ion-3-20090110 -------------- This is yet another maintenance release. ion-3-20081002 -------------- Some minor fixes again, including a few that should've already been in the previous release. ion-3-20080825 -------------- This release again fixes some issues found with the previous one. ion-3-20080707 -------------- This is yet another maintenance release fixing a few issues. ion-3-20080411 -------------- This is a maintenance release that fixes a few issues in the previous release. ion-3-20080207 -------------- . ion-3rc-20080103 ---------------- This release features a few minor fixes to behavioural regressions in the previous release, as well as some build configuration file self-documentation improvements. ion-3rc-20071220 ---------------- There are a few minor fixes in this RC, plus a major one related to layout restore under a session manager. ion-3rc-20071130 ---------------- This RC features various minor fixes, and some clarifications and simplifications to the license, which people seem to have had trouble understanding. ion-3rc-20071109 ---------------- It seems people are a bit slow, or only scaring them with a final release makes them report issues. So, still no stable release but a candidate, with many minor fixes and improvements wrt. important omissions. The most important changes are better behaviour of the unsplit operation, better handling of main window being closed before a transient, and use of the workspace's working directory for run query file name completion. ion-3rc-20070927 ---------------- Another attempt at last "rc" release. ion-3rc-20070902 ---------------- This release features a few minor fixes. If no major problems are discovered, this is likely to be the last "rc" release before the first and hopefully final "stable" release. ion-3rc-20070720 ---------------- This fourth "rc" release fixes some minor bugs and omissions in the previous release. ion-3rc-20070708 ---------------- This third "rc" release again simply fixes some minor problems in the previous release. ion-3rc-20070608 ---------------- This is the second "rc" release, and contains primarily bug fixes and other minor improvements. ion-3rc-20070506 ---------------- This is the first "rc" or "(stable) release candidate" release of Ion3. This means that there will not be any further major changes to it. Bugs will be fixed, and as an exception to the general feature freeze, some hooks may still be added, if deemed useful. Translations may also be included. After no new bugs (that can not be deemed features) have been found in this or following "rc" releases, the stable Ion3 will be released. Most of the changes in this release to the previous one already are bug fixes, in addition to some general clean-up. Other notable changes are: * Winprop matching improvements: it is possible to match against `is_dockapp` and `is_transient` (booleans), and there's a hack to support `class` and `instance` for dockapps too. * The default configuration puts dockapps in the statusbar's tray area. * The autoconf kludge has been removed, as I will have nothing to do with it, and nobody else seems to support or maintain it either. * Tab numbers are displayed when releasing modifiers in the `Mod1+K` submap. Distributors should pay heed to the name policy notice in the LICENSE file. ion-3ds-20070318 ---------------- This may be the last "ds" release if Ion3; if all goes well, the next release is likely to be an "rc". Some minor improvements will still be done, and minor requests may be accepted, so be quick. The most notable changes in this release from the previous one are: * Transients and queries in too small frames are "unsqueezed" out of them, unless disabled with `ioncore.set{ unsqueeze = false }`. * Some changes in default `cfg_ion.lua`: instead of loading various other files, just `cfg_default.lua` is loaded instead. * `mod_tiling.untile` (available in the context menu) may be used to decompose tilings into floating frames. (This is the approximate opposite of `mod_tiling.mkbottom` and the "new tiling" context menu entry.) * Improved context menus. * Slightly improved defaults style, using the drawing engine's added possibility of partial borders. * Various fixes and other improvements, in particular in relation to focus code. ion-3ds-20070203 ---------------- * There's been changes in padding/spacing usage in styles. Frames now surround stuff inside borders not with `spacing` pixels, but with `padding_pixels`. Spacing is only used to space things within the borders (all the tabs and the client window from each other). Consequently, custom styles may need to be updated to reflect this, by increasing the padding, possibly also altering/removing colour (to set it to background colour). * The use of drawing engine attributes has also changed, and strict ordering of them in the styles is no longer necessary. Additionally, much more attributes are supported, including the name of every statusbar meter. * Xinerama support is gone. In addition to being problematic as such, it had bit-rotted, and I will not waste time fixing it. * `ioncore.set` no longer supports the `default_ws_params` parameter for configuring the default layout. It is replaced by `ioncore.deflayout("default", { ... })`, which allows configuring other layouts as well, known by `mod_query.query_workspace` (F9). Some default layouts are configured in `cfg_layout.lua`. * It is now possible to automatically create new workspaces for windows with the `new_group` winprop. ion-3ds-20061223 ---------------- There's nothing major in this release, primarily just some minor fixes and tuning to the previous release, that it was time to release. ion-3ds-20061029 ---------------- Mostly this release still fixes issues in the big 3ds-20061015 release, but in addition there are some improvements in the query department: * Query activation key now cycles completions (So e.g. the in the context menu activated with META+M, this same key can be used to cycle through the alternatives.) This does not work for queries activated by submap bindings. * Likewise, it is no longer necessary to specify the key to use for cycling