5 This is the second "rc" release, and contains primarily bug fixes
6 and other minor improvements.
12 This is the first "rc" or "(stable) release candidate" release of
13 Ion3. This means that there will not be any further major changes
14 to it. Bugs will be fixed, and as an exception to the general
15 feature freeze, some hooks may still be added, if deemed useful.
16 Translations may also be included. After no new bugs (that can not
17 be deemed features) have been found in this or following "rc"
18 releases, the stable Ion3 will be released.
20 Most of the changes in this release to the previous one already
21 are bug fixes, in addition to some general clean-up. Other notable
24 * Winprop matching improvements: it is possible to match against
25 `is_dockapp` and `is_transient` (booleans), and there's a hack
26 to support `class` and `instance` for dockapps too.
28 * The default configuration puts dockapps in the statusbar's
31 * The autoconf kludge has been removed, as I will have nothing
32 to do with it, and nobody else seems to support or maintain
35 * Tab numbers are displayed when releasing modifiers in the
38 Distributors should pay heed to the name policy notice in the
45 This may be the last "ds" release if Ion3; if all goes well, the next
46 release is likely to be an "rc". Some minor improvements will still
47 be done, and minor requests may be accepted, so be quick.
49 The most notable changes in this release from the previous one are:
51 * Transients and queries in too small frames are "unsqueezed" out
52 of them, unless disabled with `ioncore.set{ unsqueeze = false }`.
54 * Some changes in default `cfg_ion.lua`: instead of loading
55 various other files, just `cfg_default.lua` is loaded instead.
57 * `mod_tiling.untile` (available in the context menu) may be used
58 to decompose tilings into floating frames. (This is the approximate
59 opposite of `mod_tiling.mkbottom` and the "new tiling" context menu
62 * Improved context menus.
64 * Slightly improved defaults style, using the drawing engine's
65 added possibility of partial borders.
67 * Various fixes and other improvements, in particular in relation
74 * There's been changes in padding/spacing usage in styles. Frames
75 now surround stuff inside borders not with `spacing` pixels, but
76 with `padding_pixels`. Spacing is only used to space things within
77 the borders (all the tabs and the client window from each other).
78 Consequently, custom styles may need to be updated to reflect this,
79 by increasing the padding, possibly also altering/removing colour
80 (to set it to background colour).
82 * The use of drawing engine attributes has also changed, and strict
83 ordering of them in the styles is no longer necessary. Additionally,
84 much more attributes are supported, including the name of every
87 * Xinerama support is gone. In addition to being problematic as such,
88 it had bit-rotted, and I will not waste time fixing it.
90 * `ioncore.set` no longer supports the `default_ws_params` parameter
91 for configuring the default layout. It is replaced by
92 `ioncore.deflayout("default", { ... })`, which allows configuring
93 other layouts as well, known by `mod_query.query_workspace` (F9).
94 Some default layouts are configured in `cfg_layout.lua`.
96 * It is now possible to automatically create new workspaces for
97 windows with the `new_group` winprop.
103 There's nothing major in this release, primarily just some minor fixes
104 and tuning to the previous release, that it was time to release.
110 Mostly this release still fixes issues in the big 3ds-20061015 release,
111 but in addition there are some improvements in the query department:
113 * Query activation key now cycles completions (So e.g. the
114 in the context menu activated with META+M, this same key
115 can be used to cycle through the alternatives.) This does
116 not work for queries activated by submap bindings.
118 * Likewise, it is no longer necessary to specify the key to
119 use for cycling for `mod_menu.grabmenu`.
121 * Control+R can now be used for history completion in queries.
122 (Currently matching is done for full string up to 'point', but
123 this may be changed to substring match.)
125 * Note that the parametrisation of WEdln.complete has changed,
126 and the second cycle parameter must be 'next' now instead of
133 Fixes some (expected, but minor) issues in the previous release.
139 * WIonWS and WFloatWS and the corresponding modules are gone, and
140 your custom configuration files will be broken with regard to these.
141 However, a partial backwards compatibility hack exists for layout
144 The F9 and META-F9 bindings now by default create workspaces with
145 a tiled layout of two frames. To create an "empty" workspace,
146 corresponding to the old WFloatWS, use the context menu (META-M)
147 and choose "new-empty-workspace". It is also possible to change
150 * Note that if you restart from an old version to this new version of Ion,
151 transients will stop working as expected for already existing windows.
152 They will work for newly-created windows, however.
154 * There are a few new sets of binding (including one for `WClientWin`!),
155 and some old bindings may not work exactly as expected anymore. In
156 particular, those for switching to full-screen mode.
158 **It is probably best to start from scratch with your custom
161 * `WFrame.set_tabbar` is gone. If you absolutely want to get rid off
162 the tabs, you must change the frame's "mode" with `WFrame.set_mode`.
163 The mode "tiled-alt" has been intended for this, and the corresponding
164 "framed-tiled-alt" style defaults to `bar = "none"`.
166 * The rather popular `detach.lua` script from the scripts repository
167 is obsoleted now, as Ion includes detach functionality in itself.
168 To detach a window, use META-K D in the default bindings. To tile
169 an existing frame from a workspace that doesn't have a tiling yet,
176 Some notable changes in this release include
178 * Lua 5.1 is now required.
