show all open windows on all desktops on I3WM

[danixland]

Hi,
is it possible to add the option to show all open windows on all desktops on i3wm?

[tuurep]

Hello, good suggestion, off the top of my head I don't think that will be too much trouble!

It would probably work the same regardless of window manager

The largest question in my mind is:

• if we click on a window that's on a different desktop, does it already switch to the correct desktop, or does the raise function need some changes?

I can start working on that maybe later this week

[tuurep]

Did you have an idea about how to sort the list with all desktops?

Gives me an idea that the desktops could have their own segments like:

firefox · discord | steam · firefox | alacritty · kitty
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    desktop 1           desktop 2         desktop 3

Could then make the desktop separator string | configurable as well

(Then each segment could sort within itself according to sort_by)

[danixland]

Hi, thanks for your reply,
regarding the sorting, I wouldn't sort by desktop, I'd probably leave the windows unsorted or sorted by the sort_by directive, but if you wanted to have the option to sort by desktop, I'd keep it simple and sort by desktop number, and inside each "desktop group" use sort_by as you said.

Maybe you could add the option to define a color for each desktop, so that you can determine which window belongs to which desktop, and then you can use bold for the current window and sort of gray out all the others.
Maybe you could also provide an option for a different divider in the "desktop group", something like you displayed in your example in the previous answer.

Hope this helps. Let me know if I can help

[tuurep]

Thanks, in that case let's first do it the simplest way possible in this issue:

• Make all windows from all desktops appear
• Make sure the raise action works by switching desktop too

Then we can follow up with

• desktop-specific colors
  • not sure if this is hard because some WMs allow infinite/dynamic amount of desktops

firefox · discord | steam · firefox | alacritty · kitty
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    desktop 1           desktop 2         desktop 3

^ In some way I really like this idea myself, but it's possible it could prove too complicated. Definitely opening a new issue for this later so let's not worry about it.

[tuurep]

I haven't yet had the time for this but it's on my mind for sure

Let me know if you wanted to do a PR

Otherwise, I'll get to it whenever I can :)

[danixland]

I haven't yet had the time for this but it's on my mind for sure

Let me know if you wanted to do a PR

I wish I could help you but I have no idea where to start with C.

Otherwise, I'll get to it whenever I can :)

No rush, keep me posted in case you need help with testing 😃