Proposed Goals

This page contains possible Goals for the next Sawfish version.

See also long term todos, latest git news, and Achieved goals

You can record an issue on your own, by putting your name. By default, items are proposed by User:Flashrider.

Key: * easy -- ** medium -- *** difficult

Open Bugs

Rename-window

Description	Current rename-window is wrong in EWMH compliance. Basically, both _NEW_WM_NAME and _NET_WM_VISIBLE_NAME have to be changed, but the whole story is complicated. For the details, read this.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Warp-Cursor

Description	Bugfix: warp-cursor command (problem with OO.o transients)
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Illegal override of the geometry

Description	If you specify the geometry of a window from the command line, and at the same time from the "Matched window", then the latter is taken. This is wrong.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Prompt utf-8

Description	The prompt feature can't handle non-ascii characters correctly, in printing and editing. All you have to do is to consider multibyte-ness in lisp/sawfish/wm/util/prompt.jl,
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Focus bug

Description	There're (at least) two focus related bugs. Read this.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	***

Sawfish 1.9 / 3.0

Emacs-like prefix argument

Description	Emacs like prefix-argument is available: Patches are available at this and this.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Command-name completion

Description	Using "report-commands" function (new in Nov 2010), offer interactive completion for "call-command".
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Don't focus windows whose parent is invisible

Description	When 'focus-window-when-mapped' is t, then the window whose parent is invisible (e.g. in another viewport) gets focused, too, but this is sometimes bad. Provide a new option to change it.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Wrong key definition tolerance

Description	When a wrong key definition is there in ~/.sawfish/custom, trailing definitions are not loaded. This must be fixed. It must be not so hard; If you try to define bad key from the configurator, you can't. A window pops up, for example, saying: While changing title-keymap: bad-event-desc: RET-Move
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Tunable pointer warp

Description	Currently, pointer warping is controled by only one boolean variable 'warp-to-window-enabled'. Make it tunable. (Seems better to make it a list then to create new variables.) For example, in window cycling, the current behavior is to warp at each step of cycling. But some prefer that warp happens only once, after the window is chosen.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Window cycling enhancements

Description	Make the window cycling more flexible. See this message for ideas. See also #Tunable pointer warp, #Merge stuff from merlin-ugliness.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

"Mode" of interacitve use & hand tiling

Description	There's a patch [1] which easily provides an "interactive mode", which is in fact a keymap wrapper. Adopt it, and using it, implement modes for grow, pack, shrink and yank ("gpsy"). Adopt Focus-by-direction, too, and make use of it from gpsy. The patch is by Christoph Ruegge, posted on 9 Feb 2010].
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Better error messages

Description	Some error messages are not easy to understand. For example, put  (define-special-variable default-window-animator 'wrong-value ) to your rc, and you'll get: "wrong function ()" while "wrong value <value> to function <function>". In this case: "wrong value 'wrong-value' to function 'default-window-animator'" would be much better. Bad arg is another error which deserves a better error message, too. Current: (bad-arg #<subr structure-imports> () 1) Better: (bad-arg: To #<subr structure-imports>, as 1st arg `()' was passed, but structure expected.) It can be done by intervening to the error handlers, defined in rep.lang.interpreter and sawfish.wm.ext.error-handler. Check the error type (= car of the data), fix the message. Printing the expected type for bad-arg is more difficult. First we have to fix the macro rep_DECLARE* defined in librep/src/rep_lisp.h. Another challenge is that some types are defined in Sawfish, not in librep, so a callback or other means is necessary.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Enhancements in multi-head support

Description	Current multi-head support is done only with Xinerama. Support RandR too, and only one of them at the same time. Current multihead support (e.g. in maximization) seems to suppose that heads don't 'overlap' each other. But with RandR, they can indeed overlap. Some users make heads mutually exclusive, but others not, so an user option to choose which 'model' will be good. Resolution change should update edge-flip. Window position & size update is difficult, because the viewport slot it belongs to is ambiguous. Some people also like update of the position of windows with gravity, and maximized windows. Solve 'dead zone problem'. See [2], [3]. (Note: internally, use register_event_handler in events.c, like edge-flip.) Partial fix: Patch for first-fit placement mode. See also Long term todos#Partial workspace layer. RandR support to respond to resolution change or montior hot plugging is done in 1.6.3.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

