Monitor the output of any command and nested tabs

[budRich]

I just got the question how i do my "monitor" tab in issue #90 . My Monitor tab has several subtabs, all of them containing a terminal displaying the output of some command. The answer is extremely simple, i just start the commands i want to monitor in a terminal ;)

But. Some of the commands I monitor are i3 and lxde. My window manager and desktop environment, how can i start commands in a terminal without having a DE or WM? Its very easy. You don't need to have a DE or WM to start graphical programs (yes the terminal emulator is a graphical program). Just like the song: All you need is X (ratatatataa). I simply start the terminals in .xinitrc, something like this:

# first i start urxvtd (this is not mandatory, but if you don't you cant use urxvtc,
# and you need to start some terminals in the background. but use urxvtd, its fun.
urxvtd -q -o -f

# then start i3 from within a urxvtc terminal
urxvtc -name i3 -e i3

# last we start lxde, but note !!! dont use urxvtc, use urxvt
# because we want to fork this process with exec, and that doesn't work with urxvtc
exec urxvt -name lxde -e startlxde

When you now start your X session (startx), lxde and i3 will be running, and two terminals will just be there
with the output of the commands. This can be very useful to see what is going on. The i3 output for example will f.i. show the output any command a keybinding would generate.

Then in my i3config i have a single autostart command that gets executed when i3 is first started:
exec startnice

~/bin/startnice:

#!/bin/bash

# the instance name "i3" was set by the -name option earlier in xinitrc
# this strange command will create a new tabbed container and put the i3 terminal inside it
# the last command, focus parent , will focus the tabbed container itself
i3-msg [class="URxvt" instance="i3"] split v, layout tabbed, focus, focus parent

# lets mark that container
i3-msg mark monitor

# now we can move the lxde monitor terminal to that monitor container
i3-msg [class="URxvt" instance="lxde"] move to mark monitor

# we can change the title of the monitor container:
i3-msg [con_mark="monitor"] title_format "monitor"

# and last, what i do is put the monitor container, inside another tabbed container from i3fyra
# it is important to focus it first, i3fyra will by default operate on the currently focused container
i3-msg [con_mark=monitor] focus
i3fyra --move B

I actually have a script called monitor, but that is really a mess, and i should clean it up, when i have i will post it here. But this should give you some idea on how this works.