180 * Framed transients on by default now. New binding contexts
181 "WFrame.toplevel" and "WMPlex.toplevel" were added to allow
182 for separate sets of bindings for nested transient frames and
183 top-level frames. Some of the bindings in the default binding
184 maps that are likely to be unwanted on transient frames were
185 moved to these contexts. Old custom bindings will continue to
186 work unless they modify the defaults by unbinding some of the
189 * Pressing Mod1+K K in the default bindings now switches to any
190 region with the "activity" flag set (indicated by the a box
191 at a corner of the screen), if there's one, before cycling to
192 previously active region. The same effect can be achieved in
193 your custom bindings with
195 ioncore.activity_goto() or ioncore.goto_previous()
201 This release mostly features minor bugfixes and other improvements. The most
202 visible non-bugfix changes are:
204 * Faster "fontset" filling kludge: only `-misc-fixed-*` fonts are tried. Ion
205 should now load faster in UTF-8 environments, and usually with no less
206 fonts in the fontset than before. (UTF-8 string drawing still does not
207 fully utilise these fonts under XFree86, but it does under XOrg.)
209 * Experimental auto-show-completions support, which is also on by default
210 now. In this mode the Tab key can be used to cycle forward through the
211 completions, and Shift+Tab backwards. Modify the settings seen in the
212 new `mod_query.lua` to get normal Tab-completion, or change the completion
215 * The release scripts do not run automatically autoconf anymore so maybe
216 a few more people would look into the README first.
222 The most visible changes in this release are:
224 * Mod1+space now toggles the scratchpad by default and Mod1+D the dock.
226 * The `ion-(ssh|man|view|edit)` wrapper scripts were removed and instead
227 the programs used can be configured in Ion's configuration files.
229 * `ioncore.exec(_on)` also support the `:cmd` notation for "run cmd in
230 xterm" familiar from the run query. The `::cmd` notation can be used
231 to ask for enter to be pressed even when the program quit succesfully.
233 * Those with custom configuration files should note that many exported toggle
234 functions were changed and renamed, and now accept a string parameter
235 incidating whether to toggle, set or unset the property.
237 - `WClientwin.set_fullsreen` (replaces `WClientWin.toggle_fullscreen`)
238 - `WRegion.set_tagged` (replaces `WRegion.tag/untag/toggle_tag`)
239 - `WFrame.set_tabbar` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_tabbar`)
240 - `WFrame.set_shaded` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_shade`)
241 - `WFloatFrame.set_sticky` (replaces `WFloatFrame.toggle_sticky`)
242 - `WMPlex.l2_set_hidden` (replaces `WMPlex.l2_hide/show`)
243 - `mod_sp.set_shown(_on)` (replaces `mod_sp.toggle(_on)`)
244 - `mod_dock.set_floating_shown_on` (replaces `mod_dock.toggle_floating_on`)
245 - `WRegion.set_activity` (replaces `WRegion.clear_activity` and
246 `WRegion.notify_activity`)
248 For example, `WRegion.set_tagged(_, 'toggle')` should be used in place of
249 `WRegion.toggle_tagged(_)` now.
251 Obviously there are some other changes and fixes too. See the changelog
252 for details as usual.
258 This is mostly a bug fix release, but also features improved
259 `mod_query.query_exec` (F3 key) completion support. Script writers should be
260 aware that As a side effect of one of these bug fixes, many hooks are now
261 called in "protected mode" and can not call any functions that modify the
262 internal state of Ion, except ioncore.defer.
268 The most important changes in this release are:
270 * So-called "placeholders". With the help of these the positions of
271 full-screen windows are remembered in their original frames, and don't
272 just get inserted after currently active window when returning from
273 full-screen mode. Under a session manager placeholders are also used
274 to remember the original order of windows.
276 * Improved `mod_statusbar` and `ion-statusd` communication, and colouring
277 of important/critical meters.
279 * A number of small fixes.
285 This monthly snapshot adds a few new and improved features.
287 * 'Grabbed menus' that have a single cycling key and activate selected
288 entry when all modifiers have been released. See
290 <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/scripts/wcirculate.lua>
294 * Potentially blocking status meters are now in a separate ion-statusd
295 program. Please write your additional status meters that do not monitor
296 the state of Ion itself for ion-statusd (and contribute them in the
297 Ion3 scripts repository at <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/>).
298 For help on writing such status meters, see e.g. source for
299 `statusd_load` in `ext_statusbar/ion-statusd`.
301 * Floating splits are now supported on plain tiled workspaces as well as
302 on pane workspaces. To create such a split, use the workspace context
303 menu (Mod1+M by default) or write your own bindings.
305 * Line editor now supports history search; Control+Up/Down only scrolls
306 through history entries with matching initial part.
308 * Arbitrary winprop matching criteria is supported. Lua scripts have
309 access to X properties.
311 Of course there are some other minor fixes and improvements as well.
317 This release finally includes a usable (yet still incomplete) version
318 of the `mod_panews` workspace module (that has also bored the name 'autows'
319 and 'rubberws' previously). The final outcome is not exactly what I
320 initially planned, as those plans turned out not to be that workable.
