voidrice/.config/Scripts/luke_guide.md

# A friendly guide to Luke's i3 rice


Use vim keys (h/j/k/l) to navigate this document. Pressing W will fit it to window width. + and - zoom in and out. q to quit. (These are general mupdf shortcuts.)

+ Mod+u will show this document at any time.

General questions? Leave a comment on YouTube or email me at luke@lukesmith.xyz.

## Basic goals and principles of my rice:

+ Naturalness - I want the number of keypresses I have to make to get what I want as little as possible.
+ Keyboard/vim-centrality - All my terminal apps (and other programs) use vim keys when possible. My hands never need leave the home row or thereabout.
+ Lots of color -- Many rices stick to one general color palatte. I like my system to be very vibrant.

## General changes

+ Capslock is now an alternative escape. Makes vim-craft much more efficient.
+ The menu button (usually between the right Alt and Ctrl) is an alternative Super/Mod button. This is to make one-handing on my laptops easier.

# Shortcut keys

## Window basics

Notice the case sensitivity of the shortcuts.

Be sure you play around with these. Be flexible with the basic commands and the rice will grow on you quick.

+ Mod+Enter -- Spawn terminal
+ Mod+q or Q -- Close window
+ Mod+d -- rofi (For running commands or programs without shortcuts)
+ Mod+t -- Toggle between spawning vertically and horizontally
+ Mod+f or F11 -- Fullscreen
+ Mod+h/j/k/l -- Move to different windows
+ Mod+H/J/K/L -- Move a window around
+ Mod+Y/U/I/O -- Resize windows
+ Mod+/ -- Spawn vertical terminal
+ Mod+' -- Spawn horizonal terminal
+ Mod+s/S -- Increase/decrease inner gaps
+ Mod+z/Z -- Increase/decrease outer gaps
+ Mod+D -- Reduce gaps to 0
+ Mod+T -- Restore gaps to default (15)
+ Mod+Shift+Space -- Make a window float (you can still resize and move floating windows with the same keys above)
+ Mod+Space -- Switch from a floating window to a non-floating one (or vice versa)

## Basic Programs

+ Mod+r -- ranger (file browser/manager)
+ Mod+e -- mutt (email)
+ Mod+m -- Music on Console Player
+ Mod+a -- qalc (calculator)
+ Mod+i -- htop (system info)
+ Mod+N -- newsbeuter (RSS feed reader)
+ Mod+y -- calcurse (calendar and schedule)
+ Mod+Shift+Enter -- tmux
+ Mod+w -- qutebrowser (web browser)

## Larger programs

+ Mod+W -- Firefox
+ Mod+E -- Thunderbird (Not installed by default)
+ Mod+B -- Blender
+ Mod+G -- GIMP
+ Mod+P -- Pinta
+ Mod+A -- Audacity

## System

+ Mod+R -- Restart/refresh i3 (renews configs, does not close any programs)
+ Mod+x -- i3lock (Enter password to return)
+ Mod+X -- shutdown now (Be careful with this one!)
+ Mod+Shift+Backspace -- reboot (And this one!)
+ Mod+Shift+Escape -- exit i3 (And this one as well!)
+ Mod+F3 -- arandr (For adding screens/HDMI/VGA connections)
+ Mod+F4 -- Hibernate
+ Mod+F5 -- Reset Network Manager
+ Mod+F7 -- Increase window transparency
+ Mod+F8 -- Decrease window transparency

## Audio

I use moc/mocp as a music player. If you prefer cmus, I have commented out shortcuts you can activate for it instead in the i3 config.

+ Mod+m -- Music on Console Player
+ Mod+n -- Next track
+ Mod+b -- Previous track
+ Mod+o -- Restart track
+ Mod+p -- Pause
+ Mod+M -- Mute all audio
+ Mod+v -- cli-visualizer
+ Mod+V -- projectM visualizer
+ Mod+- -- Decrease volume (holding shift increases amount)
+ Mod++ -- Increase volume (holding shift increases amount)
+ Mod+[ -- Back 10 seconds (holding shift increases amount)
+ Mod+] -- Forward 10 seconds (holding shift increases amount)

## Workspaces

There are ten workspaces. They work just like those in vanilla i3 with some additions.

+ Mod+(Number) -- Go to that number workspace
+ Mod+Shift+(Number) -- Send window to that workspace
+ Mod+Tab -- Go to previous workspace
+ Mod+g or escape -- Go to left workspace
+ Mod+; -- Go to right workspace

## Recording

+ Pause -- Begin screencast. Output goes into ~. Will overwrite any previous output.
+ ScrollLock -- Begin audio recording. Same traits as above
+ Mod+either of the above keys -- kills ffmpeg, thus ending recordings
+ ThinkVantage button (on Thinkpads) -- kills ffmpeg, thus ending recordings
+ Print Screen -- Take a scrot screenshot
+ Shift+Print Screen -- Take a scrot screenshot of only selected window

## Other buttons

I've mapped those extra buttons that some keyboards have (play and pause buttons, email, webbrowsing buttons, etc.) to what you would expect.

# Special traits of my rice

## Easy config access

Open a terminal and type "cfc." This will open a file where you will see customizable pairs of key shortcuts and config files. Enter any of these shortcuts in bash or ranger to immediately open the file in vim.

You may add new entries here and they will be refreshed when you refresh i3 (Mod+R).

## Folder and config shortcuts

Open a terminal and type "cff." This opens a file when you can keep and create folder shortcuts. There are only a few here now, because I don't know what your folder structure is going to look like, but on my machine, I have 81 and growing.

Each line has a shortcut key/keys and its target. These can be used in serveral applications. In bash, simply press "d," the shortcut for ~/Documents and you will cd there (and automatically ls -a).

ranger works similarly. When in ranger, just press "g" then the shortcut of the folder you want to go to. You may also press "t" plus the shortcut to open a new tab there. "m" plus the shortcut moves the selected files to the folder and "Y" copies them there. **Get good at this. It will make management of even the most complex file system easy.**

Lastly qutebrowser implements these shortcuts as well. When you see a file or image you want to download, press ";" followed by the folder shortcut and qutebrowser will let you select the file with its hint system. The file will then download to the directory you chose.

## Dynamically constructed configs

To keep these different shortcuts in sync, my rice will dynamically reconstruct the configs to bash, qutebrowser and ranger each time you refresh i3 (Mod+R).

Each time i3 starts or restarts, it will run ~/.config/Scripts/shortcuts.py, which reads the entries in the folder shortcut and config shortcut files and then translate them into the approriate syntax of all three programs.

It then takes that output and appends it to base configs of each program (~/.config/Scripts/bashrc, ~/config/qutebrowser/keys.conf.base, ~/.config/rc.conf.base) and puts the output in the proper places for each program.

## So what do I need to know?

Use the files in "cff" and "cfc" to add/change shortcuts. These shortcuts will be synced between bash, ranger and qutebrowser. Press Mod+R to refresh them. If you want to make permanent changes to your bash/ranger/qutebrowser configs, make them to the base files which you can access with "cfb," "cfr," and "cfq," respectively, then press Mod+R.

# Explore and customize

Don't like something about the rice? Change it. If you have a problem, try figuring it out yourself, but if you can't, ask on my YouTube or elsewhere.

Considering how formidable my rice might seem to greener Linux users, I hope between my vids and my documentation, you can tweak exactly what you want from it.