for `mod_menu.grabmenu`. * Control+R can now be used for history completion in queries. (Currently matching is done for full string up to 'point', but this may be changed to substring match.) * Note that the parametrisation of WEdln.complete has changed, and the second cycle parameter must be 'next' now instead of `true`. ion-3ds-20061020 ---------------- Fixes some (expected, but minor) issues in the previous release. ion-3ds-20061015 ---------------- * WIonWS and WFloatWS and the corresponding modules are gone, and your custom configuration files will be broken with regard to these. However, a partial backwards compatibility hack exists for layout savefiles. The F9 and META-F9 bindings now by default create workspaces with a tiled layout of two frames. To create an "empty" workspace, corresponding to the old WFloatWS, use the context menu (META-M) and choose "new-empty-workspace". It is also possible to change the default layout. * Note that if you restart from an old version to this new version of Ion, transients will stop working as expected for already existing windows. They will work for newly-created windows, however. * There are a few new sets of binding (including one for `WClientWin`!), and some old bindings may not work exactly as expected anymore. In particular, those for switching to full-screen mode. **It is probably best to start from scratch with your custom bindings.** * `WFrame.set_tabbar` is gone. If you absolutely want to get rid off the tabs, you must change the frame's "mode" with `WFrame.set_mode`. The mode "tiled-alt" has been intended for this, and the corresponding "framed-tiled-alt" style defaults to `bar = "none"`. * The rather popular `detach.lua` script from the scripts repository is obsoleted now, as Ion includes detach functionality in itself. To detach a window, use META-K D in the default bindings. To tile an existing frame from a workspace that doesn't have a tiling yet, use META-K B. ion-3ds-20060519 ---------------- Some notable changes in this release include * Lua 5.1 is now required. * Framed transients on by default now. New binding contexts "WFrame.toplevel" and "WMPlex.toplevel" were added to allow for separate sets of bindings for nested transient frames and top-level frames. Some of the bindings in the default binding maps that are likely to be unwanted on transient frames were moved to these contexts. Old custom bindings will continue to work unless they modify the defaults by unbinding some of the moved bindings. * Pressing Mod1+K K in the default bindings now switches to any region with the "activity" flag set (indicated by the a box at a corner of the screen), if there's one, before cycling to previously active region. The same effect can be achieved in your custom bindings with ioncore.activity_goto() or ioncore.goto_previous() ion-3ds-20050607 ---------------- This release mostly features minor bugfixes and other improvements. The most visible non-bugfix changes are: * Faster "fontset" filling kludge: only `-misc-fixed-*` fonts are tried. Ion should now load faster in UTF-8 environments, and usually with no less fonts in the fontset than before. (UTF-8 string drawing still does not fully utilise these fonts under XFree86, but it does under XOrg.) * Experimental auto-show-completions support, which is also on by default now. In this mode the Tab key can be used to cycle forward through the completions, and Shift+Tab backwards. Modify the settings seen in the new `mod_query.lua` to get normal Tab-completion, or change the completion delay. * The release scripts do not run automatically autoconf anymore so maybe a few more people would look into the README first. ion-3ds-20050322 ---------------- The most visible changes in this release are: * Mod1+space now toggles the scratchpad by default and Mod1+D the dock. * The `ion-(ssh|man|view|edit)` wrapper scripts were removed and instead the programs used can be configured in Ion's configuration files. * `ioncore.exec(_on)` also support the `:cmd` notation for "run cmd in xterm" familiar from the run query. The `::cmd` notation can be used to ask for enter to be pressed even when the program quit succesfully. * Those with custom configuration files should note that many exported toggle functions were changed and renamed, and now accept a string parameter incidating whether to toggle, set or unset the property. - `WClientwin.set_fullsreen` (replaces `WClientWin.toggle_fullscreen`) - `WRegion.set_tagged` (replaces `WRegion.tag/untag/toggle_tag`) - `WFrame.set_tabbar` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_tabbar`) - `WFrame.set_shaded` (replaces `WFrame.toggle_shade`) - `WFloatFrame.set_sticky` (replaces `WFloatFrame.toggle_sticky`) - `WMPlex.l2_set_hidden` (replaces `WMPlex.l2_hide/show`) - `mod_sp.set_shown(_on)` (replaces `mod_sp.toggle(_on)`) - `mod_dock.set_floating_shown_on` (replaces `mod_dock.toggle_floating_on`) - `WRegion.set_activity` (replaces `WRegion.clear_activity` and `WRegion.notify_activity`) For example, `WRegion.set_tagged(_, 'toggle')` should be used in place of `WRegion.toggle_tagged(_)` now. Obviously there are some other changes and fixes too. See the changelog for details as usual. ion-3ds-20050304 ---------------- This is mostly a bug fix release, but also features improved `mod_query.query_exec` (F3 key) completion support. Script writers should be aware that As a side effect of one of these bug fixes, many hooks are now called in "protected mode" and can not call any functions that modify the internal state of Ion, except ioncore.defer. ion-3ds-20050227 ---------------- The most important changes in this release are: * So-called "placeholders". With the help of these the positions of full-screen windows are remembered in their original frames, and don't just get inserted after currently active window when returning from full-screen mode. Under a session manager placeholders are also used to remember the original order of windows. * Improved `mod_statusbar` and `ion-statusd` communication, and colouring of important/critical meters. * A number of small fixes. ion-3ds-20041104 ---------------- This monthly