binary rename and better embedded workspace
1113 support in this release. I'm still contemplating whether to convert
1114 Ion to C++ and haven't written many things that I intended to as
1115 that decision will affect how those are implemented.
1117 To create an embedded workspaces in a frame, at the moment you have
1118 to modify the appropriate workspace save file (when Ion is not running!)
1119 by adding lines such as
1121 region "WFloatWS", "testiupotus" {
1124 inside the frame definition after the other options (flags, `target_id`;
1125 those options will be ignored if after any region definitions).
1127 One more thing to note: debugging infos are no longer automatically
1128 stripped from the ioncore binary or modules by 'make install' so that
1129 I don't have to explain how to get proper backtraces every time a bug
1130 is found. If you you are confident that you can send me proper backtraces
1131 when you find a bug (or maybe can fix it yourself), you can make the
1132 binary and the modules a _lot_ smaller by running 'strip' on them.
1138 The list of new ChangeLog entries is long this time, but I'm finally
1139 starting to get to what I started working on almost two years ago. Yes,
1140 there is *experimental* support for PWM-like "floating frame" workspaces.
1141 A lot of the functionality is still missing -- no need to complain of
1142 such at the time -- but the floatws.so module and basic functionality
1143 is there. Most notably perhaps a menu module is not yet implemented.
1144 (Porting the PWM menu code should a nice little task for whomever
1145 interested... *wink*.) To create some PWM workspaces, load the floatws.so
1146 module (should be loaded by default) and in `query_workspace` (F9)
1147 prefix workspace name with 'WFloatWS:' (or load the module before
1150 This release is also finally fully modularised: In addition to the
1151 ion core binary that can not function alone, there are the modules
1152 ionws.so, floatws.so and query.so. It is also possible statically
1153 compile the modules in the core binary if the system doesn't support
1156 There's also *experimental* UTF8 support that must be specifically
1157 enabled from system.mk. You must have XFree86 (4.x?) and C99 wide
1158 char support available (either libc directly or maybe libutf8+libiconv).
1159 Thanks to bugs (?) in some of the XFree86 Xutf8 functions, your locales
1160 must be properly set up or else X will stop drawing strings at non-ascii
1161 characters instead of ignoring them. See my earlier rants on the mailing
1162 list for reasons on not using the more standard Xmb functions.
1163 To actually see any special characters, you must load the necessary fonts
1164 by specifying a comma-separated list of fonts to the font and `tab_font`
1165 draw.conf options. Multiple font loading does not work when Xft support
1166 is enabled at the time being.
1168 There has been a lot of changes in the config files, again, and I can
1169 promise there's still more to come. See the ChangeLog for details.
1170 If you want to use your old workspaces configurations, move them to
1171 `~/.ion-devel/saves` and replace the strings "WFrame" and "WWorkspace"
1172 with "WIonFrame" and "WIonWS", respectively.
1178 I've made the bugfix release as promised. Get it from the usual place.
1184 There's a new major development release available from Ion web page.
1185 Not many changes are visible to the end user, though, but a lot was
1186 rewritten to be more flexible and simpler; see the ChangeLog for a
1187 full account. The older development release is also still available
1188 because this release can not be considered as stable after major
1189 changes to the code. The most visible changes are
1191 * Changes in binding configuration
1192 * A (mostly) working full screen mode toggle (see below)
1193 * The ability to switch workspaces while dragging tabs (experimental)
1194 * The ability to re-read draw.conf without restarting Ion
1198 Some notes on full screen mode toggle:
1200 * Ion doesn't detect programs trying to leave full screen mode--it
1201 should be possible to devise some method using window properties,
1203 * At least Opera unmaps the window also before changing the size to
1204 enter full screen mode, so Ion doesn't remember the last frame.
1205 * Mozilla sometimes has trouble entering full screen mode but when it
1206 succeeds, Ion remembers the last frame. However, if
1207 `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` is used to leave the full screen mode
1208 started from Mozilla, Mozilla doesn't know that the mode has been
1211 Clearly there should be some method of communication between Ion and the
1212 programs for full screen toggles to fully work. At the moment I suggest
1213 using `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` instead of the programs' native toggles
1214 unless the program has some special full screen mode and you really want