SawfishClient error-messages

Description	SawfishClient does not display error-messages directly or may even discard them. See here. See [4] for some hints (but not a fix.)
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Maximization bug in ewmh compliance

Description	Vertical and horizontal maximization is reported to have a bug. See here.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Display message enhancements

Description	Current display-message is shabby, and enhancement will be nice. See this message for more. See also Customize-messages. Dismiss with anywhere click. Please report your ideas!
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Display Viewport/Workspace name/number on switch

Description	When switch to a different Viewport/Workspace it should be possible to let sawfish display the name/number of the Viewport/Workspace for workspaces. It's already done by me (locally) but it first needs display-message to take position and timeout params, for viewports it needs more work, or, easier, just display the viewport number (say "Workspace blah, VP 3 of 9" See commit f892ee. ws-num.jl implements WS number using merlin's message, so a good reference... if not just adapt and make official.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Merge stuff from sawfish-mmc

Description	"mmc" fork has nice patches. See [5]
Assigned to	Michal Maruska
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Merge stuff from merlin-ugliness

Description	The Merlin.Ugliness contains a set of extra functions, some of them are good candidates for merge, such as having cycling windows displaying a list of all windows and the currently cycled one is highlighted, another thing would be the sawlets architecture. Excpect some discussion in January
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	***

In some themes, title-only frame is wider than the window

Description	For some themes, when a window's frame style is set to 'title-only', then it is really title only: Width of the window is a bit narrower then the title frame. Though it's only applicable to improve the shipped themes.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*
Proposed by	Teika kazura

Fill gap for EWMH (partially)

Description	Some EWMH items are not supported. 1. It is known that: 'tint' and 'visibility' Pager/windowlist programs tint and visibility don't work very well. visibility can't manipulate the state of windows, namely iconify/deiconify. 'wmctrl' utility Utility wmctrl doesn't seem it can get sawfish to change the state of any windows under its control, shade, iconify,etc. Sawfish doesn't seem to respond. I noticed sawfish only seems to work well with my gtk2 panels or other certain ones. 2. Some clients ask _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW, and Sawfish raises them in response. But there should be an option to deny the raise. It seems to happen only if the focus mode is 'click'.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**
Proposed by	1 by User:Ryuo1, 2 by User:Cyber rigger

Update Docs regarding compat.jl

Description	We need to check for functions/options from compat.jl, which are obsolete, but perhaps not marked obsolete in the docs. Some sybmols marked as 'obsolete' in compat.jl are in fact alive, so each should be investigated. In that case, 'compat.jl' should be fixed. Use the following convention for marking things as obsolete in the docs: @defvr {Obsolete Variable} var-abc When true ... This variable is obsolete. Use @code{var-new-abc} instead (@pxref{Window Foo Var}). @end defvr
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Major rework in key

Description	Keyboard handling has several major defects. Support for mouse button > 5 is hackish. Only 8 buttons are supported. Internally, button state is currently obtained from "state" feild of X Events. Change it so that Sawfish record all button press events, and utilize it. Standalone Escape should not be bindable, as it's used to exit from Compose or nested-keybinding sequences (SawfishConfig allows that) Shift levels from lock keys other than Capslock are ignored. For example, Capslock + a should be, and in fact is, treated as A, not as modifier + a. Apply this to other lock keys (mainly NumLock). In short, 'virtual modifier' has to be supported. Compose should be named Compose not Multikey (The validity of this claim is unconfirmed.) Detailed documentation is lacking: If you don't have 'meta' key, then 'alt' will be called 'meta'. AltGr is not printed as "AltGr". (Often as "Mod5", but this is machine dependent.) Some keys can't be bound, due to lacking support of XKB. Do 'xmodmap -pk', and if the key you need is reported to be "NoSymbol", it can't be used. Rejected (by Teika kazura) todos: Modifier name translation. For example, alt is treated as meta, and AltGr as mod5. Some people want to rename.
Assigned to	Teika kazura (For group switching)
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Icon & Dockapp