321 Instead, what `mod_panews` does is add to the basic tiled ionws approach
322 overlappable splits and automatically filled panes that are initially
323 empty. Each window is classified and assigned to the pane matching that
324 classification. (The default classifications are T(erminal), V(iewer)
325 and M(iscellaneous).)
327 For a better feel for it, try it out yourself and please give feedback.
328 The overlapping panes may be a bit confusing (this is one place where
329 true translucency might actually be useful and not just eyecandy) at
330 first, but you'll get used to them if you use the feature, and e.g.
331 the Gimp works quite splendidly with the toolboxes in the 'M' pane and
332 image windows in the 'V' pane -- although the simple initial size-based
333 classification heuristics don't always get it right and overriding
334 winprops (setting: `panews_classification`) should eventually added.
336 In addition to the new module, this release adds support for translations
337 of program messages and the manual page, regardless of whether such is
338 of any use in a program like Ion or not. (Currently Finnish and Czech
339 translations are available.) Of course there are some bug fixes and
340 other minor additions as well, and the `./configure` script is also back,
341 the abandonment of libtool being final now.
347 The first thing you'll notice when you start up this release of Ion is
348 that isn't reading your old configuration that. The next thing you
349 should notice is a neat layout-adapting statusbar at the bottom of the
350 screen. That's right, Ion now includes an `ext_statusbar` Lua script that
351 is enabled by default and displays date/time/load/mail count in a
354 So why is it not reading your configuration and save files? Firstly,
355 all of the `.lua` files were renamed to be indicative of their purpose.
356 Secondly, there have been so many changes that your old files would be
359 The `.lua` files are now named as follows:
361 cfg_*.lua Configuration file that the user may wish to edit
362 look_*.lua Drawing engine style file
363 saved_*.lua Save file
364 mod_*.lua Module stub loader
365 ext_*.lua A bigger Lua extension without a C counterpart
366 so that it is not a module
368 The configuration file for `mod_foobar` or `ext_foobar`, if it has one, is,
369 of course, `cfg_foobar.lua`. In the topic of file names, also note that
370 the default installation paths and binary names have changed to include
371 the component '3' to reflect the situation with many binary packages
374 You perhaps noticed above that modules have stub loaders now, so the
375 user has no need to use the `ioncore.load_module` routine. All extensions
376 and additional configuration files can now be loaded with 'dopath'
377 (used to be 'include'). Also, the `menulib`, `querylib`, and `ioncorelib`
378 Lua libraries are gone and instead their contents can be found in the same
379 `mod_whatever` namespace with the corresponding module (the "stub" loader
380 for these modules is a bit more than just a stub...). Some may also
381 want to know that for `mod_*` and `ext_*` only the compiled .lc files are
382 now installed, and not the source `.lua` files, thus removing redundant
383 files and making the installation slightly smaller.
385 There are few other changes to the contents of the configuration files
386 as well, so you're probably best off simply rewriting your modified
387 configuration files based on the new defaults. There quite likely won't
388 be any more _big_ changes to the configuration files before the release
389 of final Ion3, wherever that will be. (Most likely we won't see 3rc:s
390 yet this year.) However, some functions and variables are still likely
391 to be renamed or changed.
393 In addition to being renamed, the layout savefile of this Ion release
394 is incompatible with older releases. This is due to the changes made
395 to the `WIonWS` (and `WAutoWS`) split tree code to make it more modularly
396 extensible with the new kinds of nodes that `WAutoWS` requires.
398 The `mod_autows` module has infact been through many changes since the
399 last release, and I think I have the final form of it finally figured
400 out. However, it is still far from finished and unlikely to be ready
407 The major new features of this snapshot release are:
409 * `WMPlex` support for a sticky status display area to which `WIonWS`s
410 adjust properly. Modified to the dock module to support this method.
411 See the new `dock.lua` to set up the dock in the new embedded or old
412 floating manner (the API for the latter has also changed).
413 * Primitive session management support.
415 There are also some bug fixes and many minor improvements; see the ChangeLog
416 for details. Work on `mod_autows` has also started, but it isn't ready for
420 ### Note on ./configure:
422 ./configure does not exist for the moment as the source autoconf script
423 is not up-to-date. Ion no longer uses libtool/libltdl due to problems
424 with inter-module dependencies, and I have not asked Tom Payne to fix
425 the script yet, as this change may not be final (although that is most
426 likely the case; those without Linux-compatible libdl and a flexible
427 binary format such as ELF will just have to link statically against the
431 ### Notes on session management:
433 Ion loads `mod_sm` automatically when the SESSION_MANAGER environment
434 variable that should be set by the session manager is set, so there's
435 no need load it in `ion.lua`.
437 When session management is in use, all entries in the 'Session' menu
438 (previously 'Exit' menu) actually invoke the session manager to do the
439 task. 'Save' asks the SM save the whole session and 'Exit' (ioncore.shutdown)
440 asks it to shut down the session instead of just causing the WM to quite.
441 To do the latter, use ioncore.resign.
443 Unfortunately, all session managers I have tried (from Debian/unstable),
444 are broken/incomplete in one way or another:
447 xsm: doesn't support any requests from applications. This makes Ion's
448 session menu complete unfunctional. The only way to restart/exit/save
449 state is through xsm's window.
