5 There are a few minor fixes in this RC, plus a major one related to
6 layout restore under a session manager.
12 This RC features various minor fixes, and some clarifications and
13 simplifications to the license, which people seem to have had trouble
20 It seems people are a bit slow, or only scaring them with a final
21 release makes them report issues. So, still no stable release but
22 a candidate, with many minor fixes and improvements wrt. important
23 omissions. The most important changes are better behaviour of the
24 unsplit operation, better handling of main window being closed
25 before a transient, and use of the workspace's working directory
26 for run query file name completion.
32 Another attempt at last "rc" release.
38 This release features a few minor fixes. If no major problems are
39 discovered, this is likely to be the last "rc" release before the
40 first and hopefully final "stable" release.
46 This fourth "rc" release fixes some minor bugs and omissions in
53 This third "rc" release again simply fixes some minor problems in
60 This is the second "rc" release, and contains primarily bug fixes
61 and other minor improvements.
67 This is the first "rc" or "(stable) release candidate" release of
68 Ion3. This means that there will not be any further major changes
69 to it. Bugs will be fixed, and as an exception to the general
70 feature freeze, some hooks may still be added, if deemed useful.
71 Translations may also be included. After no new bugs (that can not
72 be deemed features) have been found in this or following "rc"
73 releases, the stable Ion3 will be released.
75 Most of the changes in this release to the previous one already
76 are bug fixes, in addition to some general clean-up. Other notable
79 * Winprop matching improvements: it is possible to match against
80 `is_dockapp` and `is_transient` (booleans), and there's a hack
81 to support `class` and `instance` for dockapps too.
83 * The default configuration puts dockapps in the statusbar's
86 * The autoconf kludge has been removed, as I will have nothing
87 to do with it, and nobody else seems to support or maintain
90 * Tab numbers are displayed when releasing modifiers in the
93 Distributors should pay heed to the name policy notice in the
100 This may be the last "ds" release if Ion3; if all goes well, the next
101 release is likely to be an "rc". Some minor improvements will still
102 be done, and minor requests may be accepted, so be quick.
104 The most notable changes in this release from the previous one are:
106 * Transients and queries in too small frames are "unsqueezed" out
107 of them, unless disabled with `ioncore.set{ unsqueeze = false }`.
109 * Some changes in default `cfg_ion.lua`: instead of loading
110 various other files, just `cfg_default.lua` is loaded instead.
112 * `mod_tiling.untile` (available in the context menu) may be used
113 to decompose tilings into floating frames. (This is the approximate
114 opposite of `mod_tiling.mkbottom` and the "new tiling" context menu
117 * Improved context menus.
119 * Slightly improved defaults style, using the drawing engine's
120 added possibility of partial borders.
122 * Various fixes and other improvements, in particular in relation
129 * There's been changes in padding/spacing usage in styles. Frames
130 now surround stuff inside borders not with `spacing` pixels, but
131 with `padding_pixels`. Spacing is only used to space things within
132 the borders (all the tabs and the client window from each other).
133 Consequently, custom styles may need to be updated to reflect this,
134 by increasing the padding, possibly also altering/removing colour
135 (to set it to background colour).
137 * The use of drawing engine attributes has also changed, and strict
138 ordering of them in the styles is no longer necessary. Additionally,
139 much more attributes are supported, including the name of every
142 * Xinerama support is gone. In addition to being problematic as such,
143 it had bit-rotted, and I will not waste time fixing it.
145 * `ioncore.set` no longer supports the `default_ws_params` parameter
146 for configuring the default layout. It is replaced by
147 `ioncore.deflayout("default", { ... })`, which allows configuring
148 other layouts as well, known by `mod_query.query_workspace` (F9).
149 Some default layouts are configured in `cfg_layout.lua`.
151 * It is now possible to automatically create new workspaces for
152 windows with the `new_group` winprop.
158 There's nothing major in this release, primarily just some minor fixes
159 and tuning to the previous release, that it was time to release.
165 Mostly this release still fixes issues in the big 3ds-20061015 release,
166 but in addition there are some improvements in the query department:
168 * Query activation key now cycles completions (So e.g. the
169 in the context menu activated with META+M, this same key
170 can be used to cycle through the alternatives.) This does
171 not work for queries activated by submap bindings.
173 * Likewise, it is no longer necessary to specify the key to
174 use for cycling for `mod_menu.grabmenu`.
176 * Control+R can now be used for history completion in queries.
177 (Currently matching is done for full string up to 'point', but
178 this may be changed to substring match.)
180 * Note that the parametrisation of WEdln.complete has changed,
181 and the second cycle parameter must be 'next' now instead of
188 Fixes some (expected, but minor) issues in the previous release.
194 * WIonWS and WFloatWS and the corresponding modules are gone, and
195 your custom configuration files will be broken with regard to these.
196 However, a partial backwards compatibility hack exists for layout
199 The F9 and META-F9 bindings now by default create workspaces with
200 a tiled layout of two frames. To create an "empty" workspace,
201 corresponding to the old WFloatWS, use the context menu (META-M)
202 and choose "new-empty-workspace". It is also possible to change
205 * Note that if you restart from an old version to this new version of Ion,
206 transients will stop working as expected for already existing windows.
