carlisle

README

Carlisle

X window management utility.

Status: Alpha. Useful for me. Liable to change.

Installation

$ go get github.com/cespare/carlisle

Usage

$ carlisle COMMAND arg1 arg2 ...

Do carlisle -h for help, or carlisle COMMAND help for help with a specific command.

moveresize

Set the position and size of the active window.

$ carlisle moveresize x=v1 y=v2 w=v3 h=v4

Any parameters not provided will remain unchanged from their current values. Each value is an s-expression which may involve constants; the functions +, -, *, /, min, and max; and the following variables:

• x - window's current x-value
• y - window's current y-value
• w - window's current width
• h - window's current height
• sw - screen width
• sh - screen height

One detail to be aware of is that the coordinates you use are relative to the usable portion of the display. If you have, say, a panel at the top or bottom of the screen, the window coordinates and screen height/width are all relative to the rectangle excluding the panel(s).

Example: Here's how you can use moveresize to make the active window occupy the right half of your screen:

$ carlisle moveresize 'x=(* 0.5 sw)' y=0 'w=(* 0.5 sw)' h=sh

focus

Activate (raise and focus) a window by matching its title.

$ carlisle focus match=substr

This just looks through the window stack from top to bottom and finds the first window whose title contains the substring. The match is case-insensitive.

Example: This is how you might quickly focus a gvim window:

$ carlisle focus match=gvim

toggle

Toggles the maximized or fullscreen state of the active window.

$ carlisle toggle maximized

switch

Move the active window to a different head. You can provide absolute (head=N, 0-indexed) or relative (dir=left, dir=right) positions. Relative directions wrap around.

$ carlisle switch dir=right

Examples

Note that you'll probably want single quotes around your moveresize argument strings or your shell will split them up.

moveresize is enough to implement most kinds of positioning commands. Here are some ideas:

# Move 100px down
$ carlisle moveresize 'y=(+ y 100)'

# Move 100px right, don't move off-screen
$ carlisle moveresize 'x=(min (+ x 100) (- sw w))'

# Left half
$ carlisle moveresize x=0 y=0 'w=(* 0.5 sw)' h=sh

# Expand 100px down without expanding off-screen
$ carlisle moveresize 'h=(min (+ h 100) (- sh y))'

I use xbindkeys to bind hotkeys to Carlisle commands, but you can use whatever tool you're most comfortable with (your desktop environment or window manager probably provides such functionality). If you'd like more ideas, check out my .xbindkeysrc.

Similar tools

• wmctrl, a similar tool (doesn't take expressions for movement).
• Slate for Mac OS X.

License

MIT (see LICENSE.txt)