452 gnome-session: This seems the most complete of the all the session managers
453 and works fine until it is requested to shut down the session, when it dumps
454 core and session state is lost if was not explicitly saved previously.
456 A `~/.gnome2/session` file to use with Ion follows:
462 0,RestartCommand=gnome-smproxy --sm-client-id default0
465 1,RestartCommand=/usr/local/ion-3/bin/ion -smclientid default1
468 ksmserver: Only supports a global shutdown request, so that Ion can not be
469 restarted or session state saved in the middle of a session.
475 This is the first development snapshot release of what is to be Ion3.
476 The most visible changes to Ion2 so far are:
478 * Default installation directory is `/usr/local/ion-3` while user
479 configuration files go in `~/.ion3`
481 * The `mod_sp` module was added. It creates an extra toggleable
482 "scratchpad" frame on each screen. Toggle is for now bound by default
483 to Mod1+section, which should be very conveniently located on most
484 Nordic keyboards (left of "1"), but you may have to change it. The
485 scratchpad should be nice for xconsole or similar monitors, xmessage
486 and other popups and just as temporary holding space for windows.
488 * All modules except the drawing engine are now called `mod_something`.
490 * Man-page complection supports a cache of known man-pages for faster
491 completion. See the README for instructions on setting up a cronjob
492 or manually generating the index if you want to use the feature.
493 Also `query_man_path` is no longer used. Instead we try the
494 `ION_MC_MANPATH` and `MANPATH` environment variables and the
497 * Exported functions are now separated into tables (namespaces)
498 instead of cluttering the globals table. Some frequently used
499 configuration functions are imported into the globals table, though.
500 Some functions have also been removed or renamed for simpler and
501 more consistent function set.
503 * New binding configuration mechanism. Dozens of `*_bindings` functions
504 were replaced with a single `[ioncorelib.]defbindings` function that
505 accepts a context parameter. Callbacks are specified as strings
506 (although passing functions still works) to make it easier for
507 external configuration programs to understand the configuration
508 files and perhaps remove some confusion among users who do not
509 care to read a tiny bit of Lua documentation and understand the
510 concept of anonymous functions.
512 * It is now also possible to retrieve a list of bindings with
513 `ioncorelib.getbindings`, for example, for self-documentation.
515 * Single move/resize mode bindings instead of separate for both
516 ionframe and floatframe.
518 There are also quite a few internal changes; see the ChangeLog for
519 details. No documentation tarball is available at the moment as the
520 documentation is out-of-date except for the function reference. If
521 you need the reference, just checkout the documentation from the
522 Subversion repository with
524 svn co http://tao.uab.es/ion/svn/ion-doc/trunk ion-doc-3ds
526 and build the documentation.
532 This release is finally what can be called "Ion 2 release candidate #1".
533 No more new features will be added to "Ion 2" after this release, and the
534 configuration interface has already been frozen for a while. I will wait a
535 couple of weeks for bug reports, and if nothing serious is found, the new
536 stable Ion should finally be released then.
538 The most notable changes since the previous release are:
540 * The dock module is included
541 * An optional autoconf script was added
542 * A few minor bugs were fixed
543 * Some incomplete features were polished, especially focus control on
545 * Changes in X keyboard map are supported now (so e.g. switching to
546 dvorak after Ion has started should update the bindings to match the
547 locations of symbols in the dvorak layout).
550 About the version numbering scheme:
552 Due to a demand of a version numbering scheme more indicative of the status
553 of the project, I was thinking of various different new version numbering
554 schemes for this release: ion-2rc1 (then 2r1, 3d1, etc.), ion-2-20040114-rc1,
555 ion-2.20040114rc1, ion-20040114-2rc1, etc.). It would've been nice if
556 simple lexicographical sorting could be used to order the packages, but
557 in the end I decided to stick with a scheme that is consistent with the
558 'ion-devel' package names:
560 project-branch_and_status-release_date
562 Therefore this release is 'ion-2rc-20040114', and the "stable" one will be
569 This is a big clean-up release. The most noticeable changes are that
570 '-devel' has been removed from path names, user configuration files go
571 in `~/.ion2/` and the main configuration file is 'ion.lua'. (The other
572 `ioncore-*.lua` files have also been renamed.) There have been no notable
573 changes in the configuration files themselves, so your old files will
574 work if you move them to the correct directory and rename the changed
575 files. (`mv ~/.ion-devel ~/.ion2; cd ~/.ion2; mv ioncore.lua ion.lua;`
578 This release also finally contains a working PWM binary. (The ioncore+
579 scripts scheme was replaced with separate binaries statically linked
580 to ioncore.a.) Floating workspaces now support edge snapping and
581 sticky windows, but some PWM features are probably still missing.
583 Some bugs were also fixed and users are now force-fed the manual page
584 the first time Ion is started. Transients can be toggled between
585 top/bottom of the main window with Mod1+K T. The SSH query uses
586 `~/.ssh/known_hosts` for completion instead of a manually defined list.
