SUBTLE(1)

💖 SUBTLE(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the subtle(1) manual page — yes the manual section is literally 1, she's giving classic Unix main character energy, we love that for her 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

subtle — a grid-based manual tiling window manager 🌸

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

subtle OPTIONS

that's it. that's the whole vibe. options in, vibes out 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so subtle is a manual tiling window manager, and ngl her approach to tiling is kind of a whole personality. instead of doing the whole "predefined layouts" thing like everyone else, she divides your screen into a grid with customizeable slots — and those slots are called gravities. iconic name, no notes 🪐

for better understanding: the default config ships with a 3x3 grid and maps each gravity to one key of the numpad. so you literally just press numpad keys and windows fly directly to the gravity you want. chef's kiss. you can also do the same thing with tagging rules in the config, iykyk 💫

and here's the other unique concept, and honestly it's giving main character: strict tagging. unlike other tiling window managers, subtle doesn't allow weak tagging — she always maps windows to virtual desktops (called views) with matching tags, regardless of the current active view. periodt. no weak tagging in this house 🚫💀

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -c, --config=CONFIG — Load config 📝
• -d, --display=DISPLAY — Connect to DISPLAY 🖥️
• -h, --help — Show this help and exit 🫶
• -k, --check — Check config syntax 🔍
• -n, --no-randr — Disable RandR extension (required for Twinview) 🙈
• -r, --replace — Replace current window manager 👑
• -s, --sublets=DIR — Load sublets from DIR 🍓
• -v, --version — Show version info and exit ⭐
• -l, --level=LEVEL[,LEVEL] — Set logging levels 🔊
• -D, --debug — Print debugging messages 🐛

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🔥 LOGLEVELS 🔥

subtle uses a loglevel system to distinguish between messages, so you can turn certain messages off when they're doing too much. you set the level with the -l or --level= options, and if you're passing multiple values they're comma separated with no whitespace whatsoever (she's picky, respect it) 💖

• subtle -l ruby,subtlext
• subtle --level=ruby,subtlext

Default levels:

• warnings — Warning messages ⚠️
• sublet — Sublet warnings 🧩
• error — Error messages 😭
• deprecated — Deprecation warnings 🕰️

Debugging levels:

• events — Information about handled events 🎪
• ruby — Ruby debugging messages 💎
• xerror — X11 error messages ❌
• subtlext — Debugging messages of subtlext 🧵
• subtle — Subsystem messages of subtle 🌙
• debug — General debugging messages 🔬

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🧚 GETTING STARTED 🧚

to get started with subtle, bestie, just follow the install instructions — have a look in the INSTALL file in the tarball, or check if there's a package for your distribution. and if no package exists and you wanna supply one?? you are welcome, truly, we're obsessed with you 🫶✨

next step after installing is configuring. subtle follows the XDG specifications, so the default system config can be found in $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/subtle or in /etc/xdg/subtle. if you'd rather have a user based config, just copy the system config to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/subtle or to $HOME/.config/subtle. easy 💅

and if you update the config, please check it with subtle -k first before starting subtle. do not skip this step, she WILL be dramatic about it 💀

inside of subtle, just press Win+Return to launch a xterm, which usually starts at center gravity. once you have a client you can play with gravities to get used to the system. it's really easy and straight forward — just try the various combinations of Win+Numpad number 🌟

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🐛 BUGS 🐛

Report bugs at http://subforge.org/projects/subtle/issues Homepage: http://subtle.subforge.org

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📜 COPYRIGHT 📜

Copyright (c) Christoph Kappel unexist@subforge.org

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

subtle(1), subtler(1), subtlext(1), sur(1), surserver(1)

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okay that's the whole page, you're so welcome 💖 this was the SUBTLE(1) manual from the subtle source, dated October 2011 — yeah she's an elder but she ATE and she's still serving grid-based lewks. go forth and tile, bestie 🎀✨🦋