207 They will work for newly-created windows, however.
209 * There are a few new sets of binding (including one for `WClientWin`!),
210 and some old bindings may not work exactly as expected anymore. In
211 particular, those for switching to full-screen mode.
213 **It is probably best to start from scratch with your custom
216 * `WFrame.set_tabbar` is gone. If you absolutely want to get rid off
217 the tabs, you must change the frame's "mode" with `WFrame.set_mode`.
218 The mode "tiled-alt" has been intended for this, and the corresponding
219 "framed-tiled-alt" style defaults to `bar = "none"`.
221 * The rather popular `detach.lua` script from the scripts repository
222 is obsoleted now, as Ion includes detach functionality in itself.
223 To detach a window, use META-K D in the default bindings. To tile
224 an existing frame from a workspace that doesn't have a tiling yet,
231 Some notable changes in this release include
233 * Lua 5.1 is now required.
235 * Framed transients on by default now. New binding contexts
236 "WFrame.toplevel" and "WMPlex.toplevel" were added to allow
237 for separate sets of bindings for nested transient frames and
238 top-level frames. Some of the bindings in the default binding
239 maps that are likely to be unwanted on transient frames were
240 moved to these contexts. Old custom bindings will continue to
241 work unless they modify the defaults by unbinding some of the
244 * Pressing Mod1+K K in the default bindings now switches to any
245 region with the "activity" flag set (indicated by the a box
246 at a corner of the screen), if there's one, before cycling to
247 previously active region. The same effect can be achieved in
248 your custom bindings with
250 ioncore.activity_goto() or ioncore.goto_previous()
256 This release mostly features minor bugfixes and other improvements. The most
257 visible non-bugfix changes are:
259 * Faster "fontset" filling kludge: only `-misc-fixed-*` fonts are tried. Ion
260 should now load faster in UTF-8 environments, and usually with no less
261 fonts in the fontset than before. (UTF-8 string drawing still does not
262 fully utilise these fonts under XFree86, but it does under XOrg.)
264 * Experimental auto-show-completions support, which is also on by default
265 now. In this mode the Tab key can be used to cycle forward through the
266 completions, and Shift+Tab backwards. Modify the settings seen in the
267 new `mod_query.lua` to get normal Tab-completion, or change the completion
270 * The release scripts do not run automatically autoconf anymore so maybe
271 a few more people would look into the README first.
277 The most visible changes in this release are:
279 * Mod1+space now toggles the scratchpad by default and Mod1+D the dock.
281 * The `ion-(ssh|man|view|edit)` wrapper scripts were removed and instead
282 the programs used can be configured in Ion's configuration files.
284 * `ioncore.exec(_on)` also support the `:cmd` notation for "run cmd in
285 xterm" familiar from the run query. The `::cmd` notation can be used
286 to ask for enter to be pressed even when the program quit succesfully.
288 * Those with custom configuration files should note that many exported toggle
289 functions were changed and renamed, and now accept a string parameter
290 incidating whether to toggle, set or unset the property.
292 - `WClientwin.set_fullsreen` (replaces `WClientWin.toggle_fullscreen`)
293 - `WRegion.set_tagged` (replaces `WRegion.tag/untag/toggle_tag`)
294 - `WFrame.set_tabbar` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_tabbar`)
295 - `WFrame.set_shaded` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_shade`)
296 - `WFloatFrame.set_sticky` (replaces `WFloatFrame.toggle_sticky`)
297 - `WMPlex.l2_set_hidden` (replaces `WMPlex.l2_hide/show`)
298 - `mod_sp.set_shown(_on)` (replaces `mod_sp.toggle(_on)`)
299 - `mod_dock.set_floating_shown_on` (replaces `mod_dock.toggle_floating_on`)
300 - `WRegion.set_activity` (replaces `WRegion.clear_activity` and
301 `WRegion.notify_activity`)
303 For example, `WRegion.set_tagged(_, 'toggle')` should be used in place of
304 `WRegion.toggle_tagged(_)` now.
306 Obviously there are some other changes and fixes too. See the changelog
307 for details as usual.
313 This is mostly a bug fix release, but also features improved
314 `mod_query.query_exec` (F3 key) completion support. Script writers should be
315 aware that As a side effect of one of these bug fixes, many hooks are now
316 called in "protected mode" and can not call any functions that modify the
317 internal state of Ion, except ioncore.defer.
323 The most important changes in this release are:
325 * So-called "placeholders". With the help of these the positions of
326 full-screen windows are remembered in their original frames, and don't
327 just get inserted after currently active window when returning from
328 full-screen mode. Under a session manager placeholders are also used
329 to remember the original order of windows.
331 * Improved `mod_statusbar` and `ion-statusd` communication, and colouring
332 of important/critical meters.
334 * A number of small fixes.
340 This monthly snapshot adds a few new and improved features.
342 * 'Grabbed menus' that have a single cycling key and activate selected
343 entry when all modifiers have been released. See
345 <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/scripts/wcirculate.lua>
349 * Potentially blocking status meters are now in a separate ion-statusd
350 program. Please write your additional status meters that do not monitor
351 the state of Ion itself for ion-statusd (and contribute them in the
352 Ion3 scripts repository at <http://iki.fi/tuomov/repos/ion-scripts-3/>).
353 For help on writing such status meters, see e.g. source for
354 `statusd_load` in `ext_statusbar/ion-statusd`.