588 There may be a few additions (e.g. the dock) and bug fixes, of course,
589 before the stable release, but this release should pretty much be what
590 the new "stable" Ion should look like. Please upgrade to it to help
591 weed out the bugs. Note that you need to upgrade Lua to the 5.0.1
599 It's finally time for a new release on Ion's development branch. Most
600 likely this will also be the last "big" release before finally, after
601 almost two years, releasing a new "stable" version of Ion. A few bug
602 fix and code clean-up releases should appear in between, though.
604 The most important additions, changes and non-changes in this release
608 * A little less broken extended character set and string encoding
610 * Extended WM hints fullscreen request support
611 * Hopefully a little clarified configuration file layout
613 * And most important of all:
615 > Configuration files written for the previous release should
616 > still work this time!
618 (However, Ion will complain of old drawing engine styles.)
620 The menu module provides both drop-down menus (in the stock configuration
621 pressing Button3 on a tab should show a context menu) and query-like
622 "in-mplex" menus (F12: main menu at screen level; Mod1+M: the same context
623 menu as above at frame level).
625 What was done enhance support for strings (mostly window titles) in
626 languages that need more than 8-bit character sets is:
628 * Remove UTF8 restriction and support almost arbitrary multibyte
629 encodings instead. (Statefull encodings will not work and combining
630 characters can cause clutter. Both are a sign of bad encoding, IMHO.)
632 * The XCreateFontSet routine that is used to load fonts in the kind
633 of structure the X utf8 and multibyte routines want apparently wants
634 to be able to load glyphs for all character sets specified in the
635 locale and therefore often fails if only single font is specified.
636 Therefore a kludge was added that tries loading more fonts while
637 keeping the fonts' size the same. (The ",*" kludge could load huge
638 fonts). Unfortunately this has a noticeable effect in startup time :(.
640 * There is no longer a system.mk option to enable utf8 (now multibyte)
641 support, but must still specifically be enabled with the -i18n
642 command line switch, mostly thanks to troublesome utf-8 locales.
644 Because Xlib's UTF-8 string drawing code is broken and very unlikely to
645 be fixed, decent text output in an UTF-8 locale is still unlikely and
646 dependent on the fonts loaded in the system. The Xmb routines that are now
647 used always use an iso10646-1 font even if other fonts are loaded and the
648 unicode font does not contain a particular glyph to be drawn. The use of
649 the Xutf8 routines in an utf8 locale can be enabled with the
650 `CF_DE_USE_XUTF8` compile-time option. The advantage of this is that
651 these routines seem to choose the font to draw particular character in
652 most cases more sanely. The downside is that there are other more serious
653 problems with unknown characters.
655 All in all, even if I'd like to support a universal move to UTF-8, thanks
656 to Xlib brokenness I can't really recommend using UTF-8 locales with Ion
657 and the default drawing engine if there's a decent alternative encoding.
658 Most if not all other stateless encodings shouldn't have the problems
659 UTF-8 has. An alternative drawing engine that didn't use the Xlib i18n
660 string drawing routines might solve the troubles with utf-8 support.
664 If you have saved a custom system.mk, you'll need to set LUAC
665 point to the Lua compiler there as some of the share/ files
672 It's been a while since the previous release as I wanted to freeze the
673 Lua configuration/scripting interface for this release and therefore
674 finish work on a few things. Well, on my part the interface is frozen,
675 but I will still accept constructive complaints for a short time and
676 after that the implemented parts of the scripting interface will be
677 frozen. But in all likelihood, if no one has anything else to say, but
678 "it's ok", "it sucks", the interface will no longer change, only possibly
681 What's new for this release then?
683 * Drawing engine module support.
684 * OO-style exported functions. The old `class_fn` functions are now
685 `WClass.fn` (an ugly wrapper is provided in `compat.lua`).
686 * No more screen-specific configuration or savefiles.
687 * Session name (can be specified on command line) instead of display
688 name based savefiles. Also affects query history and not just workspace
690 * Bug fixes, most small and one bigger (almost complete rewrite of
691 the split resizing algorithm).
692 * Some documentation improvements.
694 Converting configuration files.
696 Old `.lua` colour schemes and workspace save files can be automatically
697 converted to a format suitable to be loaded by this latest release.
698 Other files will have to be ported manually. To convert colour schemes,
699 use the script `utils/lookconv.lua`. The usage is
701 lookconv.lua look-old.lua > look-new.lua
703 To convert workspaces savefiles, use the script `utils/saveconv.sh`.
706 saveconf.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-DISPLAY.*.lua \
707 > ~/.ion-devel/SESSIONNAME/workspaces.lua
709 `DISPLAY` here is the actual display part of `$DISPLAY`, probably just `:0`.
710 '*' stands for all screens (if you have only one screen you could do with
711 perhaps just `workspaces-:0.0.lua`). SESSIONNAME is the name of the session
712 where you want to use the converted savefiles. Default session name for
713 `DISPLAY` is `default-session-DISPLAY` with the colon in `DISPLAY` converted
714 to a dash. For most people this is `default-session--0`. In the simplest
715 case the whole command line is therefore
717 saveconv.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-:0.0.lua \
718 > ~/.ion-devel/default-session--0/workspaces.lua
720 The scripts may or may not work and are only provided as a potential
721 convenience that will not be maintained and will be removed eventually.
