2017-12-10

The Advent of Void: Day 10: dvtm

You know window managers, right? Like tiled window managers. There are plenty of them. But did you know that there’s a tiled window manager for the shell?

[1][2][3][4][5][]=[                                                           ]
──[#1]─────────────────────────────────┬──[#2]─────────────────────────────────
  1 text.txt                           │#
  2                                    │
  3 :Author: tox                       │
  4 :Email: tox@rootkit                │
  5 :Date: 2017-12-07 14:07            │
  6                                    │
  7                                    │
~                                      │
~                                      │
~                                      ├──[#3]─────────────────────────────────
~                                      │# echo Hello
~                                      │Hello
~                                      │#
~                                      │
~                                      │
~                                      │
~                                      │
~                                      │
~                                      │
                     7,0-1         All │

dvtm(1) helps you to organize multiple shells within the same screen without relying on such n00p-software as any form of graphical user interface.

To start a new instance of dvtm, just run dvtm. Let me give a little explaination of the terms first:

• Window: a pseudo terminal in dvtm.
• Tag: A tag is a marker on the window. It’s a number between 1 and 9.
• View: a set tags that define which windows are shown.

Once you started dvtm you can open a new window by typing Ctrl+G, which is the modifier combination followed by C. Cycling through the windows is done by the modifier combination follower by J for the next window or K for the previous one.

dvtm supports tagging like dwm does. You may apply a tag to the selected window by pressing the modifier combination followed by T followed by the tag digit. This removes all other tags from the window. To toggle a single tag without changing other tags, use Shift+T.

To switch your view to another tag you can use the modifier combination followed by V followed by the tag digit.

There are a lot more features in dvtm. You may read about them on the dvtm website or the manpage