Vantusk

Floating taskbar/dock for Vantum. Companion to Vantyl (the app launcher).

What it does (v1 scope)

• Shows currently running windows as a floating, auto-sizing dock, centered at the bottom of the primary monitor.
• Click a tile to activate/raise its window; click again to minimize.
• Window list and live updates (open/close/active-state) come from libwnck (GTK's EWMH/_NET_WM_* window-navigator library).
• Optionally cross-references Vantyl's /tmp/processz.tmp pid map to show a friendlier app name where available. This is best-effort only, not load-bearing — Wnck's own window title is the fallback and is usually fine on its own (see note below on why the pid match is unreliable for a lot of apps).

Requirements

• Linux, X11, a window manager that implements EWMH properly (JWM does).
• GTK3 + PyGObject.
• libwnck 3 + its GObject introspection typelib. This is the one that trips people up:
  • Debian/Ubuntu/Puppy-derivatives: gir1.2-wnck-3.0
  • Fedora: libwnck3 (+ introspection subpackage if split)
  • Arch: libwnck3
  • macOS: not available. libwnck talks to an X11 WM's EWMH properties; there's no X11 WM under macOS by default, and libwnck isn't in Homebrew. Don't try to run this natively on Mac.

Why not just develop on macOS?

Vantusk's entire job is to query a live X11 window manager. There's nothing to query on macOS. Develop/test on:

• The Multipass Linux VM (already set up for BeasOS work), or
• The JWM + Xephyr sandbox (already set up for Vantyl config work), or
• Directly on the Dell Latitude / HP EliteBook BeasOS boots.

Known limitations / not yet implemented

• Single monitor only (always positions on the primary monitor).
• No drag-to-reorder tiles.
• No right-click context menu (close/pin/etc).
• Dock shrinks to near-nothing when zero windows are open — no placeholder state yet.
• pid-based name lookup misses apps that fork/re-exec (e.g. Chrome) or are launched outside Vantyl entirely — expected, not a bug to chase.

Files

• vantask.py — the dock itself.
• mockWnck.py — Since Wnck doesn't exist on macos, this is a test module that mimics the Wnck for testing.

Autostart (JWM)

Not wired up yet. When ready, add a launch line to .jwmrc's startup section (same place Vantyl's XML sandbox config lives) so Vantusk comes up alongside the desktop session.