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FVWM

by
Christopher Jay Cox

Overview

• Window managers in X11 are X applications which basically are designed to manage the windows of other X applications. Without window managers, windows would be static, immovable, uniconable and in some cases, unkillable.

Open Solution

• One big advantage of having the window manager exist as just another application is that you can have your choice of managers. Some of the more common window managers are:
  • Mwm
  • Olwm
  • Twm/CTwm
  • Fvwm

Variety and Flexibility

• FvwmThere are also window managers which make your X session look like Windows 95 (fvwm95), ones which mimic the look and feel of AmigaDOS and some which look and behave like NextStep 's interface. Having an application approach to window management is yet another example of how Unix and especially Linux maintain a true OPEN paradigm.

Where to Look

• An excellent WWW resource for comparing the plethora of managers available (with screenshots) is:

Introducing FVWM

• Fvwm is the most popular window manager on Linux. It is a small light weight window manager which has its roots in twm yet gives a default look and feel which is comparable to Motif's Mwm window manager.

Mwm-isms

• Fvwm provides some built in configuration options which help give an Mwm feel. All configuration options are stored in a global or local .fvwmrc file.
  • MWMBorders Wimpy shallow on decorations.
  • MWMButtonsOnly The 3 standard decoration buttons.
  • MWMMenus Mwm style (look and feel)
  • MWMDecorHints Try to abide by mwm decoration hints...
  • MWMFunctionHints Try to abide by mwm function hints...

Configurable Decorations

• In Fvwm you can configure your own look and feel to buttons found in the window decoration. In Mwm, you have the main button on the left and an icon button and maximize button on the right .

Configurable Decorations

• Fvwm button definitions begin with Button 1 being on the outside left, Button 2 being on the outside right, Button 3 being just right of Button 1, Button 4 being just left of Button 2 ....etc....

Mwm-like Buttons

• For our Mwm emulation I defined:
  ButtonStyle 1 60x22 ButtonStyle 2 60x60 ButtonStyle 4 22x22
  
• It's tempting to jump straight to mouse button bindings, but first we should define the menus to associated with button events.

Mwm's Main Popup

• In Mwm, typically the main menu is a popup which comes up when mouse button1 (the leftmost button) is held down within the root window. Here's the menu I have defined:

Popup "Utilities"
    Title     "Utilities  "
    Exec      "Internet   "   exec internet &
    Exec      "Xterm  "       exec xterm -ls &
EndPopup

Main Window Menu

Here is the definition for the window menu:

Popup "Window Ops2"
    Move    "&Move  Alt+F7"
    Resize  "&Size  Alt+F8"
    Iconify "(Un)Mi&nimize  Alt+F9"
    Maximize "(Un)Ma&ximize Alt+F10"
    Lower   "&Lower Alt+F3"
    Close   "&Close Alt+F4"
    Module  "&ScrollBar" FvwmScroll 2 2
EndPopup

Modules

• OK, there are some differences here between a true Mwm main button menuand the one I've defined. One of the most wonderful additions is the ScrollBar option. This invokes a built-in feature in Fvwm which places a window into a scrollable window. This is similar to the workspace concepts so often found in Microsoft Windows applications.

Mouse Bindings

• To associate the leftmost mouse button with our root popup menu:
  
  Mouse 1 R A PopUp "Utilities"
  
• The 1 represents mouse button 1. The "R" says only in the root window context. The "A" specifies that any modifier can be used. Thus shift, ctrl or alt mouse button one will all do the same thing here.

Mouse Bindings

• Lastly we define our menu we described above as the action to take. Likewise we need to associate our main window button menu with the leftmost button found in the window decoration. We also should define the actions for the Minimize and Maximize buttons on the right side of the window decoration title area.
  
  Mouse 0 1 A Function "windowops-or-die"
  Mouse 0 2 A Maximize Mouse 0 4 A Iconify
  

Functions

Function "windowops-or-die"
    PopUp       "Motion" Window Ops2
    PopUp       "Click" Window Ops2
    Close       "DoubleClick"
EndFunction

There, now we can double-click to close or just one click and get a menu.

The End...I Don't Think So

Lot's more....Take a look at the sample Fvwm configuration files. My Mwm like interpretation came from someone elses work found in the samples. The official FVWM Homepage:

http://www.hpc.uh.edu/fvwm/