The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20090802010635/http://www.fvwm.org:80/documentation/manpages/unstable/FvwmTabs.php
FvwmTabs is a generic tabbing module for the fvwm window manager.
FvwmTabs is spawned by fvwm, so no command line invocation is possible.
The FvwmTabs module is capable of swallowing any fvwm window & treating it as a tab in a tab-manager window. A tab-manager is sometimes called a tabber. Each tab-manager can store any number of windows, each in its own tab. The number of tab-managers is limited only by system resources. Tab-managers can even be nested/swallowed within other tab-managers. (ie. a tab-manager can be added as an individual tab to another tab-manager.)
Here is a screenshot of an FvwmTabs tab-manager with an rxvt window selected. Note the buttons at the top which allow switching between applications.
FvwmTabs can be invoked by inserting the line:
Module FvwmTabs
in your .fvwmrc file. This can be placed on a line by itself, if FvwmTabs is to be spawned during fvwm's initialization, or can be bound to a menu, mouse button or keystroke to invoke it later.
FvwmTabs reads the same config file as fvwm when it starts up.
The following options are recognised by FvwmTabs:
- *FvwmTabs: activeFG color
- The text color of the button for the visible tab. The default color is yellow.
- *FvwmTabs: activeBG color
- The backgound color of the button for the visible tab. The default color is MidnightBlue.
- *FvwmTabs: inactiveFG color
- The text color of the buttons for the invisible tabs. The default color is antiquewhite.
- *FvwmTabs: inactiveBG color
- The backgound color of the buttons for the invisible tabs. The default color is royalblue.
- *FvwmTabs: activeRelief style
- The relief style to use for active buttons. style can be either raised, flat or sunken. The default style is sunken.
- *FvwmTabs: inactiveRelief style
- The relief style to use for inactive buttons. style can be either raised, flat or sunken. The default style is flat.
- *FvwmTabs: buttonYPadding pixels
- How much padding to use around top and bottom of tab buttons. The default value is 3 pixels.
- *FvwmTabs: pollRate ms
- Specifies how often to check for X events. ms is time in milliseconds. The default value, 250, should be fine for most users. If you are on a very slow machine you may wish to increase this.
- *FvwmTabs: buttonFont font
- The font to use on the tab buttons. The default font is Helvetica -12 bold.
- *FvwmTabs: titleFont font
- The font to use on the titlebar. The default font is Helvetica -12.
- *FvwmTabs: menuFont font
- The font to use on the menus. The default font is Helvetica -12.
- *FvwmTabs: fontSelector fontProgram
- The external font chooser program to launch when dynamically changing fonts. The default fontProgram is gfontsel --print -f "%f". Anti-gnome users might try xfontsel -print -pattern "%f". If set to none, no font menu options will appear.
- *FvwmTabs: autoSwallowClass className [tabManagerId], ...
- *FvwmTabs: autoSwallowResource resourceName [tabManagerId], ...
- *FvwmTabs: autoSwallowName name [tabManagerId], ...
- Specify windows to swallow automatically. These are comma-separated lists that specify the class/resource/name of a window and an optional tab-manager id into which the window should be swallowed. By default, the tab-manager id increments from zero - ie. 0 is the first tab-manager created, 1 the second, etc, but it may be overriden by specifying an argument to the NewTabber function. (No whitespace is allowed in tabber ids.) You can alternatively specify 'any' or 'lastFocus' which will put the window in the tab-manager with the least number of tabs or the last focused tab-manager, respectively. If no tab-manager number is specified, an implicit default value of 'any' is used. Note that className/resourceName/name can be a (Perl) regular expression.
- *FvwmTabs: balloonBG color
- The backgound color of the balloon popups that appear over the tab buttons. The default color is #C0C080.
- *FvwmTabs: balloonFont font
- The font to use on the balloon popups. The default font is Helvetica -12.
- *FvwmTabs: balloonWait ms
- How long the mouse cursor must pause (in milliseconds) over a tab button before the balloon pops up. The default value is 250.
- *FvwmTabs: balloonMsg msg
- Message to display in balloon popups. The default value is %tabNo:\n%iconText\n%title.
- *FvwmTabs: autoResize bool
- bool can be either true or false. If true, windows in the tab-manager automatically resize to the dimensions of the largest window in the tab-manager. The default value is false. If the user performs an explicit resize of a tab-manager window, all windows in the tab-manager are resized to the new window size.
