i3-layout-manager

Saving, loading and managing layouts for i3wm.

Preamble - dont worry, I solved all of this

i3 window manager supports saving and loading of window layouts, however, the features are bare-bone and partially missing. According to the manual, the layout tree can be exported into a json file. The file contains a description of the containers of a workspace with prefilled (and commented) potential matching rules for the windows. User is supposed to uncomment the desierd one (and/or modify it) and delete the unsused ones. Moreover, user should add a surrouding root container which is missing in the file (this baffles me, why cant they save it too?).

So doing it manually (which I dont want) consists of following steps, as described at i3wm.org:

1. export the workspace into jason using i3-save-tree --workspace ...
2. edit the json to match your desired matching rules for the windows
3. wrap the file in a root node, which defines the root split.
4. when needed, load the layout using i3-append ...

However, this plan has flaws. Its not scalable, its not automated and loading a layout does not work when windows are already present in the current workspace. To fix it, I built this layout manager. Currently, its a hacky-type of a shell script, but feel free to contribute :-).

How does it work?

1. The workspace tree is exported usin i3-save-tree --workspace ...
2. The tree for all workpsaces in the cofused monitor is exported using i3-save-tree --output ...
3. The location of the current workspace in the all-tree is found by matching the workspace-tree file on the monitor-tree file.

TODO

Dependencies

• vim/nvim
• jq
• i3
• rofi
• xdotool
• x11-xserver-utils

sudo apt-install jq vim rofi xdotool x11-xserver-utils