snapshot adds a few new and improved features. * 'Grabbed menus' that have a single cycling key and activate selected entry when all modifiers have been released. See for an application. * Potentially blocking status meters are now in a separate ion-statusd program. Please write your additional status meters that do not monitor the state of Ion itself for ion-statusd (and contribute them in the Ion3 scripts repository at ). For help on writing such status meters, see e.g. source for `statusd_load` in `ext_statusbar/ion-statusd`. * Floating splits are now supported on plain tiled workspaces as well as on pane workspaces. To create such a split, use the workspace context menu (Mod1+M by default) or write your own bindings. * Line editor now supports history search; Control+Up/Down only scrolls through history entries with matching initial part. * Arbitrary winprop matching criteria is supported. Lua scripts have access to X properties. Of course there are some other minor fixes and improvements as well. ion-3ds-20040906 ---------------- This release finally includes a usable (yet still incomplete) version of the `mod_panews` workspace module (that has also bored the name 'autows' and 'rubberws' previously). The final outcome is not exactly what I initially planned, as those plans turned out not to be that workable. Instead, what `mod_panews` does is add to the basic tiled ionws approach overlappable splits and automatically filled panes that are initially empty. Each window is classified and assigned to the pane matching that classification. (The default classifications are T(erminal), V(iewer) and M(iscellaneous).) For a better feel for it, try it out yourself and please give feedback. The overlapping panes may be a bit confusing (this is one place where true translucency might actually be useful and not just eyecandy) at first, but you'll get used to them if you use the feature, and e.g. the Gimp works quite splendidly with the toolboxes in the 'M' pane and image windows in the 'V' pane -- although the simple initial size-based classification heuristics don't always get it right and overriding winprops (setting: `panews_classification`) should eventually added. In addition to the new module, this release adds support for translations of program messages and the manual page, regardless of whether such is of any use in a program like Ion or not. (Currently Finnish and Czech translations are available.) Of course there are some bug fixes and other minor additions as well, and the `./configure` script is also back, the abandonment of libtool being final now. ion-3ds-20040730 ---------------- The first thing you'll notice when you start up this release of Ion is that isn't reading your old configuration that. The next thing you should notice is a neat layout-adapting statusbar at the bottom of the screen. That's right, Ion now includes an `ext_statusbar` Lua script that is enabled by default and displays date/time/load/mail count in a configurable format. So why is it not reading your configuration and save files? Firstly, all of the `.lua` files were renamed to be indicative of their purpose. Secondly, there have been so many changes that your old files would be incompatible anyway. The `.lua` files are now named as follows: cfg_*.lua Configuration file that the user may wish to edit look_*.lua Drawing engine style file saved_*.lua Save file mod_*.lua Module stub loader ext_*.lua A bigger Lua extension without a C counterpart so that it is not a module The configuration file for `mod_foobar` or `ext_foobar`, if it has one, is, of course, `cfg_foobar.lua`. In the topic of file names, also note that the default installation paths and binary names have changed to include the component '3' to reflect the situation with many binary packages of Ion. You perhaps noticed above that modules have stub loaders now, so the user has no need to use the `ioncore.load_module` routine. All extensions and additional configuration files can now be loaded with 'dopath' (used to be 'include'). Also, the `menulib`, `querylib`, and `ioncorelib` Lua libraries are gone and instead their contents can be found in the same `mod_whatever` namespace with the corresponding module (the "stub" loader for these modules is a bit more than just a stub...). Some may also want to know that for `mod_*` and `ext_*` only the compiled .lc files are now installed, and not the source `.lua` files, thus removing redundant files and making the installation slightly smaller. There are few other changes to the contents of the configuration files as well, so you're probably best off simply rewriting your modified configuration files based on the new defaults. There quite likely won't be any more _big_ changes to the configuration files before the release of final Ion3, wherever that will be. (Most likely we won't see 3rc:s yet this year.) However, some functions and variables are still likely to be renamed or changed. In addition to being renamed, the layout savefile of this Ion release is incompatible with older releases. This is due to the changes made to the `WIonWS` (and `WAutoWS`) split tree code to make it more modularly extensible with the new kinds of nodes that `WAutoWS` requires. The `mod_autows` module has infact been through many changes since the last release, and I think I have the final form of it finally figured out. However, it is still far from finished and unlikely to be ready for use yet. ion-3ds-20040703 ---------------- The major new features of this snapshot release are: * `WMPlex` support for a sticky status display area to which `WIonWS`s adjust properly. Modified to the dock module to support this method. See the new `dock.lua` to set up the dock in the new embedded or old floating manner (the API for the latter has also changed). * Primitive session management support. There are also some bug fixes and many minor improvements; see the ChangeLog for details. Work on `mod_autows` has also started, but it isn't ready for use yet. ### Note on ./configure: ./configure does not exist for the moment as the source autoconf script is not up-to-date. Ion no longer uses libtool/libltdl due to problems with inter-module dependencies, and I have not asked Tom Payne to fix the script yet, as this change may not be final (although that is most likely the case; those without Linux-compatible libdl and a flexible binary format such as ELF will just have to link statically against the modules). ### Notes on session management: Ion loads `mod_sm` automatically when the SESSION_MANAGER environment variable that should be set by the session manager is set, so there's no need load it in `ion.lua`. When session management is in use, all entries in the 'Session' menu (previously 'Exit' menu) actually invoke the session manager to do the task. 