ruby-wmii FAQ

This is a list of frequently asked questions regarding ruby-wmii. Feel free to add your questions by editing this page.

• Does ruby-wmii work with wmii 4?
• How can I change the key sequences for the default bindings?
• I don’t seem to have MODKEY-a -> config-help. Why is that?
• How do I change the MODKEY? I want to change it to the Win Key (Super_L in X11).
• Modifier map
• wmiirc-config.rb
• Is there supposed to be a default wmiirc-config.rb file? I don’t seem to have one of these either.
• Your question here

  Does ruby-wmii work with wmii 4?

ruby-wmii works only with wmii 3.0 and 3.1 as of 0.3.0. I will soon start working on making it compatible with wmii 4.

Keep in mind that wmii 4 is a moving target, quite unstable at times, so it’s probably best to stay with 3.1 for the time being.

  How can I change the key sequences for the default bindings?

You can pass additional arguments to use_binding to override the default sequences in your .wmii-3/wmiirc-config.rb:

  (0..9).each{|k| use_binding "numeric-jump-#{k}", "MODKEY2-#{k}"  }

You can find more information about how to configure ruby-wmii ~/.wmii-3/wmiirc (the long heredoc at the top) or typing MODKEY-a (ALT-a by default) -> config-help.

  I don’t seem to have MODKEY-a -> config-help. Why is that?

There are a few possible causes; in no particular order:

• the standard plugins might be missing; please make sure that $HOME/.wmii-3/plugins/standard-plugin.rb exists and is readable
• the config-help internal action relies on xmessage to display the message; it won’t do anything if it’s missing
• are you using a recent ruby-wmii release? config-help was introduced in ruby-wmii 0.3.0

If everything fails, you can still find the config-help message in wmiirc, near the beginning, in the WMIIRC_HELP_MESSAGE heredoc.

  How do I change the MODKEY? I want to change it to the Win Key (Super_L in X11).

There are two things to consider:

1. the current modifier map
2. the translations defined in your wmiirc-config.rb

Modifier map

The modified map is used to convert keycodes to the corresponding modifier keysyms; you can see the current modifier map as follows:

$ xmodmap -pm
xmodmap:  up to 3 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):
shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock      
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x6d)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_L (0x7d),  Meta_L (0x9c)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3      
mod4        Super_L (0x7f),  Hyper_L (0x80)
mod5        Mode_switch (0x5d),  ISO_Level3_Shift (0x71),  ISO_Level3_Shift (0x7c)

In this example, Super_L corresponds to Mod4.

If you want to add a new association, you can do something like

 xmodmap -e "add mod3 = Menu"

which would map the Menu key to Mod3.

wmiirc-config.rb

Once you know which modifier you want (e.g. Mod4 in the above example, in order to use Super_L == Win key), you can change the binding translations in your $HOME/.wmii-3/wmiirc-config.rb. By default, there should be something like this near the top:

 # Translate the following names in the on_key and use_binding definitions.
 key_subs  :MODKEY  => :Mod1,
           :MODKEY2 => :Mod4,
           :LEFT    => :h,
           :RIGHT   => :l,
           :UP      => :k,
           :DOWN    => :j

you can change it to e.g.

   # Translate the following names in the on_key and use_binding definitions.
 key_subs  :MODKEY  => :Mod4,
           :MODKEY2 => :Mod5,
           :LEFT    => :h,
           :RIGHT   => :l,
           :UP      => :k,
           :DOWN    => :j

This way, all MODKEY-whatever bindings will be translated into Mod4-whatever.

You’ll have to restart wmiirc once you’ve modified wmiirc-config.rb with MODKEY-a -> wmiirc, that is (Mod1 == Alt)-a -> wmiirc because the new binding translations will only take effect after wmiirc loads the new configuration.

  Is there supposed to be a default wmiirc-config.rb file? I don’t seem to have one of these either.

Please make sure you’ve installed a recent version of ruby-wmii.

  Your question here