/*
 * title "Tagged Project Ideas"
 * author "Dylan Lom"
 * date "2023-04-29"
 * link stylesheet "/main.css"
 */

# $(echo $title)

This post attempts to collect some ideas that have been floating about
in my head for a little while now.

## Overview

Tagged is a program similar to suckless tabbed\[1\] which allows embedding
of X11 windows inside of one parent window.

Only one child window is visible at any given time, but a command in
the tag bar (described later) allows the user to change this.

Unlike tabbed, the program should not be limited to multiple instances
of the same program (although tabbed\[1\] technically allows for this
via the `xembed` script provided). In order to facilitate for this the
program should also be able to reparent existing windows into itself,
rather than simply spawn new windows.

If a child of the tagged program spawns a new window, that should
automatically be captured by the tagged program and focused.

The program will also feature a "tag" bar, similar to one seen in
the acme\[2\] editor. This tag line will allow control and extension of
program's functionality. For example a default item in the tags might be
the "New" command; which would create a new instance of the command
argument and embed that in the current tagged instance.

The program should be primarily mouse driven, adopting a similar
three-button mouse pattern as in acme\[2\].

## Other features

Commands should be programmable as shell scripts, allowing the user to
extend the program easily as required.

As graphical clients will often log additional information to
`stdout`/`stderr`, the program should capture this output into
a transcript. The "Transcript" command should spawn a new child
window listing the transcripts of all other children. This can then
be non-destructively filtered or edited by the user through common
text-processing tools such as grep(1).

As some graphical programs will detatch from their parent process, such
as code\[3\], the program will have an "Attach" command, which provides a
graphical target allowing the user to select an external X11 program to
embed inside of the instance. Using the xwininfo\[4\] program this should
be achievable with a shell script such as:

```
xwininfo | grep 'Window id: ' | cut -d':' -f3 | cut -d' ' -f2
``` 

The mechanism by which the command actually communicates back to the
tagged program has not yet been decided.


## References

	[1]: Tabbed(1) by suckless.org - http://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/
	[2]: Acme(1) by Rob Pike - http://acme.cat-v.org/
	[3]: Visual Studio Code(1) by Microsoft - https://code.visualstudio.com/
	[4]: Xwininfo(1) by X.org - https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/xwininfo.1.xhtml