'Save' asks the SM save the whole session and 'Exit' (ioncore.shutdown) asks it to shut down the session instead of just causing the WM to quite. To do the latter, use ioncore.resign. Unfortunately, all session managers I have tried (from Debian/unstable), are broken/incomplete in one way or another: xsm: doesn't support any requests from applications. This makes Ion's session menu complete unfunctional. The only way to restart/exit/save state is through xsm's window. gnome-session: This seems the most complete of the all the session managers and works fine until it is requested to shut down the session, when it dumps core and session state is lost if was not explicitly saved previously. A `~/.gnome2/session` file to use with Ion follows: [Default] num_clients=2 0,id=default0 0,Priority=0 0,RestartCommand=gnome-smproxy --sm-client-id default0 1,id=default1 1,Priority=10 1,RestartCommand=/usr/local/ion-3/bin/ion -smclientid default1 ksmserver: Only supports a global shutdown request, so that Ion can not be restarted or session state saved in the middle of a session. ion-3ds-20040316 ---------------- This is the first development snapshot release of what is to be Ion3. The most visible changes to Ion2 so far are: * Default installation directory is `/usr/local/ion-3` while user configuration files go in `~/.ion3` * The `mod_sp` module was added. It creates an extra toggleable "scratchpad" frame on each screen. Toggle is for now bound by default to Mod1+section, which should be very conveniently located on most Nordic keyboards (left of "1"), but you may have to change it. The scratchpad should be nice for xconsole or similar monitors, xmessage and other popups and just as temporary holding space for windows. * All modules except the drawing engine are now called `mod_something`. * Man-page complection supports a cache of known man-pages for faster completion. See the README for instructions on setting up a cronjob or manually generating the index if you want to use the feature. Also `query_man_path` is no longer used. Instead we try the `ION_MC_MANPATH` and `MANPATH` environment variables and the 'manpath' program. * Exported functions are now separated into tables (namespaces) instead of cluttering the globals table. Some frequently used configuration functions are imported into the globals table, though. Some functions have also been removed or renamed for simpler and more consistent function set. * New binding configuration mechanism. Dozens of `*_bindings` functions were replaced with a single `[ioncorelib.]defbindings` function that accepts a context parameter. Callbacks are specified as strings (although passing functions still works) to make it easier for external configuration programs to understand the configuration files and perhaps remove some confusion among users who do not care to read a tiny bit of Lua documentation and understand the concept of anonymous functions. * It is now also possible to retrieve a list of bindings with `ioncorelib.getbindings`, for example, for self-documentation. * Single move/resize mode bindings instead of separate for both ionframe and floatframe. There are also quite a few internal changes; see the ChangeLog for details. No documentation tarball is available at the moment as the documentation is out-of-date except for the function reference. If you need the reference, just checkout the documentation from the Subversion repository with svn co http://tao.uab.es/ion/svn/ion-doc/trunk ion-doc-3ds and build the documentation. ion-2rc-20040114 ---------------- This release is finally what can be called "Ion 2 release candidate #1". No more new features will be added to "Ion 2" after this release, and the configuration interface has already been frozen for a while. I will wait a couple of weeks for bug reports, and if nothing serious is found, the new stable Ion should finally be released then. The most notable changes since the previous release are: * The dock module is included * An optional autoconf script was added * A few minor bugs were fixed * Some incomplete features were polished, especially focus control on floatws, and: * Changes in X keyboard map are supported now (so e.g. switching to dvorak after Ion has started should update the bindings to match the locations of symbols in the dvorak layout). About the version numbering scheme: Due to a demand of a version numbering scheme more indicative of the status of the project, I was thinking of various different new version numbering schemes for this release: ion-2rc1 (then 2r1, 3d1, etc.), ion-2-20040114-rc1, ion-2.20040114rc1, ion-20040114-2rc1, etc.). It would've been nice if simple lexicographical sorting could be used to order the packages, but in the end I decided to stick with a scheme that is consistent with the 'ion-devel' package names: project-branch_and_status-release_date Therefore this release is 'ion-2rc-20040114', and the "stable" one will be 'ion-2-20040???'