7 ms·

Emacs X Window Manager

199 points by DyingAdonis 11y ago

webkike 11y ago
In all honestly this is all I've ever wanted out of a window manager.
- cottonseed 11y ago
  Me too. I've been hoping someone would integrate webkit in Emacs. Then I could go full screen and that would cover 98% of what I want to do. This might be even better, except that these days I'm usually stuck in IntelliJ on OSX.
- bentcorner 11y ago
  I've used Ratpoison in the past which seemed like a decent tiling WM. I don't have a ton of experience with it but the little I tried seemed to work as expected.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    I've been using Ratpoison since like 2005 or something. Pause for a few years while I was using OS X, and then I'd just put everything in fullscreen or on different workspaces. The tiling stuff in Ratpoison works well enough, but it's not super sophisticated and personally I almost never use it except when I'm like transcribing something. I'm using Ratpoison on a high-DPI laptop right now, I just upped my DPI and use huge fonts and everything's in fullscreen. It's lovely!
- ddalex 11y ago
  Try i3. I did, and never looked back.
kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
Take that xemacs, all stuck inside your managed window.
davexunit 11y ago
Awesome hack. I really need to try this sometime. I spent almost all of my digital life in Emacs anyway, so this could work out very well for my workflow.
- ORioN63 11y ago
  browser?
  - na85 11y ago
    http://emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryWebBrowser http://emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryWebBrowser
chjj 11y ago
I thought emacs already had an X11 window manager built-in. In all seriousness, this is pretty cool, and it uses libxcb. Nice.
kjhughes 11y ago
There are screenshots on the wiki: https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm/wiki https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm/wiki
emacs27 11y ago
Very impressive and very useful for certain Emacs workflows. Also, something tells me the creator of this project and its users won't feel the need to spam HN and r/programming with regular updates on the progress of the project in an attempt to raise the profile of the language it was written in--unlike what we saw with a certain other tiling window manager a few years back.
- emacs27 11y ago
  In fact, there is already a Lisp (Common, not Emacs) tiling WM called StumpWM. If you haven't heard of it yet, it's partly because the Lisp community isn't so embarrassingly insecure and desperate for anything they can pass off as a "killer app" (see Macsyma or Emacs itself) that they feel compelled to shove it down everyone's throat.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - arianvanp 11y ago
    Why the attitude? Can we just sit down, relax, and enjoy the awesome hack that this is without being all "we're too cool for hacker news"? . I'm really glad someone shared this today as it really brought a smile to my face.
  - TurboHaskal 11y ago
    And that's exactly why Common Lisp is fading into obscurity while the "embarrassingly insecure" Clojure community is making the language take over.
    - yenda 11y ago
      The sad truth
  - lispm 11y ago
    Actually there are lots of X11 window managers in many languages. If we look at Common Lisp, window managers are not new. https://common-lisp.net/project/eclipse/ https://common-lisp.net/project/eclipse/ https://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ https://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ Well known is Stumpwm: https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm/wiki https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm/wiki It's easy to write a minimal WM in Common Lisp: http://paste.lisp.org/display/19072 http://paste.lisp.org/display/19072
guessbest 11y ago
This reminds me of SXEmacs : http://www.sxemacs.org/ http://www.sxemacs.org/
michaelhoffman 11y ago
I would love to run this. I'm a bit worried that there is only a "certain degree of concurrency" promised in the XELB library it's built on. Seems like there would be many ways for this to get blocked. `list-packages` might stall my whole system, not just Emacs.
znpy 11y ago
...wow. I might just get off The bed and try it right now.
jevgeni 11y ago
Sweet baby Jesus, it has happened. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
- calpaterson 11y ago
  Emacs long ago (decades) expanded to read mail. There are probably multiple mail clients in GNU emacs now
  - weland 11y ago
    There are! http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryMail http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryMail
  - philjackson 11y ago
    I've gone from Gnus to Wanderlust finally settling on mu4e. The first two were probably more a gimmick where mu4e actually enables me to get things done.
    - asjo 11y ago
      One of those "gimmicks" has been working great for me the past 20+ years...
      - philjackson 11y ago
        Yea, sorry, I should have said gimmick "for me" - they're all excellent applications, it's just that mu4e happened to be the one that better suited my situation.
  - cmiles74 11y ago
    I use the notmuch extension for Emacs (with mbsync for actually fetching the mail and msmtp for sending) and have been very happy with it.
  - jevgeni 11y ago
merraksh 11y ago
Another Emacs-based window manager (http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/new-window-manager.html http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/new-window-manager....) was featured on HN about 6 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922359
JulianMorrison 11y ago
Needs a text editor. Has anyone ported Vi?
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Yes. Evil mode. NB I'm not condoning editor warring. Just pointing out that one can use arguably the best bit of vi/vim in emacs (the keybindings).
DonHopkins 11y ago
Does M-< C-@ M-> C-W delete all your windows?
- mhurron 11y ago
  See a doctor, you may be having a seizure.
  - gpvos 11y ago
    M-x doctor
    - DonHopkins 11y ago
      RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html
vander_elst 11y ago
emacs is a great operating system, it lacks a good editor though
- broodbucket 11y ago
  M-x recycle-joke
- lojack 11y ago
  should be relatively trivial to install vim
zarkone 11y ago
related: elisp x11 (in russian, but with screenshot): https://www.linux.org.ru/gallery/screenshots/7805904 https://www.linux.org.ru/gallery/screenshots/7805904
adultSwim 11y ago
Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor :-P
- chousuke 11y ago
  Not anymore: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs Seriously though, this joke has unbeliveable staying power, despite being almost as old as emacs itself.
- fanf2 11y ago
  The problem with this joke is that Emacs is actually a terrible operating system: very poor concurrency support and no pre-emption.
seba_dos1 11y ago
Will have to try it on my mobile phone together with fso-el :) https://github.com/paulfertser/fso-el/wiki https://github.com/paulfertser/fso-el/wiki

