xmonad automatically switch to application

Question

I am very fond of xmonad, but one thing would be great:

If I open a file by gvim -p --remote-tab-silent my-file and it gets opened in vim which is always on workspace 1, I want to switch automatically to workspace 1.

I just discovered the viewShift-trick, but this only changes the workspace if a new gvim is spawned, and as such solves my problem just in part.

Edit:

Thanks to Daniel Wagner's comment I was able to do some research:

I found a little program to set and unset urgency hints: seturgency. And with xwininifo I can get gvim's window id. After some trial and error I xprop showed me that the hint flag was actually set.

GVIMWINID=`xwininfo -tree -root | grep GVIM | cut -d ' ' -f6`
seturgent $GVIMWINID 1
xprop -id $GVIMWINID | grep urgency

now i added

import XMonad.Hooks.UrgencyHook
..
 myKeys conf@(XConfig {XMonad.modMask = modm}) = M.fromList $
[..
, ((mod4Mask             , xK_x      ), focusUrgent)
..]
..
main = do¬                                                                       
        xmproc <- spawnPipe "/usr/bin/xmobar"¬                                   
        xmonad $ withUrgencyHook NoUrgencyHook $ defaultConfig {..}

to my .xmonad.hs, and xmonad --recompile && xmonad --restart was without errors but no hitting mod4 + x did nothing, though xprop did report the urgency hint is set.

A real answer would include code, but... can you get gvim to set an urgency notification and use the urgency hook to switch to that workspace? — Daniel Wagner, Jun 28 '12 at 19:41
Probably does not count as an answer, but your code actually works here. Note that you need to reset the layout (Mod-Shift-Space) and it seems to only pick up urgency hints that are set _after_ you restarted xmonad with the urgency hint. — Joachim Breitner, Jul 03 '12 at 08:38
Thanks for the comment - it seems that restart was necessary; what a pity I tried it for at least an hour to get it working - and just this was preventing me from enjoying my setup. Thanks — epsilonhalbe, Jul 03 '12 at 09:09
@DanielWagner can you put your comment on urgency hooks as an answer so i can award you the bounty i offered — epsilonhalbe, Jul 07 '12 at 20:43

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 03 '12 at 12:33

Thanks to the comments by Daniel Wagner and Joachim Breitner I could solve the problem, at least in parts.

Automatically switching to gvim if it is not opened yet simply works with adding to `myManageHooks
```
myManageHook = composeAll [.., className =? "Gvim"--> viewShift "^ vim",..]
```

if gvim is already open the situation is a bit more tricky, I've made a shell script to get the window id of gvim and see if there were arguments passed.

#! /usr/bin/zsh

GVIMWINID=`xwininfo -tree -root |grep GVIM | cut -d ' ' -f6`

if [[ -n $GVIMWINID ]]; then
    #echo gvim is running
    #echo $GVIMWINID
    if [[ -n $@ ]]; then
        #echo there are args
        gvim -p --remote-tab-silent $@
    else
        #echo no args
        gvim --remote-send ":tabnew<cr>"
    fi
else
    #echo gvim is not yet running
    #echo $GVIMWINID
    gvim -p $@
fi
seturgent $GVIMWINID 1

now if I spawn a new gv the window has its urgency hint set and I am able to switch to it. But I wanted to switch automatically to the window - so at least if I spawn gvim by keyboard I want to switch automatically. So I added to myKeys in xmonad.hs

myKeys conf@(XConfig {XMonad.modMask = modm}) = M.fromList $
[.., ((mod4Mask, xK_F1),
        spawn "gv" >>
        spawn "notify-send -t 500 -i /usr/share/pixmaps/vim-32.xpm gVim" >>
        focusUrgent),..]

Where the spawn "notify-send .." line acts as a timebuffer as spawning+setting urgency hint seems to take some time and focusUrgent is called too early.

The only unsolved thing is if I call my gv-script from the terminal to be switched to gvim's workspace.

xmonad automatically switch to application

Edit:

1 Answers1