. ion-devel-20031211 ------------------ This is a big clean-up release. The most noticeable changes are that '-devel' has been removed from path names, user configuration files go in `~/.ion2/` and the main configuration file is 'ion.lua'. (The other `ioncore-*.lua` files have also been renamed.) There have been no notable changes in the configuration files themselves, so your old files will work if you move them to the correct directory and rename the changed files. (`mv ~/.ion-devel ~/.ion2; cd ~/.ion2; mv ioncore.lua ion.lua;` etc.) This release also finally contains a working PWM binary. (The ioncore+ scripts scheme was replaced with separate binaries statically linked to ioncore.a.) Floating workspaces now support edge snapping and sticky windows, but some PWM features are probably still missing. Some bugs were also fixed and users are now force-fed the manual page the first time Ion is started. Transients can be toggled between top/bottom of the main window with Mod1+K T. The SSH query uses `~/.ssh/known_hosts` for completion instead of a manually defined list. There may be a few additions (e.g. the dock) and bug fixes, of course, before the stable release, but this release should pretty much be what the new "stable" Ion should look like. Please upgrade to it to help weed out the bugs. Note that you need to upgrade Lua to the 5.0.1 pre-release. ion-devel-20031119 ------------------ It's finally time for a new release on Ion's development branch. Most likely this will also be the last "big" release before finally, after almost two years, releasing a new "stable" version of Ion. A few bug fix and code clean-up releases should appear in between, though. The most important additions, changes and non-changes in this release are: * Menu module * A little less broken extended character set and string encoding support * Extended WM hints fullscreen request support * Hopefully a little clarified configuration file layout * Quite a few fixes * And most important of all: > Configuration files written for the previous release should > still work this time! (However, Ion will complain of old drawing engine styles.) The menu module provides both drop-down menus (in the stock configuration pressing Button3 on a tab should show a context menu) and query-like "in-mplex" menus (F12: main menu at screen level; Mod1+M: the same context menu as above at frame level). What was done enhance support for strings (mostly window titles) in languages that need more than 8-bit character sets is: * Remove UTF8 restriction and support almost arbitrary multibyte encodings instead. (Statefull encodings will not work and combining characters can cause clutter. Both are a sign of bad encoding, IMHO.) * The XCreateFontSet routine that is used to load fonts in the kind of structure the X utf8 and multibyte routines want apparently wants to be able to load glyphs for all character sets specified in the locale and therefore often fails if only single font is specified. Therefore a kludge was added that tries loading more fonts while keeping the fonts' size the same. (The ",*" kludge could load huge fonts). Unfortunately this has a noticeable effect in startup time :(. * There is no longer a system.mk option to enable utf8 (now multibyte) support, but must still specifically be enabled with the -i18n command line switch, mostly thanks to troublesome utf-8 locales. Because Xlib's UTF-8 string drawing code is broken and very unlikely to be fixed, decent text output in an UTF-8 locale is still unlikely and dependent on the fonts loaded in the system. The Xmb routines that are now used always use an iso10646-1 font even if other fonts are loaded and the unicode font does not contain a particular glyph to be drawn. The use of the Xutf8 routines in an utf8 locale can be enabled with the `CF_DE_USE_XUTF8` compile-time option. The advantage of this is that these routines seem to choose the font to draw particular character in most cases more sanely. The downside is that there are other more serious problems with unknown characters. All in all, even if I'd like to support a universal move to UTF-8, thanks to Xlib brokenness I can't really recommend using UTF-8 locales with Ion and the default drawing engine if there's a decent alternative encoding. Most if not all other stateless encodings shouldn't have the problems UTF-8 has. An alternative drawing engine that didn't use the Xlib i18n string drawing routines might solve the troubles with utf-8 support. One more note: If you have saved a custom system.mk, you'll need to set LUAC point to the Lua compiler there as some of the share/ files are compiled now. ion-devel-20030810 ------------------ It's been a while since the previous release as I wanted to freeze the Lua configuration/scripting interface for this release and therefore finish work on a few things. Well, on my part the interface is frozen, but I will still accept constructive complaints for a short time and after that the implemented parts of the scripting interface will be frozen. But in all likelihood, if no one has anything else to say, but "it's ok", "it sucks", the interface will no longer change, only possibly grow. What's new for this release then? * Drawing engine module support. * OO-style exported functions. The old `class_fn` functions are now `WClass.fn` (an ugly wrapper is provided in `compat.lua`). * No more screen-specific configuration or savefiles. * Session name (can be specified on command line) instead of display name based savefiles. Also affects query history and not just workspace saves. * Bug fixes, most small and one bigger (almost complete rewrite of the split resizing algorithm). * Some documentation improvements. Converting configuration files. Old `.lua` colour schemes and workspace save files can be automatically converted to a format suitable to be loaded by this latest release. Other files will have to be ported manually. To convert colour schemes, use the script `utils/lookconv.lua`. The usage is lookconv.lua look-old.lua > look-new.lua To convert workspaces savefiles, use the script `utils/saveconv.sh`. The usage is saveconf.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-DISPLAY.