mmutils

mmutils (multi-monitor utilities) is a set of utilities for querying xrandr monitor information.

Their main purpose is to be used alongside wmutils, but they will probably work with pretty much anything runs on top of Xorg.

Utilities

Here's a list of what is currently implemented:

• lsm - get a list of monitors (active, connected, and primary)
• pfm - get xrandr id of the focused monitor (the monitor which holds the pointer)
• mattr - get information about a monitor (width, height, x/y offset, connection status)

Usage

Because mmutils is intended to work with (inspired by, and even borrowed some code from) wmutils, they have a similar way of operation.

lsm

By default lsm lists all active monitors

$ lsm
VGA1
VGA-1-2
HDMI-1-4

Passing -a will list all active monitors as well as all connected monitors (monitors that are physically connected to a graphics card, but don't have an active X desktop assigned). Mirrored/cloned monitors are excluded by default.

$ lsm -a
LVDS1
VGA1
VGA-1-2
HDMI-1-4

Passing -am will do the same as -a, but it will include all mirrored/cloned monitors.

Passing -p will output the primary monitor, if it's available.

$ lsm -p
VGA1

The primary monitor is set via xrandr:

$ xrandr --output VGA1 --primary

pfm

Gets the xrandr id of the focused monitor.
The focused monitor is determined by the pointer coordinates. Whichever monitor holds the pointer is considered as "focused".

$ pfm
VGA-1-2

This is useful when combined with mattr

$ mattr whxy $(pfm)
1920 1080 0 0

mattr

Gets information (connection status, active, width, height, x/y offset) about a monitor.
A monitor can be specified by it's xrandr id (mid, e.g. LVDS1, VGA-1-2) or by a window id (wid, e.g. 0x00600096).

By xrandr id

Check if VGA1 is connected and has an X screen attached

$ mattr "VGA1" && echo "VGA1 active"

Check if VGA1 is connected

$ mattr -c "VGA1" && echo "VGA1 connected"

Get VGA1's dimensions in standard geometry format

$ mattr -g "VGA1"
1920x1080+0+0

Get width and height of VGA1

$ mattr wh "VGA1"
1920 1080

Get x and y offset of VGA1

$ mattr xy "VGA1"
0 0

Useful for piping

$ mattr n "VGA1"
VGA1

All together now

$ mattr nxywh "VGA-1-2"
VGA-1-2 3840 0 1680 1050

By window id

You can pass a window id (e.g. 0x00600096) to mattr and you'll get info about the monitor which the window belongs to.
mattr determines if a window belongs to a monitor by comparing the intersection areas between the window and active monitors, so if a window is placed between two monitors, the monitor which displays the largest part of the window is selected.

$ mattr nwh $(pfw)
HDMI-1-4 1920 1080

Note: pfw is part of wmutils. It returns the id of the currently focused window.

Using them together

Getting info about all active monitors is as simple as

$ mattr nwhxy $(lsm)
VGA1 1920 1080 0 0
VGA-1-2 1680 1050 3840 0
HDMI-1-4 1920 1080 1920 0

Piping

There's a special case when using mattr in conjunction with other command line tools. Since mattr allows both mid and wid to be passed as an argument and n returning only mid, chaining the output with other applications can be a bit troublesome, e.g. to get a list of all the windows and monitors they're shown in you'd need to use something like this:

$ mattr n $(lsw)
HDMI2
VGA1
HDMI2

This doesn't do us much good as we lose the wids returned by lsw. To get the proper output we need something like this:

$ for wid in $(lsw); do
    printf '%s\n' "$(mattr n $wid) $wid"

DisplayPort-2 0x01e0000a
DisplayPort-1 0x00c000f1
DisplayPort-1 0x00c000a6
HDMI-A-2 0x01400003

This isn't pretty to look at or write so the s parameter comes into play. It returns the passed argument to mattr and streamlines the whole process, e.g.

$ mattr sn $(lsw)
0x01400010 HDMI2
0x01400010 VGA1
0x01400010 HDMI2

Note that s is only useful when you're passing a wid to mattr. In the case when you're passing a mid, s is equivalent to n.

Usage with wmutils

A simple usage example with wmutils would be to change the contrib repo script fullscreen.sh for basic multi-monitor capabilities.

Currently the window expands to the whole root X window (across all your monitors), which is not what you would want (most of the time).
We want the expanded window to occupy the full size of it's monitor.

The change is really simple and boils down to replacing the line

wtp $(wattr xywh `lsw -r`) $1

with (note mattr instead of wattr)

wtp $(mattr xywh $(pfw)) $1

Note that this change only illustrates how easily one can modify his current scripts to play nice with multiple monitors. Taking fullscreen.sh's current implementation, only one fullscreen window is allowed at any given time. If you want multiple fullscreen windows (per monitor), additional changes should be made.

Dependencies

mmutils only relies on the XCB library.

Installation

Arch Linux

aur -S mmutils-git

Note: The AUR package is not maintained by me.

Void Linux

xbps-install -S mmutils

Note: The package is not maintained by me.

Building mmutils

System-wide installation (default PREFIX is /usr):

$ make
# make install

Here are the variables you can override, along with their default values:

CC         =  cc
LD         =  $(CC)
CFLAGS     =  -std=c99 -pedantic -Wall -Os
LDFLAGS    =  -lxcb
PREFIX     =  /usr
DESTDIR    =

You can override them by passing them on the command line:

make DESTDIR=/newroot install

Or by setting them via the environment:

CC=c99; export CC
make -e

LICENSE

ISC. See LICENSE file

TODO

• Manpages
• Code cleanup
• Get primary monitor (if selected)