• Demos
• Advantages Over Other Dropdown Terminals
• Requirements
• Installation Instructions and Usage
  • Installation
  • Basic Sxhkd Example
  • Basic Flags
    • Changes
  • Flicker
  • Monitor Awareness
  • Hooks
    • Pre Create
    • Post Create
    • Pre Float
    • Post Float
    • Pre Map
    • Post Map
    • Pre Unmap
    • Post Unmap
  • Auto-hiding
• Tested With
  • Terminals
  • Window Managers
    • Tiling without Floating Support
    • Floating/Stacking
    • Tiling with Floating Support
• Why Not Use wmctrl?
• Why Not Use wmutils?
• Similar
• Troubleshooting
  • Tdrop does not work with some terminal/program

Demos

A basic demo using tdrop to create a dropdown/scratchpad on the fly with a hotkey. I set the height to be less than max with tdrop to make it more obvious which is the dropdown at which time. First apvlv is turned into a dropdown. Then it is cleared and zathura is turned into a dropdown. One can also have multiple hotkeys to create multiple dropdowns on the fly at a time.

A demo showing tdrop's ability to auto-hide windows when opening things from them. First an image is opened in sxiv from ranger in the dropdown. When sxiv is closed, the dropdown automatically re-appears. The image is opened once again, but this time the dropdown is manually toggled before closing sxiv. This cancels the "re-show".

Advantages Over Other Dropdown Terminals

• Can be used with any terminal or other program of your choice
• Supports many WMs
• Allows turning any window into a dropdown on the fly
• Allows for control of sizing and placement so that panels aren't hidden
• Supports tiled and floating dropdowns
• Attempts to deal with floating windows on a case by case basis (ability to have a floating dropdown without needing a rule to float all windows of that type)
• Allows for multiple dropdowns of the same type (uses window id)
• Allows for auto-hiding a dropdown when opening programs from it
• Can automatically start programs and tmux or tmuxinator sessions
• Supports automatic resizing based on the current monitor
• Has hooks for executing user commands

Requirements

• bash and basic utilities (awk, sed, etc.)
• xprop
• xwininfo
• xdotool

Optional:

• xrandr (for -m)
• tmux (for -s)
• tmuxinator (for -s)

Installation Instructions and Usage

Installation

Tdrop is in the AUR as tdrop-git. It can also be installed by cloning this repo and running sudo make install. One can then bind a key to it (e.g. with sxhkd).

Basic Sxhkd Example

# negative -w arg to account for a border width (default: 100%)
alt + s
    tdrop -ma -w -4 -y "$PANEL_HEIGHT" -s dropdown termite

The positional argument should be the name of a program in $PATH (as opposed to the full path to a program) and should not contain any flags (see -f if you want to pass additional flags to the program when running it).

Basic Flags

-s / --session should only be used for supported terminals and if the user wants to start a tmux or tmuxinator session. -a / --auto-detect-wm should be used to automatically set certain options (-l, -L, -d, and/or -i) based on the current window manager. These flags (whether automatically or manually set) may be necessary for tdrop to behave correctly (e.g. they are required for -w / --width, -h / --height, -x / --xoff, and -y / --yoff to work correctly on tiling window managers). See the manpage for these flags for specific details.

Tdrop has basic checks to print errors for malformed commands (for example to require one positional argument). If a tdrop command does not work, please run it in a terminal or check /tmp/tdrop/log for error messages and consult the manpage before making an issue. For more information, see the Troubleshooting section.

Changes

Long options can now be used with whitespace instead of requiring a = (i.e. --long-opt value and --long-opt=value are both fine).

Old users please note that -W|--normal-window, -z|--sleep-terminal, and -Z|--sleep-window are no longer necessary and have been removed. Similarly, the old hook flags (-p, -P, -M, and -O as well as --create-hook and --map-hook) have been replaced with more specific and useful versions.

Flicker

For some window managers that require a window to be repositioned after re-mapping it, some flicker may be noticeable. This flicker has been mostly fixed for some window managers (e.g. in the Gnome Shell and Cinnamon DEs) and improved for others. It is usually worse on tiling managers where the window must be re-floated every time it is mapped. The way around this is to use rules to either always have the class floated or one-time rules to only float the next instance of a class. For example, since bspwm has oneshot rules and generally doesn't alter the size/position of a window, there isn't any movement flicker.

A more consistent workaround to eliminate visual flickering regardless of the window manager is to enable fade-in for the compositor. For compton this can be done by setting fading = true; and adjusting the fade-delta in the ~/.config/compton.conf accordingly.

Monitor Awareness

Using the -m / --monitor-aware flag will cause the geometry options to act with respect to the current monitor. This may be helpful for users of multiple monitors who don't want dropdowns spanning across monitors.

This is particularly useful when using a percentage or negative value with -w, -h, -x, and/or -y. For example, -w -4 normally corresponds to a width 4 pixels less than 100% of the screen width (potentially the combined width of multiple monitors). With -m, the pixel values are calculated using the dimensions of the current monitor alone. Negative values may be useful when the window manager (possibly due to window decorations) causes a dropdown with -w 100% to go over the edge of the screen. The -m option will also automatically resize and/or reposition the dropdown when opening it on a different monitor when one or more of the geometry arguments are negative or percentages.

Some window managers allow querying what the current monitor is (e.g. bspwm and i3), but for other window managers, tdrop determines the current monitor based on the position of the active window. For these window managers, if the desktop is empty, tdrop must wait for the dropdown to be created or mapped before getting the monitor info. This may cause a slight delay before the dropdown is properly resized. If -m does not work at all or there is a specific way to query for the current monitor in your window manager, please make an issue.

