[Notion-general] Quickly jumping to specific windows

[Philipp H. <ph...@ph...>]

For a long time I had been desperately missing commands that would allow me 
quickly jump directly to my mail client, to my browser and so on. I had worked 
around it by giving single-letter window titles to most programs and using the 
gotoclient command, but I've never really liked this option. I've even 
considered switching to i3 several times because they explicitly mention[1] 
such a functionality in their user's guide, but I just can't live with dynamic 
tiling anymore.

A week ago I finally sat down to find out if there wasn't a way to somehow 
achieve such a functionality in Notion and to my big surprise it was very 
easy. As this has truly revolutionized the way I switch between windows I 
thought I'd share this revelation. Maybe someone else finds it useful. Also 
I'd love to hear comments or suggestions for improvement (although it is 
working perfectly for me :)).

I use the following little function (I've put it in cfg_kludges.lua):
--- SNIP ---
gotoclient_by_shortname = function(sn)
    local s
    ioncore.clientwin_i(function(cwin)
        local winprop = ioncore.getwinprop(cwin)
        if winprop and winprop.shortname == sn then
            s=cwin
            return false
        else
            return true
        end
    end)
    s:goto()
    return true
end
--- SNAP ---

In the definition of the window properties I've added shortnames, for example:
--- SNIP ---
defwinprop{
	class = "URxvt",
	instance = "mutt",
	target = "muttframe",
	shortname = "m"
}
--- SNAP ---

And in my cfg_notioncore.lua I've added the following section:
--- SNIP ---
	submap(META.."U", {
		kpress("a", "gotoclient_by_shortname('a')"),
		kpress("b", "gotoclient_by_shortname('b')"),
		kpress("c", "gotoclient_by_shortname('c')"),
		kpress("d", "gotoclient_by_shortname('d')"),
		kpress("e", "gotoclient_by_shortname('e')"),
		kpress("f", "gotoclient_by_shortname('f')"),
		kpress("g", "gotoclient_by_shortname('g')"),
		kpress("h", "gotoclient_by_shortname('h')"),
		kpress("i", "gotoclient_by_shortname('i')"),
		kpress("j", "gotoclient_by_shortname('j')"),
		kpress("k", "gotoclient_by_shortname('k')"),
		kpress("l", "gotoclient_by_shortname('l')"),
		kpress("m", "gotoclient_by_shortname('m')"),
		kpress("n", "gotoclient_by_shortname('n')"),
		kpress("o", "gotoclient_by_shortname('o')"),
		kpress("p", "gotoclient_by_shortname('p')"),
		kpress("q", "gotoclient_by_shortname('q')"),
		kpress("r", "gotoclient_by_shortname('r')"),
		kpress("s", "gotoclient_by_shortname('s')"),
		kpress("t", "gotoclient_by_shortname('t')"),
		kpress("u", "gotoclient_by_shortname('u')"),
		kpress("v", "gotoclient_by_shortname('v')"),
		kpress("w", "gotoclient_by_shortname('w')"),
		kpress("x", "gotoclient_by_shortname('x')"),
		kpress("y", "gotoclient_by_shortname('y')"),
		kpress("z", "gotoclient_by_shortname('z')"),
	}),
--- SNAP ---

I can now conveniently switch to my mail client by pressing Alt+u and then m. 
Of course there is no need to use a submap so that even faster bindings like 
Alt+m can be used if desired.

Regards,
Philipp

[1] http://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_jumping_to_specific_windows