727 Quite a few bug fixes and one most likely unnoticeable improvement:
731 * Fixed pointer warping on screen change.
732 * A bug in grab handler calling code could crash Ion when leaving
733 keyboard resize mode manually.
734 * Resize display was showing incorrect values for keyboard resize.
738 * Client window last height request bookkeeping code had been lost
739 when configure request policy was changed. This caused transient
740 sizes to be calculated incorrectly.
741 * Return from full screen mode to floatws had been broken.
742 * As the number of dynamic functions has been getting bigger, the
743 functions are now sorted on first use and then binary-searched
744 instead of naive linear searching.
745 * Screen lookup had been broken for windows that are not properly
752 Just some bug fixes and minor behavioural changes and improvements in
759 This release fixes some small problems with the previous release and
760 adds a workaround kludge for the XFree86 textprop bug (it's been fixed
761 but no release with the fix is available) that could cause Opera to
762 crash Ion when UTF8 support was enabled. I also added the winprop
763 needed for galeon's find dialog to default `kludges.lua` and there's
764 some extra documentation and defaults for some systems in system.mk.
770 Most changes in this release centre around making Ion more tolerant
771 to broken configuration files; for details see the ChangeLog. There
772 are also changes in binding configuration as I already mentioned in
773 an earlier poting. Namely `common-frame-bindings.lua` is gone and the
774 bindings previously set there (into variables that the `*ws.lua`
775 files later referenced) were moved to `ioncore-bindings.lua` and are
776 set using the new functions `mplex_bindings` and `genframe_bindings`
777 are were added. Old modified configuration files should still work,
778 however, but if you use `make_active_leaf_fn`, you will need to
779 include `compat.lua` as the `global_bindings` that used this were
780 replaced by bindings in `mplex_bindings` and the function
781 `make_current_clientwin_fn`.
783 There are also some (minor) bug fixes and a few other improvements
784 worth a mention. In particular all regions are now given names of
785 the form `WFoobar<n>` by default and `DEFAULT_MOD.."F9"` was bound to
786 create a new workspace without asking for a name. This binding and
787 `QueryLib.query_workspace` use the workspace type defined in the
788 variable `default_ws_type` instead of being hardcoded to `WIonWS`.
790 All objects passed to Lua now have a unique userdata (a `WWatch`
791 cached in a weak table) so they can be used e.g. as indices to tables.
797 This release unifies some parts of `WScreen` and `WGenFrame`, which makes
798 screen-level queries possible. (Later the queries for small frames might
799 be changed to be shown at screen level.) The statusbar restriction from
800 ion-devel-20030531 was also removed by this some change and a few
801 non-fatal bugs have been fixed.
807 A bug was discovered:
811 * An off-by-one error in `extl_l1_finalize` caused references to some
812 Lua tables (including large completions) never to be released.
814 It could be that this bug was causing some other errors in Lua as well.
815 Sometimes QueryLib bindings failed because some function generators
816 returned nil although they shouldn't. Adding dummy lines (!) in those
817 functions fixed the problem and for some reason this patch also seemed
818 to remove those problems.
821 One more note: as `ioncorelib.lua` and `querylib.lua` are now installed
822 in `$SHAREDIR`, you must remove the old files in `$ETCDIR` if installing
823 over a previous release or else there will be errors. You should also
824 not use any possible old copies you have in `~/.ion-devel/`. (One of the
825 reasons for moving these to `$SHAREDIR` is to stop users from making
826 copies of them as they are not configuration files.)
832 As the subject line says, Ion-devel-20030531 was just released. The short
835 * The license was changed from the Clarified Artistic License to the
836 GNU Library/Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
837 * Screen, viewport and root window renames and other changes (see below).
838 * Some installation directory changes; the ion-* helper programs are now
839 installed either in `$SHAREDIR` or `$EXTRABINDIR` and QueryLib searches
840 for them on the script path (`~/.ion-devel/`, `$ETCDIR`, `$SHAREDIR`,
841 `$EXTRABINDIR`) instead of assuming them being on `$PATH`.
842 * Client windows are now in a separate namespace.
843 * Resize/maximize/shade changes: Shading should work on `WIonFrame`s too
844 and shade mode is automatic when the client area gets too small when
845 resizing. Maximize toggle restores frame to previous size if shaded
846 instead of maximizing. The move/resize mode bindings were changed again
847 to be more consistent and predictable: Left/Right/Up/Down and F/B/P/N
848 grow the frame in the specific direction, Shift+keys shrink and in
849 case of floating frames, `DEFAULT_MOD+keys` move
850 * Returning from full screen mode should work on `WFloatWS`s too.
851 * Lots of minor fixes, export additions and clean-up.
853 As usual, see the (long!) list of new ChangeLog entries at the end of
854 this message for details.
857 I've finally personally switched from the old "stable" 20020207 to using
858 the latest development release at home too and I must say that it is
859 finally starting to look good. There are still things to be written, but
860 unless you need "proven" stability, I see no reason to sticking to that
861 old release anymore. Unless, of course, if you find a problem that I have
862 not encountered or simply have no need for the new features and don't want
863 to port your configuration files.