356 * Floating splits are now supported on plain tiled workspaces as well as
357 on pane workspaces. To create such a split, use the workspace context
358 menu (Mod1+M by default) or write your own bindings.
360 * Line editor now supports history search; Control+Up/Down only scrolls
361 through history entries with matching initial part.
363 * Arbitrary winprop matching criteria is supported. Lua scripts have
364 access to X properties.
366 Of course there are some other minor fixes and improvements as well.
372 This release finally includes a usable (yet still incomplete) version
373 of the `mod_panews` workspace module (that has also bored the name 'autows'
374 and 'rubberws' previously). The final outcome is not exactly what I
375 initially planned, as those plans turned out not to be that workable.
376 Instead, what `mod_panews` does is add to the basic tiled ionws approach
377 overlappable splits and automatically filled panes that are initially
378 empty. Each window is classified and assigned to the pane matching that
379 classification. (The default classifications are T(erminal), V(iewer)
380 and M(iscellaneous).)
382 For a better feel for it, try it out yourself and please give feedback.
383 The overlapping panes may be a bit confusing (this is one place where
384 true translucency might actually be useful and not just eyecandy) at
385 first, but you'll get used to them if you use the feature, and e.g.
386 the Gimp works quite splendidly with the toolboxes in the 'M' pane and
387 image windows in the 'V' pane -- although the simple initial size-based
388 classification heuristics don't always get it right and overriding
389 winprops (setting: `panews_classification`) should eventually added.
391 In addition to the new module, this release adds support for translations
392 of program messages and the manual page, regardless of whether such is
393 of any use in a program like Ion or not. (Currently Finnish and Czech
394 translations are available.) Of course there are some bug fixes and
395 other minor additions as well, and the `./configure` script is also back,
396 the abandonment of libtool being final now.
402 The first thing you'll notice when you start up this release of Ion is
403 that isn't reading your old configuration that. The next thing you
404 should notice is a neat layout-adapting statusbar at the bottom of the
405 screen. That's right, Ion now includes an `ext_statusbar` Lua script that
406 is enabled by default and displays date/time/load/mail count in a
409 So why is it not reading your configuration and save files? Firstly,
410 all of the `.lua` files were renamed to be indicative of their purpose.
411 Secondly, there have been so many changes that your old files would be
414 The `.lua` files are now named as follows:
416 cfg_*.lua Configuration file that the user may wish to edit
417 look_*.lua Drawing engine style file
418 saved_*.lua Save file
419 mod_*.lua Module stub loader
420 ext_*.lua A bigger Lua extension without a C counterpart
421 so that it is not a module
423 The configuration file for `mod_foobar` or `ext_foobar`, if it has one, is,
424 of course, `cfg_foobar.lua`. In the topic of file names, also note that
425 the default installation paths and binary names have changed to include
426 the component '3' to reflect the situation with many binary packages
429 You perhaps noticed above that modules have stub loaders now, so the
430 user has no need to use the `ioncore.load_module` routine. All extensions
431 and additional configuration files can now be loaded with 'dopath'
432 (used to be 'include'). Also, the `menulib`, `querylib`, and `ioncorelib`
433 Lua libraries are gone and instead their contents can be found in the same
434 `mod_whatever` namespace with the corresponding module (the "stub" loader
435 for these modules is a bit more than just a stub...). Some may also
436 want to know that for `mod_*` and `ext_*` only the compiled .lc files are
437 now installed, and not the source `.lua` files, thus removing redundant
438 files and making the installation slightly smaller.
440 There are few other changes to the contents of the configuration files
441 as well, so you're probably best off simply rewriting your modified
442 configuration files based on the new defaults. There quite likely won't
443 be any more _big_ changes to the configuration files before the release
444 of final Ion3, wherever that will be. (Most likely we won't see 3rc:s
445 yet this year.) However, some functions and variables are still likely
446 to be renamed or changed.
448 In addition to being renamed, the layout savefile of this Ion release
449 is incompatible with older releases. This is due to the changes made
450 to the `WIonWS` (and `WAutoWS`) split tree code to make it more modularly
451 extensible with the new kinds of nodes that `WAutoWS` requires.
453 The `mod_autows` module has infact been through many changes since the
454 last release, and I think I have the final form of it finally figured
455 out. However, it is still far from finished and unlikely to be ready
462 The major new features of this snapshot release are:
464 * `WMPlex` support for a sticky status display area to which `WIonWS`s
465 adjust properly. Modified to the dock module to support this method.
466 See the new `dock.lua` to set up the dock in the new embedded or old
467 floating manner (the API for the latter has also changed).
468 * Primitive session management support.
470 There are also some bug fixes and many minor improvements; see the ChangeLog
471 for details. Work on `mod_autows` has also started, but it isn't ready for
475 ### Note on ./configure:
477 ./configure does not exist for the moment as the source autoconf script
478 is not up-to-date. Ion no longer uses libtool/libltdl due to problems
479 with inter-module dependencies, and I have not asked Tom Payne to fix
480 the script yet, as this change may not be final (although that is most
481 likely the case; those without Linux-compatible libdl and a flexible
482 binary format such as ELF will just have to link statically against the
486 ### Notes on session management:
488 Ion loads `mod_sm` automatically when the SESSION_MANAGER environment
489 variable that should be set by the session manager is set, so there's
490 no need load it in `ion.lua`.