*.lua \ > ~/.ion-devel/SESSIONNAME/workspaces.lua `DISPLAY` here is the actual display part of `$DISPLAY`, probably just `:0`. '*' stands for all screens (if you have only one screen you could do with perhaps just `workspaces-:0.0.lua`). SESSIONNAME is the name of the session where you want to use the converted savefiles. Default session name for `DISPLAY` is `default-session-DISPLAY` with the colon in `DISPLAY` converted to a dash. For most people this is `default-session--0`. In the simplest case the whole command line is therefore saveconv.sh ~/.ion-devel/saves/workspaces-:0.0.lua \ > ~/.ion-devel/default-session--0/workspaces.lua The scripts may or may not work and are only provided as a potential convenience that will not be maintained and will be removed eventually. ion-devel-20030623 ------------------ Quite a few bug fixes and one most likely unnoticeable improvement: 2003-06-23: * Fixed pointer warping on screen change. * A bug in grab handler calling code could crash Ion when leaving keyboard resize mode manually. * Resize display was showing incorrect values for keyboard resize. 2003-06-21: * Client window last height request bookkeeping code had been lost when configure request policy was changed. This caused transient sizes to be calculated incorrectly. * Return from full screen mode to floatws had been broken. * As the number of dynamic functions has been getting bigger, the functions are now sorted on first use and then binary-searched instead of naive linear searching. * Screen lookup had been broken for windows that are not properly on any screen. ion-devel-20030620 ------------------ Just some bug fixes and minor behavioural changes and improvements in this release: ion-devel-20030617 ------------------ This release fixes some small problems with the previous release and adds a workaround kludge for the XFree86 textprop bug (it's been fixed but no release with the fix is available) that could cause Opera to crash Ion when UTF8 support was enabled. I also added the winprop needed for galeon's find dialog to default `kludges.lua` and there's some extra documentation and defaults for some systems in system.mk. ion-devel-20030614 ------------------ Most changes in this release centre around making Ion more tolerant to broken configuration files; for details see the ChangeLog. There are also changes in binding configuration as I already mentioned in an earlier poting. Namely `common-frame-bindings.lua` is gone and the bindings previously set there (into variables that the `*ws.lua` files later referenced) were moved to `ioncore-bindings.lua` and are set using the new functions `mplex_bindings` and `genframe_bindings` are were added. Old modified configuration files should still work, however, but if you use `make_active_leaf_fn`, you will need to include `compat.lua` as the `global_bindings` that used this were replaced by bindings in `mplex_bindings` and the function `make_current_clientwin_fn`. There are also some (minor) bug fixes and a few other improvements worth a mention. In particular all regions are now given names of the form `WFoobar` by default and `DEFAULT_MOD.."F9"` was bound to create a new workspace without asking for a name. This binding and `QueryLib.query_workspace` use the workspace type defined in the variable `default_ws_type` instead of being hardcoded to `WIonWS`. All objects passed to Lua now have a unique userdata (a `WWatch` cached in a weak table) so they can be used e.g. as indices to tables. ion-devel-20030606 ------------------ This release unifies some parts of `WScreen` and `WGenFrame`, which makes screen-level queries possible. (Later the queries for small frames might be changed to be shown at screen level.) The statusbar restriction from ion-devel-20030531 was also removed by this some change and a few non-fatal bugs have been fixed. ion-devel-20030601 ------------------ A bug was discovered: 2003-06-01: * An off-by-one error in `extl_l1_finalize` caused references to some Lua tables (including large completions) never to be released. It could be that this bug was causing some other errors in Lua as well. Sometimes QueryLib bindings failed because some function generators returned nil although they shouldn't. Adding dummy lines (!) in those functions fixed the problem and for some reason this patch also seemed to remove those problems. One more note: as `ioncorelib.lua` and `querylib.lua` are now installed in `$SHAREDIR`, you must remove the old files in `$ETCDIR` if installing over a previous release or else there will be errors. You should also not use any possible old copies you have in `~/.ion-devel/`. (One of the reasons for moving these to `$SHAREDIR` is to stop users from making copies of them as they are not configuration files.) ion-devel-20030531 ------------------ As the subject line says, Ion-devel-20030531 was just released. The short list of changes is: * The license was changed from the Clarified Artistic License to the GNU Library/Lesser General Public License (LGPL). * Screen, viewport and root window renames and other changes (see below). * Some installation directory changes; the ion-* helper programs are now installed either in `$SHAREDIR` or `$EXTRABINDIR` and QueryLib searches for them on the script path (`~/.ion-devel/`, `$ETCDIR`, `$SHAREDIR`, `$EXTRABINDIR`) instead of assuming them being on `$PATH`. * Client windows are now in a separate namespace. * Resize/maximize/shade changes: Shading should work on `WIonFrame`s too and shade mode is automatic when the client area gets too small when resizing. Maximize toggle restores frame to previous size if shaded instead of maximizing. The move/resize mode bindings were changed again to be more consistent and predictable: Left/Right/Up/Down and F/B/P/N grow the frame in the specific direction, Shift+keys shrink and in case of floating frames, `DEFAULT_MOD+keys` move * Returning from full screen mode should work on `WFloatWS`s too. * Lots of minor fixes, export additions and clean-up. As usual, see the (long!) list of new ChangeLog entries at the end of this message for details. I've finally personally switched from the old "stable" 20020207 to using the latest development release at home too and I must say that it is finally starting to look good. There are still things to be written, but unless you need "proven" stability, I see no reason to sticking to that old release anymore. Unless, of course, if you find a problem that I have not encountered or simply have no need for the new features and don't want to port your configuration files. On screens, viewports, root windows and problems with