866 On screens, viewports, root windows and problems with the new
869 The objects previously called "screens" are now called "root windows"
870 and what were called "viewports" are called "screens" to better reflect
871 what the user sees. (When Xinerama is not used there's no difference
872 between a root window and a screen, but when Xinerama is used a root
873 window may be split over multiple screens.)
875 This release also creates so-called virtual root windows for each
876 Xinerama screen when there are more than one. This is to better separate
877 the windows on different screens and thus emulate normal multihead, the
878 main difference being that windows can be moved between screens.
879 Especially the virtual roots are there to keep the windows that are on
880 a floatws on the right screen.
882 Virtual root windows will, however, break a few apps:
884 * Mozilla -remote won't work because of its crappy method for looking
885 up existing windows that can't handle multiple levels of WM windows.
886 Nested workspaces have the same problem. There is, however, a simple
887 solution to this problem: gnome-moz-remote. It seems to use a saner
888 method for looking up an existing Gecko browser and also works with
889 at least Phoenix/MozillaFirebird and Galeon.
891 These two are problems only if you use floatws:s (other problems with
892 which virtual root windows are intended to solve):
894 * The background-setting apps I am aware of will require a following
895 'xrefresh' for the changes to be updated to the (transparent) virtual
896 roots. Background setting apps that support the `_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS`
897 property (which, I think, was meant for root window-sized WS
898 backgrounds) could be used to set a separate background for each
899 Xinerama screen, though. I am not aware of any such app.
900 * Some apps' resize and move features will behave erratically on those
901 Xinerama screens not at (0, 0) on the root window. This is again
902 because the apps are assuming there's at most one WM window between
903 them and the root and are requesting windows' positions incorrectly.
904 The ICCCM is quite vague on this and I think _all_ apps that I have
905 tried are doing it wrong but the way e.g. XMMS does it certainly is
906 not an interpretation of the ICCCM. The apps that now behave correctly
907 request position for the outermost WM window. Nested workspaces have
910 There is one more temporary problem:
912 * Status bar modules (and the dock module's statusbar mode) will be
913 *temporarily* broken when virtual roots are _not_ used. This will be
914 fixed later when parts of screen and frame code are unified (it should
915 then be possible to run Ion without any workspace modules and have
916 queries attached to screens). In the meanwhile, if you don't care about
917 the above-mentioned problems and want a statusbar (which probably needs
918 to be ported to this release), you can defined `CF_ALWAYS_VIRTUAL_ROOT`
925 There are quite a few small fixes and minor enhancements invisible to
926 the user in this release. The splitting functions were renamed to be
927 more consistent and there are a couple of enhancements in the Lua code
928 query that should make it much more usable. First, tab-completion can
929 now descend into tables and complete subexpressions. Secondly, the local
930 variable `_` in addition to 'arg[1]' is set to point to the the frame in
931 which the query is executing.
933 I have also written some new documentation that is now available from
940 The most notable change in this release is that the `target_id` system
941 was removed and instead client window status is also saved over
942 restarts in the saves/workspaces-* files. (It shouldn't be too hard
943 to hook a session management module over this.) Thanks to this
944 modification, floatframes can also save their status now. Note
945 that if you restart from older version of Ion to this one, client
946 window layout will be messed up.
948 There are also a few bug fixes and code to save and load line editor
955 There are lots of minor improvements in this release, see the
956 new ChangeLog entries for details.
962 Some minor feature enhancements and a few fixes in this new release:
964 The file system scanning completions are now put in the background
965 by receiving the data from external programs through pipes and select()
966 for data in the main event loop. This way long taking completions don't
967 block Ion from processing other events and NFS problems shouldn't hang
970 Basic window stacking management support code was added. Transients
971 on floatws:s should now be stacked above their parents. If you don't
972 want to change your modified binding configurations at this point and
973 need the functions `floatframe_raise/lower`, include `compat.lua`.
979 This release again fixes some minor problems and enhances a few
980 features. Most of the enhancements are related to UTF8 support and
981 the floatws module. If UTF8 support is enabled, Ion now tries to
982 load the "fixed" font at startup after setting up locales. If locales
983 aren't properly set up, this probably fails and Ion will reset locale
984 back to "POSIX" as this might make fonts loadable although support for
985 non-ASCII characters will be crippled. It might now be safe for
986 package maintainers to enable UTF8 support by default
988 As apps seem to have switched to using `_NET_WM_NAME` for UTF8 titles
989 and filling `WM_NAME` with crap, this property is also preferred over
990 `WM_NAME` if set. Support for some other "extended" WM hints might be
991 added in the future but I have no intentions of moking Ion NetWM-
992 compliant. I might have thought of attempting to do so a few years
993 ago when I last read the specification but it seems that since then
994 they've filled it with lots of pointless bloat that may even be in
995 opposition to Ion's goals. Take multi-parent transients, for example.
997 Full error log is also displayed with xmessage on startup whether
998 it is possible to continue or not.
1004 There was a bug in QueryLib written yesterday, therefore this release.
1010 I started converting the query code to Lua and discovered some rather
1011 silly bugs in the Lua interface so here's a new release with the new
1012 and improved query code included. The names of queries have changed
1013 (they're all in the table QueryLib defined in `querylib.lua` -- only
1014 `query_query` and a few temporary handlers are implemented in query.so)
1015 so your modified configuration files will be broken again :(.