199 points by DyingAdonis 11y ago

webkike 11y ago

In all honestly this is all I've ever wanted out of a window manager.

cottonseed 11y ago
Me too. I've been hoping someone would integrate webkit in Emacs. Then I could go full screen and that would cover 98% of what I want to do. This might be even better, except that these days I'm usually stuck in IntelliJ on OSX.
bentcorner 11y ago
I've used Ratpoison in the past which seemed like a decent tiling WM. I don't have a ton of experience with it but the little I tried seemed to work as expected.
- mbrock 11y ago
  I've been using Ratpoison since like 2005 or something. Pause for a few years while I was using OS X, and then I'd just put everything in fullscreen or on different workspaces. The tiling stuff in Ratpoison works well enough, but it's not super sophisticated and personally I almost never use it except when I'm like transcribing something. I'm using Ratpoison on a high-DPI laptop right now, I just upped my DPI and use huge fonts and everything's in fullscreen. It's lovely!
ddalex 11y ago
Try i3. I did, and never looked back.

kevin_thibedeau 11y ago

Take that xemacs, all stuck inside your managed window.

davexunit 11y ago

Awesome hack. I really need to try this sometime. I spent almost all of my digital life in Emacs anyway, so this could work out very well for my workflow.

ORioN63 11y ago
browser?
- na85 11y ago
  http://emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryWebBrowser http://emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryWebBrowser

chjj 11y ago

I thought emacs already had an X11 window manager built-in. In all seriousness, this is pretty cool, and it uses libxcb. Nice.

kjhughes 11y ago

There are screenshots on the wiki: https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm/wiki https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm/wiki

emacs27 11y ago

Very impressive and very useful for certain Emacs workflows. Also, something tells me the creator of this project and its users won't feel the need to spam HN and r/programming with regular updates on the progress of the project in an attempt to raise the profile of the language it was written in--unlike what we saw with a certain other tiling window manager a few years back.

