NAME¶
windowlab - a window manager for X11
SYNOPSIS¶
windowlab [options...]
DESCRIPTION¶
windowlab is a small and simple window manager of novel design.
It has a click-to-focus but not raise-on-focus policy, a window resizing
mechanism that allows one or many edges of a window to be changed in one
action, and an innovative menubar that shares the same part of the screen as
the taskbar. Window titlebars are prevented from going off the edge of the
screen by constraining the mouse pointer, and when appropriate the pointer is
also constrained to the taskbar/menubar in order to make target menu items
easier to hit.
WindowLab places a taskbar at the top of the screen and adds a titlebar to the
top of each window. These titlebars consist of a draggable area, and three
icons on the right hand side. When left clicked, these icons:
* hide the window
* toggle the window's Z order Amiga style (if it's not at the front, bring it to
the front, otherwise send it to the back)
* close the window
Another way of toggling a window's Z order (depth) is by double left clicking on
the draggable part of its titlebar.
Windows' titlebars are prevented from leaving the screen and cannot overlap the
taskbar.
The taskbar should list all windows currently in use. Left clicking on a
window's taskbar item will give that window focus and toggle its Z order
(depth).
To resize the active window hold down alt and push against the window's edges
with the left mouse button down.
If you right click outside a client window, WindowLab's taskbar becomes a
menubar. Releasing the right mouse button over a selected menu item will start
a corresponding external program. WindowLab will look in each of the following
files in turn for definitions of the menu labels and commands:
* ~/.windowlab/windowlab.menurc
* ../etc/windowlab.menurc (from the directory containing the executable)
* /etc/X11/windowlab/windowlab.menurc
Each line in the menurc file should have the menu label, a colon, and then the
corresponding command, eg:
The GIMP:gimp
New windows (that don't specify their location) are positioned according to the
coordinates of the mouse - the top-left hand corner of a new window is set to
the location of the mouse pointer (if necessary the window will be moved to
ensure that all of it is on the screen).
WindowLab has the following keyboard controls. Hold down alt and press:
*
tab to give focus to the previous window
*
q to give focus to the next window
*
F11 to toggle fullscreen mode on and off for non transient windows
*
F12 to toggle the window's depth. This is the same as left clicking a
window's middle icon
OPTIONS¶
- -font font-spec
- Draw window titles with the font defined by
font-spec.
- -border color, -text color, -active
color, -inactive color, -menu color, -selected
color, -empty color
- Use color for the borders, the text, the active
background, the inactive background, the menubar, the selected menu item
and empty parts of the screen.
- -about
- Print information to stdout and exit.
- -display
- Sets which X display will be managed by
windowlab.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES¶
DISPLAY Sets which X display will be managed by
windowlab.
This version of WindowLab supports the Debian Menu subsystem. To update the
menus, it suffices to execute the command
update-menus. If executed as
root, the system setting in
-
- /etc/X11/windowlab/windowlab.menurc
will be affected, whereas execution by any underprivileged user only effects the
private resource file in
-
- ~/.windowlab/windowlab.menurc.
The following files tune the compilation of auto-generated menus:
- /etc/X11/windowlab/debian_config,
~/.windowlab/debian_config
- Debian-specific system configuration and user-specific
overrides.
- /etc/X11/windowlab/common_menu
- A common tail part, that currently encompasses
About, Reload and Quit. All users get these entries
included in their menu.
- ~/.windowlab/user_menu
- Menu entries hand-picked by the individual user.
SIGNALS¶
When WindowLab receives a
SIGHUP signal, it will reload all relevant menu
resource files, thus updating the menu bar.
SEE ALSO¶
X(7),
The Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (from the
X11R6 documentation).
AUTHOR¶
Nick Gravgaard (me at nickgravgaard.com)