the new implementation The objects previously called "screens" are now called "root windows" and what were called "viewports" are called "screens" to better reflect what the user sees. (When Xinerama is not used there's no difference between a root window and a screen, but when Xinerama is used a root window may be split over multiple screens.) This release also creates so-called virtual root windows for each Xinerama screen when there are more than one. This is to better separate the windows on different screens and thus emulate normal multihead, the main difference being that windows can be moved between screens. Especially the virtual roots are there to keep the windows that are on a floatws on the right screen. Virtual root windows will, however, break a few apps: * Mozilla -remote won't work because of its crappy method for looking up existing windows that can't handle multiple levels of WM windows. Nested workspaces have the same problem. There is, however, a simple solution to this problem: gnome-moz-remote. It seems to use a saner method for looking up an existing Gecko browser and also works with at least Phoenix/MozillaFirebird and Galeon. These two are problems only if you use floatws:s (other problems with which virtual root windows are intended to solve): * The background-setting apps I am aware of will require a following 'xrefresh' for the changes to be updated to the (transparent) virtual roots. Background setting apps that support the `_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS` property (which, I think, was meant for root window-sized WS backgrounds) could be used to set a separate background for each Xinerama screen, though. I am not aware of any such app. * Some apps' resize and move features will behave erratically on those Xinerama screens not at (0, 0) on the root window. This is again because the apps are assuming there's at most one WM window between them and the root and are requesting windows' positions incorrectly. The ICCCM is quite vague on this and I think _all_ apps that I have tried are doing it wrong but the way e.g. XMMS does it certainly is not an interpretation of the ICCCM. The apps that now behave correctly request position for the outermost WM window. Nested workspaces have the same problem. There is one more temporary problem: * Status bar modules (and the dock module's statusbar mode) will be *temporarily* broken when virtual roots are _not_ used. This will be fixed later when parts of screen and frame code are unified (it should then be possible to run Ion without any workspace modules and have queries attached to screens). In the meanwhile, if you don't care about the above-mentioned problems and want a statusbar (which probably needs to be ported to this release), you can defined `CF_ALWAYS_VIRTUAL_ROOT` when compiling Ion. ion-devel-20030510 ------------------ There are quite a few small fixes and minor enhancements invisible to the user in this release. The splitting functions were renamed to be more consistent and there are a couple of enhancements in the Lua code query that should make it much more usable. First, tab-completion can now descend into tables and complete subexpressions. Secondly, the local variable `_` in addition to 'arg[1]' is set to point to the the frame in which the query is executing. I have also written some new documentation that is now available from the Ion web page. ion-devel-20030506 ------------------ The most notable change in this release is that the `target_id` system was removed and instead client window status is also saved over restarts in the saves/workspaces-* files. (It shouldn't be too hard to hook a session management module over this.) Thanks to this modification, floatframes can also save their status now. Note that if you restart from older version of Ion to this one, client window layout will be messed up. There are also a few bug fixes and code to save and load line editor history was added. ion-devel-20030503 ------------------ There are lots of minor improvements in this release, see the new ChangeLog entries for details. ion-devel-20030427 ------------------ Some minor feature enhancements and a few fixes in this new release: The file system scanning completions are now put in the background by receiving the data from external programs through pipes and select() for data in the main event loop. This way long taking completions don't block Ion from processing other events and NFS problems shouldn't hang it. Basic window stacking management support code was added. Transients on floatws:s should now be stacked above their parents. If you don't want to change your modified binding configurations at this point and need the functions `floatframe_raise/lower`, include `compat.lua`. ion-devel-20030412 ------------------ This release again fixes some minor problems and enhances a few features. Most of the enhancements are related to UTF8 support and the floatws module. If UTF8 support is enabled, Ion now tries to load the "fixed" font at startup after setting up locales. If locales aren't properly set up, this probably fails and Ion will reset locale back to "POSIX" as this might make fonts loadable although support for non-ASCII characters will be crippled. It might now be safe for package maintainers to enable UTF8 support by default As apps seem to have switched to using `_NET_WM_NAME` for UTF8 titles and filling `WM_NAME` with crap, this property is also preferred over `WM_NAME` if set. Support for some other "extended" WM hints might be added in the future but I have no intentions of moking Ion NetWM- compliant. I might have thought of attempting to do so a few years ago when I last read the specification but it seems that since then they've filled it with lots of pointless bloat that may even be in opposition to Ion's goals. Take multi-parent transients, for example. Full error log is also displayed with xmessage on startup whether it is possible to continue or not. ion-devel-20030410 ------------------ There was a bug in QueryLib written yesterday, therefore this release. ion-devel-20030409 ------------------ I started converting the