Window, Workspace, and Monitor Events

Track window, workspace, and monitor records as compositor state changes.

Lifecycle events describe active state in the current compositor session.

Monitor and workspace records

Monitor records describe active logical monitors. The id is the canonical connector name. A monitor event's changed field lists updated properties:

• Position: index, x, y, width, height, work_area.
• Display: primary, scale, enabled, refresh_rate, transform.
• Identity: id, name, make, model, serial.

Create, rename, and activation events include a workspace record. Workspace change events include a changed array listing number, window_count, or persistent. The window_count value matches immediate workspace reads.

A removal carries workspace_id and last, the final record before removal. The moved event reports the stable window ID and source and destination workspace IDs. It has no workspace record.

The attention event also carries demands_attention at the top level. It can follow a focus request that policy did not activate; it reports Mutter's attention state and does not identify why the window requested attention.

Strict focus policy also emits gnoblin.window.activation-denied when Mutter rejects an application's activation request. The event's reason is one of:

• missing_context: the request has no activation context.
• invalid_context: its token is not valid.
• stale_context: its startup context is too old.

The event contains no activation token or input serial. Socket subscription is documented in the compositor bridge.

Window records

Window records contain the fields available from the compositor:

• Identity: id, title, app_id, gtk_app_id, wm_class, rule_app_id, and optional role.
• Location: workspace_id, workspace_number, monitor_id, monitor_index, parent.
• State: maximized, fullscreen, minimized, focused, above, sticky, modal, and demands_attention.
• Capabilities: closable, minimizable, maximizable, movable, and resizable.
• Type: type, an integer MetaWindowType value.
• Geometry: frame and the optional monitor origin.
• Interaction: last_user_time.
• Record metadata: revision, the state revision for this record.

A field is omitted when the compositor does not provide it. monitor_id is the active connector name for the current logical monitor. Cloned outputs use the lexicographically first active connector. monitor_index is the current Mutter order and can change when outputs change.

The type value follows Mutter's MetaWindowType enum. It describes the client surface rather than shell presentation.

modal is true for type value 4; changed includes modal when it changes.

Value	Type	Meaning
0	normal	Standard application window.
1	desktop	Desktop background surface.
2	dock	Dock or panel surface.
3	dialog	Dialog window.
4	modal dialog	Dialog that blocks its parent window.
5	toolbar	Toolbar surface.
6	menu	Menu surface.
7	utility	Utility window.
8	splash screen	Application startup surface.
9	dropdown menu	Dropdown menu surface.
10	popup menu	Popup menu surface.
11	tooltip	Tooltip surface.
12	notification	Notification surface.
13	combo box	Combo-box popup surface.
14	drag-and-drop	Drag-and-drop surface.
15	override other	Other override-redirect surface.

The changed array lists mapped properties that changed. Focus transitions and attention changes use separate events; demands_attention is omitted from the changed array.

When focus moves between windows that remain managed, the native runtime dispatches unfocused before focused within that state revision.

A closed event's last field contains the final available window record.

Layer lifecycle events follow the latest native layer snapshot. Each carries the shared state revision, sequence, and monotonic time. The stable ID is in layer.id on created; changed and removed also carry layer_id.

• created includes the record when its layer role first appears in the snapshot. It can initially be unmapped.
• changed includes the updated layer and a changed array. The array names fields that changed, except for per-record revision. Mapped transitions are changes.
• removed includes the final record as last and is sent when the layer disappears from the snapshot.

removed reports the workspace's last record before removal. Its number is the position immediately before removal.

When workspace.create uses activate = true, Gnoblin emits created first with active = false, then emits activated after switching workspaces.

A Lua API call returns an Operation handle with its current status, result, failure reason, and a completion callback. See the Lua runtime API for the handle fields and callback behavior.

Type definition

Event names are open-ended: Gnoblin accepts a nonempty UTF-8 string of up to 128 bytes with no NUL byte, but only names dispatched by Gnoblin or Mutter produce callbacks. The event fields depend on the event name; all callback values are Lua tables.

gnoblin.on(event_name, function(event)
    -- event_name: string | "*"
    -- event = {
    --     name = string,
    --     source = string?, signal = string?,
    --     app_id = string?, wm_class = string?, title = string?,
    --     type = string?, time = number?, x = number?, y = number?,
    --     button = integer?, key_symbol = string?,
    --     scroll_x = number?, scroll_y = number?, scroll_direction = string?,
    --     ... -- additional fields depend on the event source
    -- }
end)