This module implements modal keybindings for xmonad.

This module provides modal keybindings in xmonad. If you're not familiar with modal keybindings from Vim, you can think of modes as submaps from XMonad.Actions.Submap, but after each action you execute, you land back in the submap until you explicitly exit the submap. To use this module you should apply the modal function to the config, which will setup the list of modes (or rather, XConfig Layout -> Mode) you provide:

import XMonad
import XMonad.Hooks.Modal
import XMonad.Util.EZConfig
import qualified Data.Map as M

main :: IO ()
main =
  xmonad
    . modal [noModMode, floatMode 10, overlayedFloatMode 10, sayHelloMode]
    $ def
    `additionalKeysP` [ ("M-S-n", setMode noModModeLabel)
                      , ("M-S-r", setMode floatModeLabel)
                      , ("M-S-z", setMode overlayedFloatModeLabel)
                      , ("M-S-h", setMode "Hello")
                      ]

sayHelloMode :: Mode
sayHelloMode = mode "Hello" $ mkKeysEz
  [ ("h", xmessage "Hello, World!")
  , ("M-g", xmessage "Goodbye, World!")
  ]

Alternatively, one could have defined sayHelloMode as

sayHelloMode :: Mode
sayHelloMode = mode "Hello" $ \cfg ->
  M.fromList [ ((noModMask, xK_h), xmessage "Hello, World!")
             , ((modMask cfg, xK_g), xmessage "Goodbye, World!")
             ]

In short, a Mode has a label describing its purpose, as well as attached keybindings. These are of the form

• [(String, X ())], or
• XConfig Layout -> M.Map (ButtonMask, KeySym) (X ()).

The former—accessible via mkKeysEz—is how specifying keys work with XMonad.Util.EZConfig, while the latter is more geared towards how defining keys works by default in xmonad. Note that, by default, modes are exited with the Escape key. If one wishes to customise this, the modeWithExit function should be used instead of mode when defining a new mode.

The label of the active mode can be logged with logMode to be displayed in a status bar, for example (For more information check XMonad.Util.Loggers). Some examples are included in the provided modes.