492 When session management is in use, all entries in the 'Session' menu
493 (previously 'Exit' menu) actually invoke the session manager to do the
494 task. 'Save' asks the SM save the whole session and 'Exit' (ioncore.shutdown)
495 asks it to shut down the session instead of just causing the WM to quite.
496 To do the latter, use ioncore.resign.
498 Unfortunately, all session managers I have tried (from Debian/unstable),
499 are broken/incomplete in one way or another:
502 xsm: doesn't support any requests from applications. This makes Ion's
503 session menu complete unfunctional. The only way to restart/exit/save
504 state is through xsm's window.
507 gnome-session: This seems the most complete of the all the session managers
508 and works fine until it is requested to shut down the session, when it dumps
509 core and session state is lost if was not explicitly saved previously.
511 A `~/.gnome2/session` file to use with Ion follows:
517 0,RestartCommand=gnome-smproxy --sm-client-id default0
520 1,RestartCommand=/usr/local/ion-3/bin/ion -smclientid default1
523 ksmserver: Only supports a global shutdown request, so that Ion can not be
524 restarted or session state saved in the middle of a session.
530 This is the first development snapshot release of what is to be Ion3.
531 The most visible changes to Ion2 so far are:
533 * Default installation directory is `/usr/local/ion-3` while user
534 configuration files go in `~/.ion3`
536 * The `mod_sp` module was added. It creates an extra toggleable
537 "scratchpad" frame on each screen. Toggle is for now bound by default
538 to Mod1+section, which should be very conveniently located on most
539 Nordic keyboards (left of "1"), but you may have to change it. The
540 scratchpad should be nice for xconsole or similar monitors, xmessage
541 and other popups and just as temporary holding space for windows.
543 * All modules except the drawing engine are now called `mod_something`.
545 * Man-page complection supports a cache of known man-pages for faster
546 completion. See the README for instructions on setting up a cronjob
547 or manually generating the index if you want to use the feature.
548 Also `query_man_path` is no longer used. Instead we try the
549 `ION_MC_MANPATH` and `MANPATH` environment variables and the
552 * Exported functions are now separated into tables (namespaces)
553 instead of cluttering the globals table. Some frequently used
554 configuration functions are imported into the globals table, though.
555 Some functions have also been removed or renamed for simpler and
556 more consistent function set.
558 * New binding configuration mechanism. Dozens of `*_bindings` functions
559 were replaced with a single `[ioncorelib.]defbindings` function that
560 accepts a context parameter. Callbacks are specified as strings
561 (although passing functions still works) to make it easier for
562 external configuration programs to understand the configuration
563 files and perhaps remove some confusion among users who do not
564 care to read a tiny bit of Lua documentation and understand the
565 concept of anonymous functions.
567 * It is now also possible to retrieve a list of bindings with
568 `ioncorelib.getbindings`, for example, for self-documentation.
570 * Single move/resize mode bindings instead of separate for both
571 ionframe and floatframe.
573 There are also quite a few internal changes; see the ChangeLog for
574 details. No documentation tarball is available at the moment as the
575 documentation is out-of-date except for the function reference. If
576 you need the reference, just checkout the documentation from the
577 Subversion repository with
579 svn co http://tao.uab.es/ion/svn/ion-doc/trunk ion-doc-3ds
581 and build the documentation.
587 This release is finally what can be called "Ion 2 release candidate #1".
588 No more new features will be added to "Ion 2" after this release, and the
589 configuration interface has already been frozen for a while. I will wait a
590 couple of weeks for bug reports, and if nothing serious is found, the new
591 stable Ion should finally be released then.
593 The most notable changes since the previous release are:
595 * The dock module is included
596 * An optional autoconf script was added
597 * A few minor bugs were fixed
598 * Some incomplete features were polished, especially focus control on
600 * Changes in X keyboard map are supported now (so e.g. switching to
601 dvorak after Ion has started should update the bindings to match the
602 locations of symbols in the dvorak layout).
605 About the version numbering scheme:
607 Due to a demand of a version numbering scheme more indicative of the status
608 of the project, I was thinking of various different new version numbering
609 schemes for this release: ion-2rc1 (then 2r1, 3d1, etc.), ion-2-20040114-rc1,
610 ion-2.20040114rc1, ion-20040114-2rc1, etc.). It would've been nice if
611 simple lexicographical sorting could be used to order the packages, but
612 in the end I decided to stick with a scheme that is consistent with the
613 'ion-devel' package names:
615 project-branch_and_status-release_date
617 Therefore this release is 'ion-2rc-20040114', and the "stable" one will be
624 This is a big clean-up release. The most noticeable changes are that
625 '-devel' has been removed from path names, user configuration files go
626 in `~/.ion2/` and the main configuration file is 'ion.lua'. (The other
627 `ioncore-*.lua` files have also been renamed.) There have been no notable
628 changes in the configuration files themselves, so your old files will
629 work if you move them to the correct directory and rename the changed
630 files. (`mv ~/.ion-devel ~/.ion2; cd ~/.ion2; mv ioncore.lua ion.lua;`
633 This release also finally contains a working PWM binary. (The ioncore+
634 scripts scheme was replaced with separate binaries statically linked
635 to ioncore.a.) Floating workspaces now support edge snapping and
636 sticky windows, but some PWM features are probably still missing.