See the manpage for more information.

Hooks

Tdrop provides various hook flags that can be used to run commands at various stages during execution. These commands can make use of any internal tdrop variable, such as $width, $height, $xoff, $yoff, $class, and $wid. For example, to set a dropdown as always on top, "-P 'wmctrl -i -r $wid -b add,above'" could be added to a tdrop command.

Note that for some of the hooks, the window id is not guarunteed to be known (since the window may not have yet been created), so any scripts that make use of these should check if it is defined (pre-map and pre-float; wid will never be known for pre-create).

Pre Create

Program The hook will be run before the program is started.

Current The hook will be run before unmapping the current window.

Hide and Show No effect.

Post Create

Program The hook will be run after the program is started and its window is active.

Current The hook will be run after unmapping the current window.

Hide and Show No effect.

Pre Float

A command specifically meant to float the window. Note that if you specify this, it will override any defaults from -a.

Program / Current The command will be run before mapping the window.

Hide No effect.

Show Will be used before mapping the window if it was previously floating.

Post Float

A command specifically meant to float the window. Note that if you specify this, it will override any defaults from -a.

Program / Current The command will be run after mapping the window.

Hide No effect.

Show Will be used after mapping the window if it was previously floating.

Pre Map

Program / Current / Show The command will be run before mapping the window.

Hide No effect.

Post Map

Program / Current / Show The command will be run after mapping the window.

Hide No effect.

Pre Unmap

Program / Current / Hide The command will be run before unmapping the window.

Show No effect.

Post Unmap

Program / Current / Hide The command will be run after unmapping the window.

Show No effect.

Auto-hiding

In addition to creating dropdowns, tdrop can automatically hide a window and later un-hide it. For example, if gvim is opened to write a git commit message from the terminal, tdrop can automatically hide the terminal (dropdown or not) and restore it after the user is finished writing the commit message:

hide_on_open() {
    tdrop -a auto_hide && "$@" && tdrop -a auto_show
}
alias gc='hide_on_open git commit'

The most useful application of this functionality is probably when opening videos, images, etc. in an external program from a file manager like ranger. For example, in the rifle.conf:

mime ^video, has mpv, X, flag f = tdrop -a auto_hide && mpv -- "$@" && tdrop -a auto_show

Tested With

Terminals

These terminals have been tested with tdrop and support the -s and -a flags unless otherwise specified:

• Termite
• URxvt (including urxvtd)
• XTerm
• Xfce4-terminal
• Gnome-terminal
• Konsole
• Terminology
• Sakura
• Roxterm
• Tilix (previously terminix)
• st (-s does not work)
• Alacritty
• xiate

If your terminal doesn't work with tdrop, feel free to make an issue. Please follow the steps in the Troubleshooting section.

Window Managers

The primary goal of tdrop is to "just work" with any window manager. The primary differences between how tdrop deals with different window managers is the strategy it takes for floating only the dropdown (as opposed to all instances of the class that the dropdown is). There are three types of window managers as far as tdrop is concerned:

Tiling without Floating Support

If your window manager does not support floating, there's nothing to worry about. Binding a key to tdrop <flags> terminal should work. Options for resizing and movement that work only with floating window managers are not supported. One can, however, add post-map and post-unmap commands to do something like change the layout to fullscreen when showing a dropdown then revert the layout when hiding the dropdown. Automatic settings exist to do this for the following window managers (-a):

• herbstluftwm

Floating/Stacking

For floating window managers, tdrop should also generally "just work", but you may need to add the -a option for auto-showing to correctly restore the previous geometry.

That said, these are the floating window managers that currently have been tested:

• mutter (gnome shell)
• muffin (cinnamon)
• xfwm4 (xfce)
• metacity (gnome 2)
• marco (mate)
• kwin (kde)
• openbox (lxde)
• compiz (unity)
• pekwm
• fluxbox
• blackbox
• fvwm
• sawfish
• goomwwm

If your dropdown moves out of place when being shown, make an issue, and I will add settings for it.

Tiling with Floating Support

These window managers currently will work with -a for a floating (instead of tiled) dropdown:

• bspwm (support for versions prior to 0.9.1 was dropped on 2016/09/22)
• i3
• awesome

Awesome support may be buggy; if you encounter problems, please report them.

Why Not Use wmctrl?

Necessary features don't work on many window managers, including mine.

Why Not Use wmutils?

Maybe in the future. The only advantage I can see over xdotool is that it can toggle mapping (mapw -t), but this wouldn't be used in this script anyway since different code is executed depending on whether or not the window is mapped or unmapped. Also the command names are somewhat cryptic.

Similar

• drawer

Troubleshooting

Tdrop does not work with some terminal/program

Please make an issue. Including the following information would help resolve the problem more quickly.

Basic:

• The incorrect behavior: Does the window appear at all? Is the problem that it is not floated correctly in a supported wm? Or is it a feature request for -a support?
• Whether things work as expected with a basic tdrop <terminal> (no flags) or whether the issue occurs with a specific flag (probably -s)

Additional helpful information:

• If the problem only occurs with the -s flag, the issue is likely due to the fact that not all terminals have compatible -e flags. It would be helpful if information on how the terminal's flag for executing a command works. Is it something other than -e? Are quotations required or incorrect ("-e 'command -flags …'" vs "-e command flags")?
• If the issue is with the dropdown behavior (e.g. tdrop keeps opening new windows for the program), does the program share a PID across all instances (e.g. open several windows and provide the output of pgrep -l <program>)? Does the program have a daemon and client?