A Sanskrit identity for the dwm topbar
I have long wanted to bring in Sanskrit/Tamizh concepts into my daily life, one way or another. One of the simplest entrypoint is numbers and I have managed with some tinkering to bring in Devanagari numbers into my dwm topbar.
Dwm - dynamic window manager - has been my preferred window manager for more than 5 years now. It's a dynamic tiling window manager for X11, the dynamic part referring to the fact that the system auto-tiles and you mostly move between different layouts as needed.
Figure 1: The default top bar looks something like this. (Image taken from the alpha patch on the suckless website.)
Figure 2: The new "Devanagari" top bar.
The changes are as follows.
Statically change the characters used for the panes in the array in config.h to Unicode Devanagari ones.
Change the letterings for the mode indicator (tiling, floating, monocle) to predefined Unicode ones, also in config.h. (I wanted to use Tamizh letterings for this, but the Sanskrit and Tamizh characters don't align with each other in the bar.)
Swap out the original "window presence" indicator to shapes reminiscent of Sanksrit transliteration. So, now we have a single dot below the letter to represent windows in other tags and a dash above the letter to mark visible windows. Admittedly, this one is a bit of a stretch, but I think it is highly topical and the design adds to the feel. This was also the most difficult one to pull off, it required direct code changes and a little bit of tinkering to get out. The specific changes are in this commit.
I am always on the lookout for more such changes, but nothing else seems apt or doable at this point.
The full config is available here.