"Mouseless navigation". Keyboard navigation of the Linux desktop.

Use the keyboard to switch between windows and workspaces. This program shows a menu with the colored list of windows, marked by letters a-z. Colors are configurable. Pressing the key a-z "teleports" to that window. Pressing the space bar brings up the previous window. Pressing 1-9 "teleports" to the corresponding workspace.

(with some artwork from colourlovers.com)

sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev libxmu-dev libglib2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libcairo2-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libatk1.0-dev qt5-qmake qt5-default
qmake
make

The installation consists of simply copying files:

[ -d ~/.wmjump/ ] || { mkdir ~/.wmjump/ ; cp data/*  ~/.wmjump/ ; }
sudo install -g root -o root -m 0755 wmjump /usr/bin/
sudo install -g root -o root -m 0644 wmjump.1 /usr/share/man/man1/

The instructions for use and config of wmjump can be found in README or by running:

man wmjump

The color of a button is determined by the WM_CLASS of the window. To learn WM_CLASS, execute command:

xprop WM_CLASS

The mouse cursor will become a cross. Click on the window in question. The output will be something like:

WM_CLASS(STRING) = "xterm", "UXTerm"

Notice that there are two values: "xterm" and "UXTerm" The first one, "xterm", is called res_name , while the second ("UXTerm") is called res_class. (Together they form a struct XClassHint of the xlib library.)

The wmjump looks at res_name. It ignores res_class.

The res_name of a window is typically hard-coded in the application, and sometimes it is desirable to change it.

A program called xdotool allows to change the res_name of any window. It is done in two steps. The first step is to execute:

xdotool  search --pid   $WINDOW_PID

where $WINDOW_PID is the process ID of the process which owns the window. The result will be a window code (or a list of codes, if there are several windows). Let us call it $WINDOW_CODE. Then second step is to execute:

xdotool  set_window --classname NEWNAME  $WINDOW_CODE

where NEWNAME is the res_name we want.