About The Project

a4 is a dynamic terminal window manager. One of eight tiling layouts is dynamically applied to all visible terminals. The terminal windows are grouped by tags making it easy to visually switch between contexts of work. Color schemes are dynamically applied to each terminal window, based on the text in its titlebar, helping the user to visually identify terminals based on attributes such as hostname, userid, and any other text programmed to display in the titlebar.

Four of the eight layouts divide the screen into two areas, one for a zoomed window and the other for a stack of the remaining windows. These four layouts can be adjusted during use to expand or shrink the number of windows in the zoom area and the overall size of the zoom area. They are named for the location of the zoom area: zoom_left, zoom_right, zoom_top, and zoom_bottom. The other four layouts are fullscreen, grid, rows, and columns.

Each terminal window can be tagged with one or more tags. The user then selects which tag or tags to view, and all windows with those tags are arranged in the dynamic layout. The list of all tags is displayed on the left of the status bar. Tag names are user defined with the default being the numerals 1 through 9.

Terminal windows can be minimized to a bar at the bottom of the screen. A minimized terminal keeps its tags but stays out of the user's way until it is unminimized again. Terminal windows can be set to read-only status in order to prevent accidental typing or closing. Terminal windows can be added to a focus group in order to type the same input into all simultaneously. Minimized and read-only terminal windows are never typed into, even if they are included in the focus group.

Terminal color schemes are dynamically applied by comparing the text of the terminal's title with an ordered set of user-defined color rules.

A4 supports 24-bit truecolor and is configurable by editing an a4.ini file. It is a partial rewrite of dvtm, which in turn is a text-based implementation of dwm.

Distribution Packages

Void Linux

Install using the xbps package manager

sudo xbps-install -S a4

Nix

Install using nix-env

nix-env -iA nixos.a4term # change `nixos` for `nixpkgs`, if on a non-NixOS system

Try it with nix-shell

nix-shell -p a4term

a4 Compile and Install

All required prerequisites are now included under the lib folder, so there is no need to compile any additional libraries.

tgz packages are available from the Tags page.

git clone https://github.com/rpmohn/a4
cd a4
make && sudo make install

Notes

Persistence

It is useful to run a4 with abduco so that you can disconnect and reconnect while your a4 session continues to run in the background. This is also helpful if you run a4 on remote machines since the session continues to run even if your connection to the machine is lost, and you can reconnect later without losing any of your work. Consider setting a alias such as this:

alias a4.abduco="abduco -A a4 a4 $@"

Mouse Support

There's a configuration error in the xterm-256color file installed by some Linux distros that causes the mouse to behave incorrectly by printing characters to the terminal. If you experience this problem, run the following command to put a local, patched copy of the file in place for your login account:

infocmp xterm-256color | sed -E 's/(kmous=\\E\[)</\1M/' | tic -o ~/.terminfo -

Documentation

See a4term.com for more documentation, including a copy of the manual page and default keyboard maps.