EXWM Workspace Group

An EXWM extension for managing workspace units in a multiple monitor environment by grouping the units.

Configuration

(require 'exwm-workspace-group)
(ewg/init (list "HDMI-1-1" "DVI-I-1" "HDMI-0"))  ; pass a list of connected monitor names found by xrandr

Note

• Each workspace in the current group corresponds to each monitor
• You can create, delete or switch between groups
  • However, deleting the 0th group is prohibited. See Limitation section.
• Currently, it supports only dual and triple monitor configurations
  • Instead, you can easily define your own ewg/xrandr-*-monitor and modify ewg/init
• ewg/init modifies values of some variables defined in exwm package:
  • exwm-workspace-number
  • exwm-randr-workspace-monitor-plist

  So, be careful of conflicts with your existing EXWM configuration.

• Interactive functions
  • ewg/add-group
  • ewg/switch-next-group
  • ewg/switch-previous-group
  • ewg/delete-current-group ; the 0th group cannot be deleted by default
  • ewg/delete-other-groups ; the 0th group cannot be deleted by default
  • ewg/other-workspace-in-group
  • ewg/other-workspace-in-group-backwards
  • ewg/swap-with-other-workspace-in-group
  • ewg/swap-with-other-workspace-in-group-backwards
  • ewg/swap-current-group-number ; the 0th group cannot be swapped by default
• You can also switch to a specific group by using ewg/switch-create-group instead of exwm-workspace-switch-create

  ;; This exampmle is modified from https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm/wiki#global-key-bindings
  (setq exwm-input-global-keys
        `(;; ...
          ;; other bindings here
          ;; ...
          ,@(mapcar (lambda (i)
                      `(,(kbd (format "s-%d" i)) .
                        (lambda ()
                          (interactive)
                          (ewg/switch-create-group ,i))))
                    (number-sequence 0 9))))
      

• exwm-workspace-group is also compatible with tab-bar-mode

Limitation

If we try to delete the 0th group, it would cause the error “Attempt to delete a surrogate minibuffer frame”. Therfore, deleting the 0th group is prohibited by default as setting ewg/keeping-group-0 to t.

Related work

• Another approach, which is based on perspective: https://github.com/SqrtMinusOne/perspective-exwm.el