moocow - Man Page

moocow command [args .​.​.​]

moocow -p [-P prompt] [-S prompt] [-C colour]

moocow is the command-line IPC client for the cow(1) window manager.​ It connects to the cow IPC socket, sends the given command, waits for the JSON response, and prints it as formatted JSON to standard output.​

Each shell argument is encoded as a separate cow command argument.​  Normal shell quoting therefore preserves values containing spaces; it is not necessary to quote the entire command.​  For compatibility and advanced uses, a single argument is treated as a complete command string.​  The full command language is described in cow(1).​

Options belonging to moocow must precede command.​ Once command is seen, all remaining options are passed to cow unchanged.​ An optional -- may still be used before command, but is not required.​

With -p, moocow stays running and reads commands from standard input.​  When run interactively it prints a connection banner containing the moocow version and client ID, then the prompt >>> before each command.​  Incomplete commands use the prompt .​.​.​ until the command is complete.​  A backslash (\) at the end of a line continues the command on the next line.​

Persistent mode also recognises local commands which begin with .​ and are not sent to cow:

.​moocow-set pretty-print-json boolean

Enable or disable formatted JSON responses.​  The default is true.​

.​moocow-show

Print current local moocow settings.​

-h

Print usage and exit.​

-p

Read and evaluate commands persistently.​  The client ID shown in the connection banner is the moocow process ID.​

-P prompt

Set the primary prompt used by -p.​  The default is >>> .​

-S prompt

Set the continuation prompt used by -p.​  The default is .​.​.​ .​

-C colour

Set the prompt colour used by -p.​  The default is red.​  Supported colours are black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, and none.​

0

The command was accepted and cow responded with "ok": true.​

1

A connection error occurred, or cow responded with "ok": false.​ The error message is included in the JSON response and printed to standard output.​  In -p mode, moocow keeps reading commands but exits with status 1 if any command failed.​

COW_IPC_SOCKET

Override the socket path.​ When set, moocow connects to this path instead of the default.​

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

Used to locate the default socket path.​ Must be set if COW_IPC_SOCKET is not.​

WAYLAND_DISPLAY

Used to qualify the default socket name so separate CoW instances in the same runtime directory do not share a command socket.​

$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/cow-$WAYLAND_DISPLAY-cmd.​sock

Default IPC command socket created by cow(1).​ If WAYLAND_DISPLAY is unset, the fallback path is $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/cow-cmd.​sock.​

Query all managed windows:

  moocow show -a window

Apply a decoration profile:

  moocow decor -a default

Switch to desk 3:

  moocow desk -d 3

Reload the configuration:

  moocow quit -r

Close the focused window:

  moocow winops -c

Target a window whose title contains a space:

  moocow winops -t ​'/Mozilla Firefox/​' -c

The equivalent raw-command form remains available:

  moocow ​'winops -t "/Mozilla Firefox/" -c​'

List all available commands:

  moocow show -a command

Write the current serializable configuration as commands which can be loaded by cow(1):

  moocow show -f config config > cow​.generated​.conf

Config-formatted responses are printed as plain text.​ Other responses retain their JSON envelope.​

Run commands persistently:

  moocow -p

Run persistently with custom prompts:

  moocow -p -P ​'cow> ​' -S ​'​.​.​.> ​' -C green

cow(1), cowbar(1)

Thomas Adam

cow(1), cowbar(1), cowbuttons(1), cowdiag(1), cowiconman(1), cowident(1), cow-module-cmd(1), cowrearrange(1).