[xmonad] [newbie] {visual preview of workspaces, ignoring current workspace} when using Actions.CycleWS

[Wirt Wolff]

Excerpts from Lara Michaels's message of Sat Jan 09 11:02:43 -0700 2010:
>
> Two brief questions:
>
> 1 - Is it possible to get some sort of visual preview of what is in the next or
> previous workspace when moving with next|prevWS? (A little bit like regular
> window managers bring up for you to pick among windows when you press Alt-Tab?)
> Currently, I cycle blindly among all nine workspaces until I stumble upon the
> one I had in mind.
>
> 2- In the attached xmonad.hs, I have tried to combine cycling with
> Actions.CycleWS with the non-greedy view. My goal is that, when the focus is on
> a particular (physical) screen, doing (next|prev)WS will *skip* over the
> workspace currently visible in the *other* (physical) screen. In other words, I
> would like the focus never to leave the physical screen I am using, and that
> while cycling the workspace currently in the other screen would be ignored. Is
> there even a way to do this...?
>

1 - xmonad doesn't do any compositing, so you can't really get exposé
style previews. However, XMonad.Actions.CycleRecentWS lets you
cycle through workspaces without re-ordering them quite so much as
other methods of cycling. You end up with more recently accessed
workspaces showing up earlier as you cycle in preview mode, rather
than cycling through them in the config order. IIRC it skips workspaces
already visible on other monitors, too, although it's been quite a while
since I tried it out; could be wrong about that.

2 - Actions.CycleWS is the right place to look for this. Sounds like
you're wanting `moveTo Next HiddenWS' and `moveTo Prev HiddenWS'. There
are lots of other goodies in CycleWS too. They can get a little complicated
to set up how you want, so if no response here ....

For more interactive config tweaking and troubleshooting, #xmonad on
irc.freenode.net is a good place to ask.

Glad you're enjoying xmonad so far; hope it continues to be fun and
work well for you.

Regards,
-- 
wmw