X-Git-Url: https://git.sur5r.net/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=docs%2Fwsbar.html;h=a50da7fe8c5f15b902b75ce211d05825554cee3b;hb=c6a11870009f9f14da917485066d262b6b71e407;hp=7ddac0473483021703a39e61fe4c30657d16257b;hpb=c5811e907324151b05ed74ed681aa5eb41d47d81;p=i3%2Fi3.github.io diff --git a/docs/wsbar.html b/docs/wsbar.html index 7ddac04..a50da7f 100644 --- a/docs/wsbar.html +++ b/docs/wsbar.html @@ -2,14 +2,15 @@ "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
+ - +This document describes why the internal workspace bar is minimal and how an -external workspace bar can be used. It explains the concepts using i3-wsbar -as the reference implementation.
i3 comes with i3bar by default, a simple bar that is sufficient for most users. +In case you are unhappy with it, this document explains how to use a different, +external workspace bar. Note that we do not provide support for external +programs.
The internal workspace bar of i3 is meant to be a reasonable default so that you can use i3 without having too much hassle when setting it up. It is quite -simple and intended to stay this way. So, there is no way to display your own -information in this bar (unlike dwm, wmii, awesome, â¦).
We chose not to implement such a mechanism because that would be duplicating -already existing functionality of tools such as dzen2, xmobar and similar. -Instead, you should disable the internal bar and use an external workspace bar -(which communicates with i3 through its IPC interface).
By default, the IPC interface is enabled and places its UNIX socket in -~/.i3/ipc.sock.
By default, the IPC interface is enabled and you can get the path to the socket +by calling i3 --get-socketpath.
To learn more about the protocol which is used for IPC, see docs/ipc.
Please keep in mind that i3-wsbar is just a reference implementation. It is -shipped with i3 to have a reasonable default. Thus, i3-wsbar is designed to -work well with dzen2 and there are no plans to make it more generic.
i3-wsbar used to be the reference implementation before we had i3bar. +Nowadays, it is not shipped with release tarballs, but you can still get it at +http://code.stapelberg.de/git/i3/tree/contrib/i3-wsbar
The most common reason to use an external workspace bar is to integrate system -information such as what i3status provides into the workspace bar (to save -screen space). So, we have i3status or a similar program, which only provides +information such as what i3status or conky provide into the workspace bar. +So, we have i3status or a similar program, which only provides text output (formatted in some way). To display this text nicely on the screen, there are programs such as dzen2, xmobar and similar. We will stick to dzen2 from here on. So, we have the output of i3status, which needs to go into dzen2 @@ -132,17 +129,13 @@ bar which you will see should look exactly like the internal bar of i3.
i3status | i3-wsbar -c "dzen2 -x %x -dock"
It is recommended to place the above command in your i3 configuration file -to start it automatically with i3.