1021 Be prepared to completely rewrite your configuration files once
1022 again: a new version of Ion-devel has been released that uses Lua
1023 <http://www.lua.org/> for all configuration. Version 5.0 of the
1024 language/library is required. Although scripting possibilities
1025 are now much better than before, there is one rather big drawback:
1026 Lua is not nearly as error-tolerant as Ion's old configuration
1027 parser so a syntax error in a file will cause the file not to be
1028 executed and may even cause Ion not to be able to start. More
1029 comments and documentation on scripting will follow at a later time.
1031 Libtool and libltdl are also now used to implement module support.
1032 Hopefully this will make compiling Ion easier on a wider range of
1033 platforms. (On the other hand, this could also induce new problems.)
1035 Finally, the preferred linking address for Ion's home page is now
1036 <http://www.iki.fi/tuomov/ion/>. The pages are still located at the
1037 old address, but this redirected address should be more permanent.
1043 Just some minor fixes, binary rename and better embedded workspace
1044 support in this release. I'm still contemplating whether to convert
1045 Ion to C++ and haven't written many things that I intended to as
1046 that decision will affect how those are implemented.
1048 To create an embedded workspaces in a frame, at the moment you have
1049 to modify the appropriate workspace save file (when Ion is not running!)
1050 by adding lines such as
1052 region "WFloatWS", "testiupotus" {
1055 inside the frame definition after the other options (flags, `target_id`;
1056 those options will be ignored if after any region definitions).
1058 One more thing to note: debugging infos are no longer automatically
1059 stripped from the ioncore binary or modules by 'make install' so that
1060 I don't have to explain how to get proper backtraces every time a bug
1061 is found. If you you are confident that you can send me proper backtraces
1062 when you find a bug (or maybe can fix it yourself), you can make the
1063 binary and the modules a _lot_ smaller by running 'strip' on them.
1069 The list of new ChangeLog entries is long this time, but I'm finally
1070 starting to get to what I started working on almost two years ago. Yes,
1071 there is *experimental* support for PWM-like "floating frame" workspaces.
1072 A lot of the functionality is still missing -- no need to complain of
1073 such at the time -- but the floatws.so module and basic functionality
1074 is there. Most notably perhaps a menu module is not yet implemented.
1075 (Porting the PWM menu code should a nice little task for whomever
1076 interested... *wink*.) To create some PWM workspaces, load the floatws.so
1077 module (should be loaded by default) and in `query_workspace` (F9)
1078 prefix workspace name with 'WFloatWS:' (or load the module before
1081 This release is also finally fully modularised: In addition to the
1082 ion core binary that can not function alone, there are the modules
1083 ionws.so, floatws.so and query.so. It is also possible statically
1084 compile the modules in the core binary if the system doesn't support
1087 There's also *experimental* UTF8 support that must be specifically
1088 enabled from system.mk. You must have XFree86 (4.x?) and C99 wide
1089 char support available (either libc directly or maybe libutf8+libiconv).
1090 Thanks to bugs (?) in some of the XFree86 Xutf8 functions, your locales
1091 must be properly set up or else X will stop drawing strings at non-ascii
1092 characters instead of ignoring them. See my earlier rants on the mailing
1093 list for reasons on not using the more standard Xmb functions.
1094 To actually see any special characters, you must load the necessary fonts
1095 by specifying a comma-separated list of fonts to the font and `tab_font`
1096 draw.conf options. Multiple font loading does not work when Xft support
1097 is enabled at the time being.
1099 There has been a lot of changes in the config files, again, and I can
1100 promise there's still more to come. See the ChangeLog for details.
1101 If you want to use your old workspaces configurations, move them to
1102 `~/.ion-devel/saves` and replace the strings "WFrame" and "WWorkspace"
1103 with "WIonFrame" and "WIonWS", respectively.
1109 I've made the bugfix release as promised. Get it from the usual place.
1115 There's a new major development release available from Ion web page.
1116 Not many changes are visible to the end user, though, but a lot was
1117 rewritten to be more flexible and simpler; see the ChangeLog for a
1118 full account. The older development release is also still available
1119 because this release can not be considered as stable after major
1120 changes to the code. The most visible changes are
1122 * Changes in binding configuration
1123 * A (mostly) working full screen mode toggle (see below)
1124 * The ability to switch workspaces while dragging tabs (experimental)
1125 * The ability to re-read draw.conf without restarting Ion
1129 Some notes on full screen mode toggle:
1131 * Ion doesn't detect programs trying to leave full screen mode--it
1132 should be possible to devise some method using window properties,
1134 * At least Opera unmaps the window also before changing the size to
1135 enter full screen mode, so Ion doesn't remember the last frame.
1136 * Mozilla sometimes has trouble entering full screen mode but when it
1137 succeeds, Ion remembers the last frame. However, if
1138 `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` is used to leave the full screen mode
1139 started from Mozilla, Mozilla doesn't know that the mode has been
1142 Clearly there should be some method of communication between Ion and the
1143 programs for full screen toggles to fully work. At the moment I suggest
1144 using `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` instead of the programs' native toggles
1145 unless the program has some special full screen mode and you really want