query code to Lua and discovered some rather silly bugs in the Lua interface so here's a new release with the new and improved query code included. The names of queries have changed (they're all in the table QueryLib defined in `querylib.lua` -- only `query_query` and a few temporary handlers are implemented in query.so) so your modified configuration files will be broken again :(. ion-devel-20030408 ------------------ Be prepared to completely rewrite your configuration files once again: a new version of Ion-devel has been released that uses Lua for all configuration. Version 5.0 of the language/library is required. Although scripting possibilities are now much better than before, there is one rather big drawback: Lua is not nearly as error-tolerant as Ion's old configuration parser so a syntax error in a file will cause the file not to be executed and may even cause Ion not to be able to start. More comments and documentation on scripting will follow at a later time. Libtool and libltdl are also now used to implement module support. Hopefully this will make compiling Ion easier on a wider range of platforms. (On the other hand, this could also induce new problems.) Finally, the preferred linking address for Ion's home page is now . The pages are still located at the old address, but this redirected address should be more permanent. ion-devel-20030327 ------------------ Just some minor fixes, binary rename and better embedded workspace support in this release. I'm still contemplating whether to convert Ion to C++ and haven't written many things that I intended to as that decision will affect how those are implemented. To create an embedded workspaces in a frame, at the moment you have to modify the appropriate workspace save file (when Ion is not running!) by adding lines such as region "WFloatWS", "testiupotus" { } inside the frame definition after the other options (flags, `target_id`; those options will be ignored if after any region definitions). One more thing to note: debugging infos are no longer automatically stripped from the ioncore binary or modules by 'make install' so that I don't have to explain how to get proper backtraces every time a bug is found. If you you are confident that you can send me proper backtraces when you find a bug (or maybe can fix it yourself), you can make the binary and the modules a _lot_ smaller by running 'strip' on them. ion-devel-20030311 ------------------ The list of new ChangeLog entries is long this time, but I'm finally starting to get to what I started working on almost two years ago. Yes, there is *experimental* support for PWM-like "floating frame" workspaces. A lot of the functionality is still missing -- no need to complain of such at the time -- but the floatws.so module and basic functionality is there. Most notably perhaps a menu module is not yet implemented. (Porting the PWM menu code should a nice little task for whomever interested... *wink*.) To create some PWM workspaces, load the floatws.so module (should be loaded by default) and in `query_workspace` (F9) prefix workspace name with 'WFloatWS:' (or load the module before ionws.so). This release is also finally fully modularised: In addition to the ion core binary that can not function alone, there are the modules ionws.so, floatws.so and query.so. It is also possible statically compile the modules in the core binary if the system doesn't support libdl. There's also *experimental* UTF8 support that must be specifically enabled from system.mk. You must have XFree86 (4.x?) and C99 wide char support available (either libc directly or maybe libutf8+libiconv). Thanks to bugs (?) in some of the XFree86 Xutf8 functions, your locales must be properly set up or else X will stop drawing strings at non-ascii characters instead of ignoring them. See my earlier rants on the mailing list for reasons on not using the more standard Xmb functions. To actually see any special characters, you must load the necessary fonts by specifying a comma-separated list of fonts to the font and `tab_font` draw.conf options. Multiple font loading does not work when Xft support is enabled at the time being. There has been a lot of changes in the config files, again, and I can promise there's still more to come. See the ChangeLog for details. If you want to use your old workspaces configurations, move them to `~/.ion-devel/saves` and replace the strings "WFrame" and "WWorkspace" with "WIonFrame" and "WIonWS", respectively. ion-devel-20030225 ------------------ I've made the bugfix release as promised. Get it from the usual place. ion-devel-20030223 ------------------ There's a new major development release available from Ion web page. Not many changes are visible to the end user, though, but a lot was rewritten to be more flexible and simpler; see the ChangeLog for a full account. The older development release is also still available because this release can not be considered as stable after major changes to the code. The most visible changes are * Changes in binding configuration * A (mostly) working full screen mode toggle (see below) * The ability to switch workspaces while dragging tabs (experimental) * The ability to re-read draw.conf without restarting Ion * Some bug fixes. Some notes on full screen mode toggle: * Ion doesn't detect programs trying to leave full screen mode--it should be possible to devise some method using window properties, however. * At least Opera unmaps the window also before changing the size to enter full screen mode, so Ion doesn't remember the last frame. * Mozilla sometimes has trouble entering full screen mode but when it succeeds, Ion remembers the last frame. However, if `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` is used to leave the full screen mode started from Mozilla, Mozilla doesn't know that the mode has been left. Clearly there should be some method of communication between Ion and the programs for full screen toggles to fully work. At the moment I suggest using `clientwin_toggle_fullscreen` instead of the programs' native toggles unless the program has some special full screen mode and you really want it.