638 Some bugs were also fixed and users are now force-fed the manual page
639 the first time Ion is started. Transients can be toggled between
640 top/bottom of the main window with Mod1+K T. The SSH query uses
641 `~/.ssh/known_hosts` for completion instead of a manually defined list.
643 There may be a few additions (e.g. the dock) and bug fixes, of course,
644 before the stable release, but this release should pretty much be what
645 the new "stable" Ion should look like. Please upgrade to it to help
646 weed out the bugs. Note that you need to upgrade Lua to the 5.0.1
654 It's finally time for a new release on Ion's development branch. Most
655 likely this will also be the last "big" release before finally, after
656 almost two years, releasing a new "stable" version of Ion. A few bug
657 fix and code clean-up releases should appear in between, though.
659 The most important additions, changes and non-changes in this release
663 * A little less broken extended character set and string encoding
665 * Extended WM hints fullscreen request support
666 * Hopefully a little clarified configuration file layout
668 * And most important of all:
670 > Configuration files written for the previous release should
671 > still work this time!
673 (However, Ion will complain of old drawing engine styles.)
675 The menu module provides both drop-down menus (in the stock configuration
676 pressing Button3 on a tab should show a context menu) and query-like
677 "in-mplex" menus (F12: main menu at screen level; Mod1+M: the same context
678 menu as above at frame level).
680 What was done enhance support for strings (mostly window titles) in
681 languages that need more than 8-bit character sets is:
683 * Remove UTF8 restriction and support almost arbitrary multibyte
684 encodings instead. (Statefull encodings will not work and combining
685 characters can cause clutter. Both are a sign of bad encoding, IMHO.)
687 * The XCreateFontSet routine that is used to load fonts in the kind
688 of structure the X utf8 and multibyte routines want apparently wants
689 to be able to load glyphs for all character sets specified in the
690 locale and therefore often fails if only single font is specified.
691 Therefore a kludge was added that tries loading more fonts while
692 keeping the fonts' size the same. (The ",*" kludge could load huge
693 fonts). Unfortunately this has a noticeable effect in startup time :(.
695 * There is no longer a system.mk option to enable utf8 (now multibyte)
696 support, but must still specifically be enabled with the -i18n
697 command line switch, mostly thanks to troublesome utf-8 locales.
699 Because Xlib's UTF-8 string drawing code is broken and very unlikely to
700 be fixed, decent text output in an UTF-8 locale is still unlikely and
701 dependent on the fonts loaded in the system. The Xmb routines that are now
702 used always use an iso10646-1 font even if other fonts are loaded and the
703 unicode font does not contain a particular glyph to be drawn. The use of
704 the Xutf8 routines in an utf8 locale can be enabled with the
705 `CF_DE_USE_XUTF8` compile-time option. The advantage of this is that
706 these routines seem to choose the font to draw particular character in
707 most cases more sanely. The downside is that there are other more serious
708 problems with unknown characters.
710 All in all, even if I'd like to support a universal move to UTF-8, thanks
711 to Xlib brokenness I can't really recommend using UTF-8 locales with Ion
712 and the default drawing engine if there's a decent alternative encoding.
713 Most if not all other stateless encodings shouldn't have the problems
714 UTF-8 has. An alternative drawing engine that didn't use the Xlib i18n
715 string drawing routines might solve the troubles with utf-8 support.
719 If you have saved a custom system.mk, you'll need to set LUAC
720 point to the Lua compiler there as some of the share/ files
727 It's been a while since the previous release as I wanted to freeze the
728 Lua configuration/scripting interface for this release and therefore
729 finish work on a few things. Well, on my part the interface is frozen,
730 but I will still accept constructive complaints for a short time and
731 after that the implemented parts of the scripting interface will be
732 frozen. But in all likelihood, if no one has anything else to say, but
733 "it's ok", "it sucks", the interface will no longer change, only possibly
736 What's new for this release then?
738 * Drawing engine module support.
739 * OO-style exported functions. The old `class_fn` functions are now
740 `WClass.fn` (an ugly wrapper is provided in `compat.lua`).
741 * No more screen-specific configuration or savefiles.
742 * Session name (can be specified on command line) instead of display
743 name based savefiles. Also affects query history and not just workspace
745 * Bug fixes, most small and one bigger (almost complete rewrite of
746 the split resizing algorithm).
747 * Some documentation improvements.
749 Converting configuration files.
751 Old `.lua` colour schemes and workspace save files can be automatically
752 converted to a format suitable to be loaded by this latest release.
753 Other files will have to be ported manually. To convert colour schemes,
754 use the script `utils/lookconv.lua`. The usage is
756 lookconv.lua look-old.lua > look-new.lua
758 To convert workspaces savefiles, use the script `utils/saveconv.sh`.
761 saveconf.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-DISPLAY.*.lua \
762 > ~/.ion-devel/SESSIONNAME/workspaces.lua
764 `DISPLAY` here is the actual display part of `$DISPLAY`, probably just `:0`.
765 '*' stands for all screens (if you have only one screen you could do with
766 perhaps just `workspaces-:0.0.lua`). SESSIONNAME is the name of the session
767 where you want to use the converted savefiles. Default session name for
768 `DISPLAY` is `default-session-DISPLAY` with the colon in `DISPLAY` converted
769 to a dash. For most people this is `default-session--0`. In the simplest
770 case the whole command line is therefore
772 saveconv.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-:0.0.lua \
773 > ~/.ion-devel/default-session--0/workspaces.lua
775 The scripts may or may not work and are only provided as a potential
776 convenience that will not be maintained and will be removed eventually.