emacs27 11y ago
In fact, there is already a Lisp (Common, not Emacs) tiling WM called StumpWM. If you haven't heard of it yet, it's partly because the Lisp community isn't so embarrassingly insecure and desperate for anything they can pass off as a "killer app" (see Macsyma or Emacs itself) that they feel compelled to shove it down everyone's throat.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- arianvanp 11y ago
  Why the attitude? Can we just sit down, relax, and enjoy the awesome hack that this is without being all "we're too cool for hacker news"? . I'm really glad someone shared this today as it really brought a smile to my face.
- TurboHaskal 11y ago
  And that's exactly why Common Lisp is fading into obscurity while the "embarrassingly insecure" Clojure community is making the language take over.
  - yenda 11y ago
    The sad truth
- lispm 11y ago
  Actually there are lots of X11 window managers in many languages. If we look at Common Lisp, window managers are not new. https://common-lisp.net/project/eclipse/ https://common-lisp.net/project/eclipse/ https://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ https://common-lisp.net/project/clfswm/ Well known is Stumpwm: https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm/wiki https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm/wiki It's easy to write a minimal WM in Common Lisp: http://paste.lisp.org/display/19072 http://paste.lisp.org/display/19072

guessbest 11y ago

This reminds me of SXEmacs : http://www.sxemacs.org/ http://www.sxemacs.org/

michaelhoffman 11y ago

I would love to run this. I'm a bit worried that there is only a "certain degree of concurrency" promised in the XELB library it's built on. Seems like there would be many ways for this to get blocked. `list-packages` might stall my whole system, not just Emacs.

znpy 11y ago

...wow. I might just get off The bed and try it right now.

jevgeni 11y ago

Sweet baby Jesus, it has happened. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html

calpaterson 11y ago
Emacs long ago (decades) expanded to read mail. There are probably multiple mail clients in GNU emacs now
- weland 11y ago
  There are! http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryMail http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryMail
- philjackson 11y ago
  I've gone from Gnus to Wanderlust finally settling on mu4e. The first two were probably more a gimmick where mu4e actually enables me to get things done.
  - asjo 11y ago
    One of those "gimmicks" has been working great for me the past 20+ years...
    - philjackson 11y ago
      Yea, sorry, I should have said gimmick "for me" - they're all excellent applications, it's just that mu4e happened to be the one that better suited my situation.
- cmiles74 11y ago
  I use the notmuch extension for Emacs (with mbsync for actually fetching the mail and msmtp for sending) and have been very happy with it.
- jevgeni 11y ago

merraksh 11y ago

Another Emacs-based window manager (http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/new-window-manager.html http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/new-window-manager....) was featured on HN about 6 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922359

JulianMorrison 11y ago

Needs a text editor. Has anyone ported Vi?

JupiterMoon 11y ago
Yes. Evil mode. NB I'm not condoning editor warring. Just pointing out that one can use arguably the best bit of vi/vim in emacs (the keybindings).

DonHopkins 11y ago

Does M-< C-@ M-> C-W delete all your windows?

mhurron 11y ago
See a doctor, you may be having a seizure.
- gpvos 11y ago
  M-x doctor
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html

vander_elst 11y ago

emacs is a great operating system, it lacks a good editor though

broodbucket 11y ago
M-x recycle-joke
lojack 11y ago
should be relatively trivial to install vim

zarkone 11y ago

related: elisp x11 (in russian, but with screenshot): https://www.linux.org.ru/gallery/screenshots/7805904 https://www.linux.org.ru/gallery/screenshots/7805904

adultSwim 11y ago

Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor :-P

chousuke 11y ago
Not anymore: https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs Seriously though, this joke has unbeliveable staying power, despite being almost as old as emacs itself.
fanf2 11y ago
The problem with this joke is that Emacs is actually a terrible operating system: very poor concurrency support and no pre-emption.

seba_dos1 11y ago

Will have to try it on my mobile phone together with fso-el :) https://github.com/paulfertser/fso-el/wiki https://github.com/paulfertser/fso-el/wiki