- *FvwmTabs: stateFile file
- FvwmTabs has the ability to preserve its state (ie. remember the windows it has swallowed as tabs) b/w fvwm restarts. file specifies the name of a temporary file to record the state in, so it can be reconstructed when FvwmTabs restarts. The default file is
$FVWM_USERDIR/.fvwmtabs.state. - *FvwmTabs: fixedSizeTabs bool
- bool can be either true or false. If true, the tab-manager will ensure each tab-button has the same dimensions. If false, the selected tab is expanded so that it is fully visible. The default value is false.
- *FvwmTabs: showTitlebar bool
- Show internal titlebar. If set to true a titlebar appears below the row of tab-buttons and displays the title associated with the current window. This titlebar is capable of displaying long or multi-line titles. The default value is true.
- *FvwmTabs: useTMTitlebar bool
- Add the title associated with the selected tab to the tab-manager titlebar. (ie. the titlebar at the top of the window, distinct from the titlebar below the tab-buttons.) Default value is true.
- *FvwmTabs: dragDropIcon imageFile
- Specify the icon to display when performing a drag-&-drop operation to reorder the tab-buttons. FvwmTabs will search the ImagePath for this image unless an absolute filename (ie. filename begins with '/') is specified. The default value is none. If none (or an invalid file) is specified a * is used.
- *FvwmTabs: bBuggyFocus bool
- FvwmTabs tries to work around a limitation in Perl/Tk (there is no way to access the timestamp associated with WM_TAKE_FOCUS events). On some systems this doesn't work and sometimes tab-managers have trouble acquiring the focus. If this happens to you, try setting this option to true. This can lead to focussing race-conditions (tab-managers temporarily "steal" focus in some situations) but this is less annoying than not being able to focus at all.
- *FvwmTabs: enableSwallowDND bool
Swallow windows that (are moved to) overlap a tabber.
Note: drag-&-drop can be enabled for individual tabbers via the menu.
The default value is true.
- *FvwmTabs: swallowDNDTolerance tol
- Determines how much a window must overlap a tabber for it to be swallowed when drag-&-drop is enabled. If the value has a %-sign appended to it, windows must overlap by the specified percentage of the current size of the tabber. If no %-sign is present, the value is treated in units of pixels. The default value is 10 (pixels).
- *FvwmTabs: useIconsOnTabs bool
- Show the mini icon associated with each window on its tab button. Note: mini icons for apps that use EWMH icons look a bit distorted. This is because of the poor image resizing algorithm used in Tk. This sinactiveBG hould be rectified in the near future. The default value is true.
- *FvwmTabs: killIcon image
- Image to use on kill toolbar button. Default is none.
- *FvwmTabs: addIcon image
- Image to use on add toolbar button. Default is none.
- *FvwmTabs: swallowIcon image
- Image to use on add toolbar button when tabber will swallow next window to popup. Default is none. By using a separate icon to addIcon, this option provides visual feedback on when a tabber will unconditionally swallow the next window to popup.
- *FvwmTabs: releaseIcon image
- Image to use on release toolbar button. Default is none.
- *FvwmTabs: menuIcon image
- Image to use on menu toolbar button. Default is none.
6.1.�Additional Configuration
Images you may wish to use with the FvwmTabs module:
If you use a decent shell like zsh, you might like to add these functions to your ~/.zshrc file so that tabs/titles have more meaningful names when executing commands:
setTitleAndIcon () { print -nP '%{\e]2;'$1'\a\e]1;'$2'\a%}' }
preexec () { setTitleAndIcon $1 ${1%% *} }
precmd () { setTitleAndIcon %n@%m %m }
There are likely similar functions for other sh/csh shells.
7.�Functions for Bindings
A number of fvwm functions are available once the FvwmTabs module is started.
- NewTabber
Create a new tabber. Optional argument is tabber name. No whitespace is allowed in the tabber name. Can also prefix --geometry argument. Example:
NewTabber --geometry=+200+400 scottie
- Tabize
- Add a window (as a tab) to a tabber.
- NextTab
- Show/select the next tab.
- PrevTab
- Show/select the previous tab.
- LastTab
- Show/select the last selected tab (if there was one).
- ReleaseTab
- Release a tabbed window back to fvwm.
- ReleaseIconifyTab
- Release a tabbed window back to fvwm & iconify it.
- ReleaseAllTabs
- Release all windows in a tab-manager back to fvwm.
- ReleaseIconifyAllTabs
- Release all windows in a tab-manager back to fvwm & iconify them.
- CloseTabber
- Destroy a tab-manager. All windows in the tab-manager are released back to fvwm.
- AddTab
- Pick a new window to add to a tab-manager. Selecting this option & clicking on a window will add the selected window to the tab-manager.
- MultiAddTab
- Pick & add new windows to a tab-manager until ESC is pressed.
- ShowTab tabNo
- Show/select tab tabNo in the tab-manager. tabNo is zero-based. ie. 0 is the first tab, 1 is the second, etc.
