Unity-style application swapping in openbox

Question

I missed the W-1 binding in unity, which launches an application if it's not already running or changes focus to it if it is already running, so I decided to implement the feature in openbox.
I wrote a bash script launch_or_swap, which is pretty simple:
#!/bin/bash
if wmctrl -lx | grep -i --quiet "$1"; then
wmctrl -x -a "$1"
else
"$1" &
fi
It uses wmctrl with the -x parameter to list the currently open windows, including their WM_CLASS. This list is piped to grep, which searches for the name of the application we are looking to access. For the three applications I am using this for (terminator, firefox, and evince), the application binary name is included in WM_CLASS. I don't know if this is always the case; YMMV. If an appropriate application window is found, wmctrl swaps to it. Otherwise, the application is launched.
To create the W-1 hotkey for terminator I added this to ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml:
<keybind key="W-1">
<action name="Execute">
<command>launch_or_swap terminator</command>
</action>
</keybind>
If anyone has suggestions for better ways to accomplish this or improvements, I'd be happy to hear them.
Last edited by ChrisODonnell (2015-03-25 19:01:42)

Answer 1

Openbox's menu is built in to the WM, but menumaker can work with dozens (or hundreds) of different menus.  Check the AUR for choices.
I used one quite a long time ago - I think it was 'mygtkmenu' - it felt a lot like the openbox menu, but it was actually easier to configure.