782 Quite a few bug fixes and one most likely unnoticeable improvement:
786 * Fixed pointer warping on screen change.
787 * A bug in grab handler calling code could crash Ion when leaving
788 keyboard resize mode manually.
789 * Resize display was showing incorrect values for keyboard resize.
793 * Client window last height request bookkeeping code had been lost
794 when configure request policy was changed. This caused transient
795 sizes to be calculated incorrectly.
796 * Return from full screen mode to floatws had been broken.
797 * As the number of dynamic functions has been getting bigger, the
798 functions are now sorted on first use and then binary-searched
799 instead of naive linear searching.
800 * Screen lookup had been broken for windows that are not properly
807 Just some bug fixes and minor behavioural changes and improvements in
814 This release fixes some small problems with the previous release and
815 adds a workaround kludge for the XFree86 textprop bug (it's been fixed
816 but no release with the fix is available) that could cause Opera to
817 crash Ion when UTF8 support was enabled. I also added the winprop
818 needed for galeon's find dialog to default `kludges.lua` and there's
819 some extra documentation and defaults for some systems in system.mk.
825 Most changes in this release centre around making Ion more tolerant
826 to broken configuration files; for details see the ChangeLog. There
827 are also changes in binding configuration as I already mentioned in
828 an earlier poting. Namely `common-frame-bindings.lua` is gone and the
829 bindings previously set there (into variables that the `*ws.lua`
830 files later referenced) were moved to `ioncore-bindings.lua` and are
831 set using the new functions `mplex_bindings` and `genframe_bindings`
832 are were added. Old modified configuration files should still work,
833 however, but if you use `make_active_leaf_fn`, you will need to
834 include `compat.lua` as the `global_bindings` that used this were
835 replaced by bindings in `mplex_bindings` and the function
836 `make_current_clientwin_fn`.
838 There are also some (minor) bug fixes and a few other improvements
839 worth a mention. In particular all regions are now given names of
840 the form `WFoobar<n>` by default and `DEFAULT_MOD.."F9"` was bound to
841 create a new workspace without asking for a name. This binding and
842 `QueryLib.query_workspace` use the workspace type defined in the
843 variable `default_ws_type` instead of being hardcoded to `WIonWS`.
845 All objects passed to Lua now have a unique userdata (a `WWatch`
846 cached in a weak table) so they can be used e.g. as indices to tables.
852 This release unifies some parts of `WScreen` and `WGenFrame`, which makes
853 screen-level queries possible. (Later the queries for small frames might
854 be changed to be shown at screen level.) The statusbar restriction from
855 ion-devel-20030531 was also removed by this some change and a few
856 non-fatal bugs have been fixed.
862 A bug was discovered:
866 * An off-by-one error in `extl_l1_finalize` caused references to some
867 Lua tables (including large completions) never to be released.
869 It could be that this bug was causing some other errors in Lua as well.
870 Sometimes QueryLib bindings failed because some function generators
871 returned nil although they shouldn't. Adding dummy lines (!) in those
872 functions fixed the problem and for some reason this patch also seemed
873 to remove those problems.
876 One more note: as `ioncorelib.lua` and `querylib.lua` are now installed
877 in `$SHAREDIR`, you must remove the old files in `$ETCDIR` if installing
878 over a previous release or else there will be errors. You should also
879 not use any possible old copies you have in `~/.ion-devel/`. (One of the
880 reasons for moving these to `$SHAREDIR` is to stop users from making
881 copies of them as they are not configuration files.)
887 As the subject line says, Ion-devel-20030531 was just released. The short
890 * The license was changed from the Clarified Artistic License to the
891 GNU Library/Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
892 * Screen, viewport and root window renames and other changes (see below).
893 * Some installation directory changes; the ion-* helper programs are now
894 installed either in `$SHAREDIR` or `$EXTRABINDIR` and QueryLib searches
895 for them on the script path (`~/.ion-devel/`, `$ETCDIR`, `$SHAREDIR`,
896 `$EXTRABINDIR`) instead of assuming them being on `$PATH`.
897 * Client windows are now in a separate namespace.
898 * Resize/maximize/shade changes: Shading should work on `WIonFrame`s too
899 and shade mode is automatic when the client area gets too small when
900 resizing. Maximize toggle restores frame to previous size if shaded
901 instead of maximizing. The move/resize mode bindings were changed again
902 to be more consistent and predictable: Left/Right/Up/Down and F/B/P/N
903 grow the frame in the specific direction, Shift+keys shrink and in
904 case of floating frames, `DEFAULT_MOD+keys` move
905 * Returning from full screen mode should work on `WFloatWS`s too.
906 * Lots of minor fixes, export additions and clean-up.
908 As usual, see the (long!) list of new ChangeLog entries at the end of
909 this message for details.
912 I've finally personally switched from the old "stable" 20020207 to using
913 the latest development release at home too and I must say that it is
914 finally starting to look good. There are still things to be written, but
915 unless you need "proven" stability, I see no reason to sticking to that
916 old release anymore. Unless, of course, if you find a problem that I have
917 not encountered or simply have no need for the new features and don't want
918 to port your configuration files.