Description	Icon & Dockapps support. Dockapps are small windows which can be used within Gnustep & Window Maker. It's reported in bugzilla, [6], but in fact it's a (lacking) feature. Icon enhancement is also proposed here
Assigned to	Alexey Froloff
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Running

configurator

Description	Configurator items. Implement radio button, with doc label. Re-implement "or" widget with radio. (Currently checkbox). Most of yes-no items in "window rules" only support yes. (No is meaningless.) Replace it with plain checkbox. Read this for more. In window position in "window rules", negative values are interpreted as-is. (x = -10 means 10 pixels left from the left border.) But it's handy to allow x = -10 to indicate 10 pixels left from the right border. Enable it, but retain the current one, too.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

replace deprecated GTK+ Widgets

Description	Only the ancient GtkTree is implemented in rep-gtk. GtkTree only supports double-clicks, for user experience it's better to implement GtkTreeView, which is much more modern and supports single clicks. This also involves a rewrite of lisp.sawfish.ui.group - I'll try to get that into rep-gtk 0.90.1, a set of other deprecated Widgets has already been modernized.
Assigned to	User:Flashrider
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Done

Tabbed Windowing Support

Description	Tabbed windowing support is in, but refinement is necessary.
Assigned to	None
Page	See Tab .
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Focus or exec script

Description	User-contrib scripts like App, Gimme, waffle, jump-or-exec, Iswitch-window fall in category of "focus or exec" scripts. (See Category:Focus management scripts). Review and compare them, and incorporate as an official code. Jump-or-exec is now in trunk, but the update is available at here. See also this message for enhancements ideas. Waffle uses a customized iswitch-window. The latter is "prompt" for window name with completion, so it need not to be limited to usage for waffle. First putting it together with prompt is good.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Prompt code improvement

Description	Write doc. Done: Adopt prompt patch after inspection.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Infinite desktop + dragging

Description	Using infinite-desktop, you can't scroll the viewport while dragging a window. The reason and the fix can be learned from edge-flip.jl.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Pager auto show/hide

Description	Show the Sawfish pager only when the viewport or the workspace is changed.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	*

Restart Maximized

Description	Bugfix: wrong vertically maximized windows after restart See [7]. The cause is that on restart Sawfish treats windows one by one. But 'avoid' property should be set for all windows before any maximization is done. (Does postponing maximization suffice? Not sure.)
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Draft Animator

Description	Bugfix: 'draft' animator has a bug; displayed numbers remain, not erased
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**
Proposed by	Teika kazura

Restart and Viewport

Description	At restart, the current viewport becomes the new top-left of the virtual desktop. Upper or left windows are hidden. This was fixed in 1.6.0, but it is again there.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Rejected

Support for merging windows into one frame

Description	Let's say you use the GIMP and merge all three windows into one frame. This would be an improvement for users of apps with several windows and another unique characteristic for sawfish. Negative opinions: 1, 2.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	***

Add Stop-Focus/Stop-Raise Focus Modes

Description	Stop-focus and Stop-raise are available as scripts. Merge them into Sawfish
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Animated Window Moving

Description	This is already available as script. This animation might be used for any move operation. Setting steps to 1 should disable animation, else get a fancy effect.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Split the theme-menu by first letter (if many to show)

Description	if [[ $MAX_THEMES_TO_SHOW_AT_ONCE < $ALL_THEMES_TO_SHOW ]]; then _______ | A | K | | A1 | K1 | | A2 | L | fi Timo Korvola says: This would not be necessary if the combo box had proper keyboard support, i.e., moved to an item when the user types the beginning of its label. Unfortunately it doesn't. I would have expected the toolkit to take care of this.
Assigned to	None
Patch
Status	NEW/PENDING	Difficulty	**

Template usage

See Template:Todo-item. It must be easy, but you are not forced to use it. :)