Getting Emacs Windows to Not Be Shy

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 09:37:35 +0530

Figuring out my webapps problem yesterday made me ask myself if I could somehow repurpose that little xdotool script to solve another niche itch that I had.

Spoiler alert: It did.

I run Emacs as a daemon, and use EmacsClient to connect to the Emacs process.
Makes it really ease to launch, work on, sling around and close lots of Emacs windows.¹

Which brings me to the hiccough. I launch EmacsClient and a window (frame) does indeed launch, but it just … stays there in the background.

Repeated attempts to launch EmacsClient are to no avail.
The pesky little windows just pile up in their corner.

Ergo, this little bit of Bash/xdotool shenanigans …

#!/usr/bin/env bash 

export EMACSWINID=$(xdotool search "\*scratch\*" | tail -n1)

if [ $EMACSWINID ]; then
 xdotool windowactivate $EMACSWINID
else
 sh -c 'emacsclient --create-frame --no-wait --alternate-editor="" && export EMACSWINID=$(xdotool search "\*scratch\*" | tail -n1) && xdotool windowactivate $EMACSWINID'
fi

Check to see if an Emacs scratch buffer is open. If it is, switch to it.
Otherwise, just launch EmacsClient, get the id of the scratch buffer window (frame) and raise it, so that I can work on it. In peace.

Cue: sounds of relief, in the background

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Frames, in Emacs parlance ↩︎

Getting Around Linux Mint Web App Manager Window Errors

feedback@janusworx.com (Mario Jason Braganza) — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 19:09:46 +0530

One of best parts of using Linux Mint is its Web Apps Manager.

I can use most of my websites as dedicated applications now.
Case in point, I use a dedicated web app to run Elk, the web client for Mastodon.
Social stuff like this, or banking stuff or my webmail for that matter, stays away from the rest of my browsing and lets me keep these activities cognitively separate.

So far, so good.
The issue arises, when I try to launch one of these dedicated apps and it is already running.
Due to the way these little web containers are created, it cannot run another instance and I run into this error.

“Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To use Firefox, you must first close the existing Firefox process, restart your device, or use a different profile.”¹

And I’m like, I know this you git! I am running a different profile. Can’t you just switch to it? Apparently it cannot. So I’d have to go looking for my app and then Alt-Tab through dozens of windows or look in my dock² and then get it back.

The problem wasn’t the error per se, the problem was the slightly longish delay between me calling the app and the error popping up. And also all that crazy hunting and pecking to find the right window, once I see the error. It gets maddening when I need to do this dance and all I want to do is get to my email window to go look for something important.

So I began casting around for a way to somehow switch to the actually running window. Was it possible?
That’s when I found xdotool
It lets you do all sorts of crazy things with windows and keyboard and mouse input, but most importantly for me, it let me search for my running app window and it let me raise and bring it back up. Awesome!

So instead of telling Ulauncher to directly launch the app, I told it to run this script instead.

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#!/usr/bin/env bash 

export ELKWINID=$(xdotool search WebApp-ElkforToots1234 | tail -n1)

if [ $ELKWINID ]; then
 xdotool windowactivate $ELKWINID
else
 sh -c ' firefox --class WebApp-ElkforToots1234 --profile /home/user/.local/share/ice/firefox/ElkforToots1234 --no-remote "https://elk.zone/"'
fi

In a nutshell, I’m looking to see if Elk is already running (using the xdotool search option in line 3).
If it is, I tell xdotool to get that window to the forefront of the display; and if it isn’t, then to just go ahead and launch the app anew.

What a load off my mind, this one was!

I don’t know if this would happen if I use Chrome as the browser engine. I don’t even use it as a browser, much. And for things like these, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. ↩︎
and still some how miss it ↩︎

Scripting on Janusworx

Getting Emacs Windows to Not Be Shy

Getting Around Linux Mint Web App Manager Window Errors