- AddToTabber
- Add a window (as a tab) to a tab-manager.
- SwapLeft
- Swap the selected window with the window on its immediate left.
- SwapRight
- Swap the selected window with the window on its immediate right.
- SelectTabber
- Select a tab-manager for a new window to be added to.
- EnableDND
- Swallow windows that (are moved to) overlap a tabber.
By default, FvwmTabs reads a default user configuration file FvwmTabs-DefaultSetup which defines several useful key-bindings for FvwmTabs. You can tell FvwmTabs NOT to read this file with:
SetEnv FvwmTabs_NoDefaultSetup
This environment variable must be set before starting the module.
Then, pressing Ctrl-Alt-a (when the focus is in a tab-manager) will allow you to click on a window to add to the tab-manager.
All of the key bindings can be changed using the standard fvwm Key command and making use of the aforementioned fvwm functions. ie.
Key (FvwmTabs*) A A CM Function AddTab
Then, pressing Ctrl-Alt-a (when the focus is in a tab-manager) will allow you to click on a window to add to the tab-manager.
The default key bindings (set in the FvwmTabs-DefaultSetup file) are:
- Ctrl-Alt-a
- AddTab
- Ctrl-Alt-c
- CloseTabber
- Ctrl-Alt-i
- ReleaseIconifyTab
- Ctrl-Alt-Shift-I
- ReleaseIconifyAllTabs
- Ctrl-Alt-l
- LastTab
- Ctrl-Alt-m
- MultiAddTab
- Ctrl-Alt-n & Ctrl-Alt-Tab
- NextTab
- Ctrl-Alt-p
- PrevTab
- Ctrl-Alt-r
- ReleaseTab
- Ctrl-Alt-Shift-R
- ReleaseAllTabs
- Ctrl-Alt-t
- NewTabber
- Ctrl-Alt-<num>
- ShowTab <num>
- Ctrl-Alt-Left
- SwapLeft
- Ctrl-Alt-Right
- SwapRight
9.1.�Mouse Bindings on Tab Buttons
9.2.�Mouse Bindings on Toolbar Icons
There are 4 toolbar icons named (L-to-R): menu, release, add and kill.
Mouse-1 on the "menu" button will bring up a menu of options:
If the FvwmTabs module is correctly installed/configured, press Ctrl-Alt-t and a little window that looks something like this should appear:
A new tabber is created every time Ctrl-Alt-t is pressed.
11.2.�Adding windows to a tabber
There are a number of ways to add windows to a tabber:
- To add a single window to a tabber, click the add (orange) icon (or press Ctrl-Alt-a when the tabber is focussed). The mouse cursor will change to a crosshair. The next window selected (clicked on) will be swallowed by the tabber.
To cancel an add-window operation, press Esc.
- To add multiple windows to a tabber, click the add (orange) icon with the right mouse button (or press Ctrl-Alt-m when the tabber is focussed). All windows that are selected (clicked on) until Esc is pressed, will be swallowed by the tabber.
- Invoke the tab.zsh script from a shell to swallow the next window that pops up. For example:
tab.zsh xterm -bg blue -fg white
tab.zsh gnome-calculator
The xterm and calculator window will automatically be swallowed into the tabber that last had the focus.
- Invoke the fvwm SwallowNew function. Syntax is:
Function SwallowNew tabberId fvwmCommand
For example:
Function SwallowNew any Function StartupBrowser
Function SwallowNew lastFocus Exec exec rxvt
Function SwallowNew 2 Exec exec gvim header.hh
The fvwm command is executed when the tabber is ready to swallow the next window that is created.
11.3.�Releasing windows from a tabber
There are a number of ways to release windows from a tabber.
To release a single window from a tabber:
- Click the release (middle green) icon with the left mouse button.
- Press Ctrl-Alt-r when the tabber is focussed.
- Click the tab button for the window with the middle mouse button.
- To release and iconify a window, click the tab button for the window with the right mouse button.
The first two release the selected window. The last two release the window the tab button is associated with.
To release all windows from a tabber:
- Click the release (left green) icon with the middle mouse button.
- To release and iconify all windows, click the release (left green) icon with the right mouse button.
Tab-managers don't take focus when iconified.
FvwmTabs doesn't obey ClickToFocus mode.
FvwmTabs has a problem swallowing shaded windows.
Using Maximize to resize tab-manager windows prevents dynamic resizing from working.
Please send bug reports, feature requests and queries about FvwmTabs to the fvwm mailing list: <fvwm@fvwm.org>. Be sure to include the word "FvwmTabs" somewhere in the subject line.
FvwmTabs is GPL software.
