Other i3-gaps?

B

BryanW

I've been using i3-gaps on my Linux machine for some time now, and am trying to move over more and more to FreeBSD. I've been using i3wm on FreeBSD, but am missing the gaps.

I'm trying to use i3-gaps-freebsd from
git clone https://github.com/tony/i3-gaps-freebsd.git but am having trouble with his instructions. Is anyone using this?

I've cloned the repo, and then

$sudo make WITH=gaps install clean

which gives:

Code: 
===>  Patching for i3-4.10.2
/usr/bin/patch --forward --quiet -E -p0 -V simple --suffix .orig < /usr/home/bryan/i3-gaps-freebsd/files/extra-patch-gaps
File to patch:

What file is to be patched here?
 
From man patch:
Code: 
 -p strip-count, --strip strip-count
             Sets the pathname strip count, which controls how pathnames found
             in the patch file are treated, in case you keep your files in a
             different directory than the person who sent out the patch.  The
             strip count specifies how many slashes are to be stripped from
             the front of the pathname.  (Any intervening directory names also
             go away.)  For example, supposing the file name in the patch file
             was /u/howard/src/blurfl/blurfl.c:

             Setting -p0 gives the entire pathname unmodified.

             -p1 gives

                   u/howard/src/blurfl/blurfl.c

             without the leading slash.

             -p4 gives

                   blurfl/blurfl.c

             Not specifying -p at all just gives you blurfl.c, unless all of
             the directories in the leading path (u/howard/src/blurfl) exist
             and that path is relative, in which case you get the entire
             pathname unmodified.  Whatever you end up with is looked for
             either in the current directory, or the directory specified by
             the -d option.
 
I personally do not understand why "gaps" is/are not merged on i3. If you take a look on i3 and i3-gaps on github, the gaps dev seem to be one of the most active contributors of i3.

Would be a good thing if the i3 available on FreeBSD could be i3-gaps instead of normal i3.
 
pva said:
I couldn't get it to work either, so I made a new port that I maintain for my own use here. Maybe you'll find it of some use, too.
Click to expand...

I got sidetracked for a while, but finally got around to installing gaps through your port. Works great so far. Thank you much.
 
Things I hate about 80% of github. No explanation of what their software is or does. No quick Google search helps. Might as well be a blank page.

So what is i3-gaps?
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Things I hate about 80% of github. No explanation of what their software is or does. No quick Google search helps. Might as well be a blank page.

So what is i3-gaps?
Click to expand...

i3-gaps is exactly the same as i3 (they keep it synced) but with some patches to allow (configurable) gaps between the windows, what brings a more pleasant looks:

qu4vhq498tux.png


Just to notice, there is also Sway, what is a i3 "port" to Wayland - I think it also have gaps.

Cheers!
 
Just in the case of someone interested, I will give x11-wm/bspwm a try, what supposedly is quite similar to i3 and have "gaps" by default.

I installed it already and the configuration file seem to as simple as i3 ones. There is this guide to start with, but for some reason these two specific example files are not being installed here bspwmrc and sxhkdrc.

EDIT: Bspwm should work well with x11/lemonbar.

Cheers! :beer:
 
Last edited:
BryanW said:
What breaks?
Click to expand...

The gaps feature will only work if titlebars are completely disabled. I believe I heard through the grapevine that gaps are now gracefully disabled if titlebars are not explicitly disabled, but when the project was first started having titlebars and gaps enabled simultaneously actually interfered with the drawing of the windows on-screen. The common practical argument in favor of putting gaps between tiled windows is that doing so helps the user more easily distinguish between different windows. But having titlebars on windows obviously does that already. Titlebars in i3 also serve to indicate special container and window states, and using stacked or tabbed containers in i3 virtually necessitates having titlebars. Removing them makes such containers tedious to use, rather than the convenience they're supposed to be.

i3 is one of the more distinctive tilers out there, with its own look and feel (comparable only to the virtually defunct wmii) a very carefully thought-out workflow and feature set that these gaps interfere with. So despite many, many requests over the years, the i3 developers refuse to add any support for gaps between windows because doing so would mean rewriting a portion of the window manager, making it perhaps nicer for some people to look at, but harder for everybody to use.
 
ANOKNUSA said:
The gaps feature will only work if titlebars are completely disabled. ......
Click to expand...

Thanks, that would seem a valid reason for it not being upstreamed.
I do wish, though, that the work would be put in to resolve the problem so both the beauty (subjective, I know) and functionality would not be at odds.

It's important—to me, at least—to have a beautiful workspace even if minimal. I've enjoyed removing the title bars, window control buttons, borders, scrollbars, etc. I love having just the main content on screen with little else, but I certainly wouldn't want to force others into what I like or remove functionality that others use.

At the moment, I have one machine with gaps and one without. It seems the i3 in the FreeBSD ports at least does a shading effect at the window border, so with that I was quite content without gaps.
 
I was looking on how the graphics/wayland port is going on, and I found this on the mailing list archive. If you look on the links in there, at least one of the people involved to bring Wayland to FreeBSD is using Sway to work on it. So, when we have Wayland properly working Sway should came to ports too, and well ported I guess. :)
 
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