Automatically stack certain windows
On my communications workspace, I have an email client and a Jabber client, tiled horizontally (Thunderbird occupying the left 4/5 of the screen, and Gajim contact list the remaining 1/5 on the right). There may be other windows stacked with Thunderbird.
Now I want to arrange for all chat windows spawned by Gajim to open stacked with its contact list.
If I only opened chat windows from my contact list, they would open in place automatically. But they also open when someone messages me.
I understand that I can arrange for my initial layout to be like this:
- H-split container
- Stacked container
- Thunderbird
- Stacked container
- Gajim contact list
- Stacked container
Then, I plan to have a for_window rule matching all Gajim windows.
What do I need to write as the action, so as to move the new window to the second stacked container in that workspace?
As an ugly workaround, I used to use this:
assign [class="Gajim"] 2
for_window [class="Gajim"] focus; move right; move right; move left
but this doesn’t play well with switching Thunderbird’s parent container into tabbed layout. (I would need to increase the number of move rights to the maximum number of tabbed windows I can have.)
It would be nice to have some of the workspace features for containers, too. Being able to predefine (named) containers, setting a layout (other than the global default) and assigning windows to them would go a long way to help with cases like this. I'd certainly like to see something like that.
Adaephon: Experiment with http://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_vim_like_marks_mark_goto. Focus parent, set a mark, and some juggling is possible with this container.
joepd: I'm aware of that feature, but the container has to be already there in order to use it. And even with a mark on the container it is not possible to move a window into it by using that mark as target. Or am I missing something?
As far as I understand, marks add a different way to address a window or container, in case its class/instance/role is not unique enough. It does not, however, allow any new two-address commands involving a window and a container (such as `move window to container`).