921 On screens, viewports, root windows and problems with the new
924 The objects previously called "screens" are now called "root windows"
925 and what were called "viewports" are called "screens" to better reflect
926 what the user sees. (When Xinerama is not used there's no difference
927 between a root window and a screen, but when Xinerama is used a root
928 window may be split over multiple screens.)
930 This release also creates so-called virtual root windows for each
931 Xinerama screen when there are more than one. This is to better separate
932 the windows on different screens and thus emulate normal multihead, the
933 main difference being that windows can be moved between screens.
934 Especially the virtual roots are there to keep the windows that are on
935 a floatws on the right screen.
937 Virtual root windows will, however, break a few apps:
939 * Mozilla -remote won't work because of its crappy method for looking
940 up existing windows that can't handle multiple levels of WM windows.
941 Nested workspaces have the same problem. There is, however, a simple
942 solution to this problem: gnome-moz-remote. It seems to use a saner
943 method for looking up an existing Gecko browser and also works with
944 at least Phoenix/MozillaFirebird and Galeon.
946 These two are problems only if you use floatws:s (other problems with
947 which virtual root windows are intended to solve):
949 * The background-setting apps I am aware of will require a following
950 'xrefresh' for the changes to be updated to the (transparent) virtual
951 roots. Background setting apps that support the `_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS`
952 property (which, I think, was meant for root window-sized WS
953 backgrounds) could be used to set a separate background for each
954 Xinerama screen, though. I am not aware of any such app.
955 * Some apps' resize and move features will behave erratically on those
956 Xinerama screens not at (0, 0) on the root window. This is again
957 because the apps are assuming there's at most one WM window between
958 them and the root and are requesting windows' positions incorrectly.
959 The ICCCM is quite vague on this and I think _all_ apps that I have
960 tried are doing it wrong but the way e.g. XMMS does it certainly is
961 not an interpretation of the ICCCM. The apps that now behave correctly
962 request position for the outermost WM window. Nested workspaces have
965 There is one more temporary problem:
967 * Status bar modules (and the dock module's statusbar mode) will be
968 *temporarily* broken when virtual roots are _not_ used. This will be
969 fixed later when parts of screen and frame code are unified (it should
970 then be possible to run Ion without any workspace modules and have
971 queries attached to screens). In the meanwhile, if you don't care about
972 the above-mentioned problems and want a statusbar (which probably needs
973 to be ported to this release), you can defined `CF_ALWAYS_VIRTUAL_ROOT`
980 There are quite a few small fixes and minor enhancements invisible to
981 the user in this release. The splitting functions were renamed to be
982 more consistent and there are a couple of enhancements in the Lua code
983 query that should make it much more usable. First, tab-completion can
984 now descend into tables and complete subexpressions. Secondly, the local
985 variable `_` in addition to 'arg[1]' is set to point to the the frame in
986 which the query is executing.
988 I have also written some new documentation that is now available from
995 The most notable change in this release is that the `target_id` system
996 was removed and instead client window status is also saved over
997 restarts in the saves/workspaces-* files. (It shouldn't be too hard
998 to hook a session management module over this.) Thanks to this
999 modification, floatframes can also save their status now. Note
1000 that if you restart from older version of Ion to this one, client
1001 window layout will be messed up.
1003 There are also a few bug fixes and code to save and load line editor
1010 There are lots of minor improvements in this release, see the
1011 new ChangeLog entries for details.
1017 Some minor feature enhancements and a few fixes in this new release:
1019 The file system scanning completions are now put in the background
1020 by receiving the data from external programs through pipes and select()
1021 for data in the main event loop. This way long taking completions don't
1022 block Ion from processing other events and NFS problems shouldn't hang
1025 Basic window stacking management support code was added. Transients
1026 on floatws:s should now be stacked above their parents. If you don't
1027 want to change your modified binding configurations at this point and
1028 need the functions `floatframe_raise/lower`, include `compat.lua`.
1034 This release again fixes some minor problems and enhances a few
1035 features. Most of the enhancements are related to UTF8 support and
1036 the floatws module. If UTF8 support is enabled, Ion now tries to
1037 load the "fixed" font at startup after setting up locales. If locales
1038 aren't properly set up, this probably fails and Ion will reset locale
1039 back to "POSIX" as this might make fonts loadable although support for
1040 non-ASCII characters will be crippled. It might now be safe for
1041 package maintainers to enable UTF8 support by default
1043 As apps seem to have switched to using `_NET_WM_NAME` for UTF8 titles
1044 and filling `WM_NAME` with crap, this property is also preferred over
1045 `WM_NAME` if set. Support for some other "extended" WM hints might be
1046 added in the future but I have no intentions of moking Ion NetWM-
1047 compliant. I might have thought of attempting to do so a few years
1048 ago when I last read the specification but it seems that since then
1049 they've filled it with lots of pointless bloat that may even be in
1050 opposition to Ion's goals. Take multi-parent transients, for example.
1052 Full error log is also displayed with xmessage on startup whether
1053 it is possible to continue or not.
1059 There was a bug in QueryLib written yesterday, therefore this release.
1065 I started converting the query code to Lua and discovered some rather
1066 silly bugs in the Lua interface so here's a new release with the new
1067 and improved query code included. The names of queries have changed
1068 (they're all in the table QueryLib defined in `querylib.lua` -- only
1069 `query_query` and a few temporary handlers are implemented in query.so)
1070 so your modified configuration files will be broken again :(.
