i3/man/i3.man

i3(1)
=====
Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
v3.alpha, February 2009

== NAME

i3 - an improved dynamic, tiling window manager

== SYNOPSIS

i3

== DESCRIPTION

=== INTRODUCTION

i3 was created because wmii, our favorite window manager at the time, didn’t
provide some features we wanted (Xinerama done right, for example), had some
bugs, didn’t progress since quite some time and wasn’t easy to hack at all
(source code comments/documentation completely lacking). Still, we think the
wmii developers and contributors did a great job. Thank you for inspiring us to
create i3.

Please be aware that i3 is primarily targeted at advanced users and developers.

=== ABOUT THIS RELEASE

What you are using is i3.alpha. That means, it is a preview release, not yet fully
stable, may still contain bugs and the implementation of several behaviour is
subject to change. However, it should provide you with a pretty good picture of
how i3 will look in subsequent releases.

Please, use i3 and report all the bugs/problems you encounter by sending an
email to <michael+i3 at stapelberg.de>

=== TERMINOLOGY

Client::
A client is X11-speak for a window.

Table::
Your workspace is managed using a table. You can move windows around and create new columns
(move a client to the right) or rows (move it to the bottom) implicitly.
+
By "snapping" a client in a specific direction, you increase its colspan/rowspan.

Container::
A container contains a variable number of clients. Each cell of the table is a container.
+
Containers can be used in various modes. The default mode is called "default" and just
resizes each client equally so that it fits. The stacking mode is currently not implemented.

Workspace::
A workspace is a set of clients (technically speaking, it’s just a table). Other window
managers call this "Virtual Desktops".
+
In i3, each workspace is assigned to a specific virtual screen. By default, screen 1
has workspace 1, screen 2 has workspace 2 and so on… However, when you create a new
workspace (by simply switching to it), it’ll be assigned the screen you are currently
on.

Virtual Screen::
Using Xinerama, you can have an X11 screen spanning multiple real monitors. Furthermore,
you can set them up in cloning mode or with positions (monitor 1 is left of monitor 2).
+
A virtual screen is the result of your Xinerama setup. For example, if you have attached
two real monitors (let’s say your laptop screen and a beamer) and enabled cloning, i3
will use one virtual screen with the size of the smallest screen you have attached (so
that you can see all your windows on each screen all the time).
If you have two monitors attached, one configured to be left of the other, i3 will use
two virtual screens.

== KEYBINDINGS

Here is a short overview of the default keybindings:

h/j/k/l::
Direction keys (left, down, up, right)

Mod1+<direction>::
Focus window in <direction>.

Mod1+Shift+<direction>::
Move window to <direction>.

Mod1+Control+<direction>::
Snap window to <direction>.

Mod1+<number>::
Switch to workspace <number>.

Mod1+f::
Toggle fullscreen mode.

Mod1+s::
Enable stacking layout for the current container.

Mod1+d::
Enable default layout for the current container.

== FILES

=== i3.config

When starting, i3 looks for i3.config in the current working directory and loads the
configuration. At the moment, you can specify only the path to your favorite terminal
emulator, the font and keybindings.

At the moment, you have to bind to keycodes (find them out via xev(1)).

.Sample configuration
-------------------------------------------------------------
terminal /usr/pkg/bin/urxvt
font -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso8859-1

# Fullscreen
bind Mod1+41 f
# Stacking
bind Mod1+43 s
# Default
bind Mod1+26 d
# Focus
bind Mod1+44 h
bind Mod1+45 j
bind Mod1+46 k
bind Mod1+47 l
# Snap
bind Mod1+Control+44 sh
bind Mod1+Control+45 sj
bind Mod1+Control+46 sk
bind Mod1+Control+47 sl
# Move
bind Mod1+Shift+44 mh
bind Mod1+Shift+45 mj
bind Mod1+Shift+46 mk
bind Mod1+Shift+47 ml
# Workspaces
bind Mod1+10 1
...
-------------------------------------------------------------

=== ~/.xsession

This file is where you should configure your locales and start i3. It is run by
your login manager (xdm, slim, gdm, …) as soon as you login.

.Sample xsession
-------------------------------------------------------------
# Disable DPMS turning off the screen
xset dpms force on
xset s off
# Disable bell
xset -b

# Enforce correct locales from the beginning
unset LC_COLLATE
export LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8
export LC_TIME=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_MONETARY=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_MESSAGES=C
export LC_PAPER=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_NAME=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.ISO8859-15
export LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.ISO8859-15

exec /usr/bin/i3
-------------------------------------------------------------

== TODO

There is lots of stuff left to do. This release is to be considered as a technology preview.
Here is an overwiew of the most important points:

 * IPC
 * a command for toggling layouts/workspaces
 * floating
 * do something about applications which don’t use _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN (like xpdf)

== AUTHOR

Michael Stapelberg and contributors