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<title>The Spectrwm Window Manager</title>
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<center><h3>The spectrwm window manager</h3></center>
<a href="https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/spectrwm">The spectrwm
window manager</a> was inspired by xmonad and <a href="dwm.html">dwm</a>. It shares several
characteristics of dwm and has several nice features of its own, things
that I always had to add to dwm with scripts or patches.  The downside of
that is that it's a bit bigger, with more dependencies, than dwm, but even
on an old machine, it would be considered a very lightweight and fast
window manager. <p>

It was originally named scrotwm.  Whether the humor was amusing, infantile,
or both can be left to the judgement of the reader.  Some people were
offended and eventually the name was changed to spectrwm.<p>

After installation, a default spectrwm.conf is created.  If building from
source, it will be in the spectrwm directory created after untarring the
tarball.  In Ubuntu based systems, as well as Fedora, it's /etc/spectrwm.conf. 
In FreeBSD it's /usr/local/etc/spectrwm.conf<p>
Copy this file to your home directory.
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
cd
cp /etc/spectrwm.conf .spectrwm.conf
</pre>
</td>
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</table>
<p>
Note the period before the name in your home directory.  That's making it a
hidden file. <p>
The file is fairly straightforward and has pretty sane defaults.  The key
bindings are described in the man page.  Between the descriptions in the
file and the man page, even the newcomer shouldn't have much trouble.  This
page is to just touch upon some things said newcomer may overlook.<p>
Like many tiling window managers, Mod1 (the alt key), shift, and return
launches an xterm by default. Mod1 and p will launch dmenu, which, if you're
not familiar with it, is a very handy little application--it will appear by
default, at the top of the screen and you can enter the name of an
application into it.  It has automatic tab completion, so if you enter the
first few letters of thunderbird, for example, it will complete the
word--you can then hit enter and it will launch thunderbird.<p>

The first window, on the left, is the master window.  As you add other
windows, they will open in a stack on the right, automatically sizing
themselves so that they can fit.  To swap a window with the master window,
Mod1 and return will put the focused window on the left, as the main
window.  So, you might have a browser on the left and two or three
terminals on the right. If you're doing something involved in one terminal
and need more top to bottom space, give it focus, hit Mod1 and return, and
it's in the master window.  Some prefer that new windows open in the master
position, and all currently open windows get moved to the stack column.
(This is the default behavior of dwm, for example).  In such a case, find
the line in your $HOME/.spectrm.conf that reads
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
spawn_position    = last
</pre>
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<p>
and change the word last to read first.<p>
The <a href="https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm/wiki">home page</a> has
some screenshots. <p>
Hitting Mod1+l (lower case L) will expand the master window to the right.
Hitting Mod1+h will shrink it to the left, or expand the stack on the
right, depending upon your point of view.  Those used to dwm will find the
default keybindings fairly similar--using h and l to expand and contract
the master are similar to movement keys in the vi editor.  To focus on the
next window use Mod1+j and Mod1+k moves to the previous window.<p>
All of the above is common on many tiling window managers, but may help the
novice as a 1 minute tutorial.  Many people choose to customize their
window manager, and this is where spectrwm shines, with a plain text
configuration file and the ability to reload without restarting.<p>
Let's start with the status bar.  The default bar has more information than
I need or want.  I want the title of the focused window, the number of the
workspace, and the date.  Depending upon your version of spectrwm, you may
have to manually add bar_format to your $HOME/.spectrwm.conf.  A full
description of the format is in the man page. To get what I want I use
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
bar_format   =[+I] %R %F +C
</pre>
</td>
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</table>
<p>
The [+I] gives me the workspace number, and %R %F are the date format I
prefer, giving me a time and date like 14:20 2014-11-14 (if it was 14:20 on
the 14th of November in 2014, the day I'm writing this). The +C gives me
the window class, which can be useful if I have a bunch of windows open.
Spectrwm does identify the focused window by default, by having a 1 pixel
red outline around it, but it can be useful to see it in the status bar as
well.  Some people prefer to have +W as well, for the window name.  As far
as I can see, if you have +C, +W or both in your bar_format line, you can
leave the window_class_enabled and window_name_enabled at their default
value of off.  I haven't tested this too much, but it does seem that even
if you turn them on, if you don't have the +C or +W in your bar_format
line, you won't see a window name (or class) in the status bar.<p>

One nice feature of spectrwm is that once you've changed your config file,
MOD+q will reload it so that you can see your changes.  (To quit spectrwm
entirely use MOD+Shift+q).  So, after making a change, hit MOD+q, and see
if you like it.  <p>

A common change is the mod key. The default is Mod1, the alt key.
Many people, including myself, prefer Mod4, the Windows key on a Windows
keyboard, also known as Super.  In your $HOME/.spectrwm.conf file, look for
the line (like most defaults, it is commented out) 
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<pre>
# modkey   = Mod1
</pre>
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</table>
<p>
Change it Mod4 to have the Windows key be your usual mod key.<p>
It has certain default programs--for example, the default terminal is
xterm . You will see lines in your spectrwm.conf file like
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
program[term] = xterm
</pre>
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<p>
If you preferred urxvt, you can change xterm to urxvt.
Its default binding is MOD+Shift+Return. To disable any default binding,
look for the section Validated default programs. In the section below it,
you can see examples of how to disable validation, just uncomment the
default bind keys.  In practice, if you specify another binding, this
probably isn't necessary. For example, I prefer to open dmenu with
MOD+Shift+p as I use MOD+p for firefox--a habit formed long, long ago, when
it was called phoenix.  Even if I don't uncomment the default MOD+p for
dmenu, MOD+p still opens firefox if I have it defined in my
.spectrwm.conf.<p>