1076 Be prepared to completely rewrite your configuration files once
1077 again: a new version of Ion-devel has been released that uses Lua
1078 <http://www.lua.org/> for all configuration. Version 5.0 of the
1079 language/library is required. Although scripting possibilities
1080 are now much better than before, there is one rather big drawback:
1081 Lua is not nearly as error-tolerant as Ion's old configuration
1082 parser so a syntax error in a file will cause the file not to be
1083 executed and may even cause Ion not to be able to start. More
1084 comments and documentation on scripting will follow at a later time.
1086 Libtool and libltdl are also now used to implement module support.
1087 Hopefully this will make compiling Ion easier on a wider range of
1088 platforms. (On the other hand, this could also induce new problems.)
1090 Finally, the preferred linking address for Ion's home page is now
1091 <http://www.iki.fi/tuomov/ion/>. The pages are still located at the
1092 old address, but this redirected address should be more permanent.
1098 Just some minor fixes, binary rename and better embedded workspace
1099 support in this release. I'm still contemplating whether to convert
1100 Ion to C++ and haven't written many things that I intended to as
1101 that decision will affect how those are implemented.
1103 To create an embedded workspaces in a frame, at the moment you have
1104 to modify the appropriate workspace save file (when Ion is not running!)
1105 by adding lines such as
1107 region "WFloatWS", "testiupotus" {
1110 inside the frame definition after the other options (flags, `target_id`;
1111 those options will be ignored if after any region definitions).
1113 One more thing to note: debugging infos are no longer automatically
1114 stripped from the ioncore binary or modules by 'make install' so that
1115 I don't have to explain how to get proper backtraces every time a bug
1116 is found. If you you are confident that you can send me proper backtraces
1117 when you find a bug (or maybe can fix it yourself), you can make the
1118 binary and the modules a _lot_ smaller by running 'strip' on them.
1124 The list of new ChangeLog entries is long this time, but I'm finally
1125 starting to get to what I started working on almost two years ago. Yes,
1126 there is *experimental* support for PWM-like "floating frame" workspaces.
1127 A lot of the functionality is still missing -- no need to complain of
1128 such at the time -- but the floatws.so module and basic functionality
1129 is there. Most notably perhaps a menu module is not yet implemented.
1130 (Porting the PWM menu code should a nice little task for whomever
1131 interested... *wink*.) To create some PWM workspaces, load the floatws.so
1132 module (should be loaded by default) and in `query_workspace` (F9)
1133 prefix workspace name with 'WFloatWS:' (or load the module before
1136 This release is also finally fully modularised: In addition to the
1137 ion core binary that can not function alone, there are the modules
1138 ionws.so, floatws.so and query.so. It is also possible statically
1139 compile the modules in the core binary if the system doesn't support
1142 There's also *experimental* UTF8 support that must be specifically
1143 enabled from system.mk. You must have XFree86 (4.x?) and C99 wide
1144 char support available (either libc directly or maybe libutf8+libiconv).
1145 Thanks to bugs (?) in some of the XFree86 Xutf8 functions, your locales
1146 must be properly set up or else X will stop drawing strings at non-ascii
1147 characters instead of ignoring them. See my earlier rants on the mailing
1148 list for reasons on not using the more standard Xmb functions.
1149 To actually see any special characters, you must load the necessary fonts
1150 by specifying a comma-separated list of fonts to the font and `tab_font`
1151 draw.conf options. Multiple font loading does not work when Xft support
1152 is enabled at the time being.
1154 There has been a lot of changes in the config files, again, and I can
1155 promise there's still more to come. See the ChangeLog for details.
1156 If you want to use your old workspaces configurations, move them to
1157 `~/.ion-devel/saves` and replace the strings "WFrame" and "WWorkspace"
1158 with "WIonFrame" and "WIonWS", respectively.
1164 I've made the bugfix release as promised. Get it from the usual place.
1170 There's a new major development release available from Ion web page.
1171 Not many changes are visible to the end user, though, but a lot was
1172 rewritten to be more flexible and simpler; see the ChangeLog for a
1173 full account. The older development release is also still available
1174 because this release can not be considered as stable after major
1175 changes to the code. The most visible changes are
1177 * Changes in binding configuration
1178 * A (mostly) working full screen mode toggle (see below)
1179 * The ability to switch workspaces while dragging tabs (experimental)
1180 * The ability to re-read draw.conf without restarting Ion
1184 Some notes on full screen mode toggle:
1186 * Ion doesn't detect programs trying to leave full screen mode--it
1187 should be possible to devise some method using window properties,
1189 * At least Opera unmaps the window also before changing the size to
1190 enter full screen mode, so Ion doesn't remember the last frame.
1191 * Mozilla sometimes has trouble entering full screen mode but when it
1192 succeeds, Ion remembers the last frame. However, if
1193 `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` is used to leave the full screen mode
1194 started from Mozilla, Mozilla doesn't know that the mode has been
1197 Clearly there should be some method of communication between Ion and the
1198 programs for full screen toggles to fully work. At the moment I suggest
1199 using `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` instead of the programs' native toggles
1200 unless the program has some special full screen mode and you really want