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Is it possible with I3Wm to populate an entire workspace with determined size, position and commands for each window?

I know I can do i3-msg "exec xterm -e 'ls; bash'" to create a new window, but I can't specify his position and size.

Maybe there is also an alternative by declaring via JSON the layout or something like that?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Unitech
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  • "I can't specify his position and size" I'm not an i3 user, but unless it does something funny, you should be able to use the -geometry=WxH+X+Y switch to xterm. The W and H are in characters, the X and Y are in pixels. Note you could also use the snazzier terminal from (e.g.) XFCE stand-alone if you want, which uses the same style geometry spec. The GNOME terminal may be portable too; KDE's konsole definitely is but does not allow you to dictate the geometry. – goldilocks Aug 25 '14 at 15:36

1 Answers1

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Since version 4.8, something like that is part of i3 and there's a detailed guide on the website, but here's a short version:

Once you've set up a workspace like you want it to be, save its layout with

i3-save-tree --workspace <whichever workspace you want> > ~/.i3/layout-ws-<xyz>.json

into the file ~/.i3/layout-ws-xyz.json. You'll then need to edit that file to enable criteria that match windows in the layout.

After that, you can restore that layout with

i3-msg "workspace <your workspace>; append_layout ~/.i3/layout-ws--<xyz>.json"

This will open placeholder windows on that workspace and when a window matching the criteria enabled in the layout file appears, it will be placed in the corresponding placeholder window.

Wieland
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  • Thanks for this tip, I tried it and it works well for saving and restoring workspaces ! But I don't manage to execute any command into these windows (via the JSON). There is only some text written on it without anything else. – Unitech Aug 26 '14 at 14:01
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    The text in the placeholder windows are the criteria that new windows need to match to be placed into the placeholder window, so if the text in a placeholder window is class="^Google-chrome$", you still need to start an application whose window has that specific class; the application will not be started automatically. – Wieland Aug 26 '14 at 14:13
  • Got it! I set the right swallows[0].class then launched i3-msg "workspace 1; append_layout /path/my/layout.json; [class='xterm'] exec xterm and worked like a charm. This JSON declaration is definitely an awesome feature, thank you! – Unitech Aug 26 '14 at 15:33