To bind a program to a key, you must first define it with a program line.
For example, if I want to open firefox with a key command, I must first
define the program.  They give an example of firefox, opening it to the
spectrwm home page.  Suppose I just want open the opera browser with the
key combo of MOD+o.  I first give it a name with a program line, then open
it.   
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
program[opera]  = opera
bind[opera]  	= Mod+o
</pre>
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<p>
The program line is necessary. It can be quite useful to, for example, open
a program with  specificed defaults.  For example, if I want open irssi in a
specifically colored terminal
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
program[irc] 	= urxvt -bg black -fg white -e 'irssi -c irc.freenode.net'
bind[irc] 	= MOD+i
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
(Either MOD or Mod will work.)<p>

One very nice feature of spectrwm is that one can quickly, with the
keyboard, toggle a window from tiled to floating and then, if it's
floating, move it around and resize it. The keyboard shortcuts are in the
man page, and can be added or changed in $HOME/.spectrwm.conf.  MOD+t
toggles the window to floating--then MOD+] moves it to right, MOD+[ to the
left.  MOD+- (the minus sign) shrinks the window's width.  MOD+_ (the
underscore, done with MOD+Shift+ the -_ key) shrinks the height.  MOD+=
increases the width and adding the Shift key, so that it's MOD++ (the plus
sign) increases the height.<p>
At work, I have 4 1600x900 monitors. I have NVidia cards and use the
nvidia-settings program to make it run in Xinerama, one big screen.  Using
dwm, it seems to recognize screen boundries by default.  With spectrwm,
this should be configured in your .spectrwm.conf  You will see a default
commented out entry
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<pre>
region 			=screen[1]:1280x1024+0+0
region 			=screen[1]:1280x1024+1280+0
</pre>
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<p>
This refers to the screen resolution, X (left to right) and Y (top to
bottom) positions. So, as all my monitors are 1600x900 I use
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
region 			=screen[1]:1600x900+0+0
region 			=screen[1]:1600x900+1600+0
region 			=screen[1]:1600x900+0+900
region 			=screen[1]:1600x900+1600+900
</pre>
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<p>
I'm not sure what that first [1] is for.  The man page says idx but at any
rate, in my setup, it stays at [1] for all of them. The first monitor, the
upper left is at 0 and 0 that is, the far left and top edge of both X and Y
axis. The second one is to the right, so it's at 1600 on the left to right
axis and 0 on the Y axis. The third one is bottom left and so it's 0 for
left to right and 900 on the Y axis and the last one, the bottom right,
starts at 1600 on the left right axis and 900 at the up down axis.  Some
people may want larger regions, in which case they would make something
like 3200x900+0+0. (To make one huge screen, I guess it would be 3200x1800,
but in my case, I want each monitor to be a separate region.)<p>
Each screen, when I do it this way, unlike dwm, has a different workspace
number.  If I have, for example firefox open on the top left, and
thunderbird on the upper right, then, on the lower left, have something
else, and then use MOD+2 on the lower left, it will now show me workspace
2, in other words, what was on the upper right monitor.  The former
workspace 2 will also change numbers. I've never actually kept track of
this, as it only happens to me by mistake--generally what I want to do is
open a fresh workspace, meaning I should use MOD+5, and hit 2 by mistake.
Putting it back, by, while focused on the lower left monitor, doing
MOD+3, puts all workspaces back to normal.  MOD+Shift+number will moved a
focused window to the workspace indicated by the number. In other words, if
I want to move a terminal from workspace 3 to workspace 5, I focus on the
terminal, hit MOD+Shift+5 and the terminal will now be on workspace 5.
<p>

With multiple monitors, you have to watch this--MOD+number won't switch
focus to the screen with workspace 2, it will switch workspace 2 to the
currently focused monitor.   To move focus to a different monitor, the
default key combination is MOD+&lt;number&gt; with the number being the
keypad,rather than the number keys, which, as mentioned will switch the
workspace within the monitor. The command is rg_n, with n referring to the
number.  One can also use rg_next and rg_previous.  If you want, for
example, to use MOD+N and MOD+P for next and previous regions (as MOD+p
with lower case is already used)
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<td>
<pre>
bind[rg_next]	= MOD+Shift+n
bind[rg_prev]   = MOD+Shift+p
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
On FreeBSD, I've found that one has to install x11/fonts/fonts-misc-misc.
Otherwise, if I try to start spectrwm with startx, it fails to start,
complaining about missing fonts.  (I installed spectrwm with pkg, this may
not be true with ports.  On Fedora, I wasn't able to get the
rpm to work in 21 beta, latest F23 (in TC status as I write this), 
everything is fine.  On older versions If I installed
the git version, it worked as expected.  <p>
In CentOS 6,x I'm not able to get anything later than version 2.5.1 to
compile.  To get it to work, after extracting the tarball, I have to edit
the linux/Makefile.  There is a line that begins LDADD+=.  To get it to
compile I have to edit it so that it reads
<table border="0" bgcolor="#E8E8E8">
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<pre>
LDADD+= -lX11 -lX11-xcb -lxcb-aux -lxcb-icccm -lxcb-randr -lxcb-keysyms -lxcb-xtest -lXft -lXcursor
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
If your browser broke that, it should be on one line.  In version 2.6 and
above, the linux/Makefile doesn't have that line. The Makefile in the main
directory has an LDADD line, but editing that didn't enable me to compile
it. I should add that I have no knowledge of C, and it's possible that
there's an easy fix, but with my relatively simple needs, version 2.5.1 is
fine.


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