Re: [dwm] [PATCH] An experiment with X resources

"Anselm R. Garbe" <arg_AT_suckless.org> writes:

> it won't last long that the need arises to also configure the key
> bindings, and the terminal command, and the dmenu command, and what not
> using such capabilities.

Actually... :-)

What wasn't in that patch, but is in my tree, is a little convenience
function that lets you define commands by name in .Xresources:

  Dwm.command.xterm: urxvt -bg red
  Dwm.command.browser: opera

and then bind them in config.h

  Key keys[] = {
  [...]
  { MODKEY, XK_Return, spawn_command, "xterm" }
  { MODKEY | ShiftMask, XK_Return, spawn_command, "browser" }
  [...]
  }

At present, my spawn_command is a no-op if the corresponding
Dwm.command.* X resource isn't defined.

Unfortunately, to do this requires that xrdb doesn't get freed at the end
of setup(), so I need to rethink this a bit before I'll be happy with it.

I also now configure my mwfact, nmaster, nrows and ncols parameters for
my 'supertile()' through X resources.

For me, this gives a sweet spot between runtime configurability and
keeping code complexity low, with compiled-in key bindings which are
constant across all the systems I use, but runtime configurable colours,
rules, tag names and commands, which vary from system to system.

I used X resources not because I think they're a nice system per se, but
rather because I end up having to use them for other X apps anyway. I
didn't fancy trying to express a rules table as a command line argument
or environment variable!

> Besides this, the X resource file format always seemed insane to me.

Yes, I agree. Many of the design choices in Xlib are baroque to the point
of insanity.

Cheers,

Chris.
Received on Mon Sep 24 2007 - 21:50:56 UTC