wmii - window manager improved 2 for X11

wmii is a dynamic window manager for the X Window System. It provides a synthesis of conventional, tiled and tabbed window management based on dynamic layouts. Several roots of these window management capabilities have been introduced by the Ion and LarsWM window managers. Apart from this, it implements a socket-based fileserver, which is accessed to configure and interoperate with wmii. The idea behind this file-based approach is derived from the plan9 operating system and can be found in the Acme programming environment. wmii consists of the core window manager itself and several utilities, such as wmibar(1), wmifs(1), wmimenu(1), wmikeys(1), wmiplumb(1), wmir(1) and wmiwarp(1).

wmii [-s socketfile]

wmii -v

-s socketfile

lets you override the default socketfile which wmii should use for connecting fileserver clients.

-v

prints version information to stderr, then exits.

this file is the default socket file used by wmii.

this file is executed when wmii starts up or shuts down. If it is not present, wmii executes as fallback. The rc script is used to customize and setup wmii beside its components to match the users needs. It can be a simple shell script, a native binary or whatever executable. The only condition is, that it understands the command line arguments start , which is provided while startup and stop , which is provided on shutdown. For details about the shipped default rc configuration system, see wmii.rc(5).

The structure of wmii consists of following objects which are described in more detail.

Display

The display is a running X server which consists of at least one Screen (Monitor), Keyboard, and the Mouse. Applications with X11 support can connect to such X server display in order to be used.

Screen (Monitor)

A screen is the physical device which displays a part or the whole display driven by the X server. Each screen consists of a root window which matches the physical conditions the X server is configured to drive the graphics adaptor and the connected screen, such as color depth and resolution.

(Root) Window

A window is a rectangular area which is drawn by the X server. A root window is the complete drawable area of a screen. Root windows are top-level windows which are always at the most-background position. If you have set a wallpaper, the root window displays the wallpaper. All other windows are children of the root window. Thus, windows of X clients, frames surrounding them and bars are all windows.

Client

A client is the window provided by X applications (clients) without the surrounding frame. There're X clients supported, such as xmms, which request not to be surrounded by a frame, those are called borderless.

Frame

A frame is a parent window of a client or of nested frames in a layout. Mostly a frame consists of a border and a titlebar. The titlebar provides tabs, if the frame contains nested frames, otherwise it shows the title of the surrounded client.

Layout

A layout defines how to arrange nested frames of a frame. See CUSTOMIZATION section for further details about how such definitions look like.

Page

A page is a container of the size of the root window which contains nested frames. It can be compared to workspaces in other window managers, but with the exception, that a page behaves very similiar to a frame, except that it reuses the root window as frame window.

Action

An action is an internal interface command or an external process call in order to reach a specific window management result, ie resizing a frame or launching a terminal.

wmii is customized through the rc script, which manipulates the namespace its fileserver provides to other processes. This namespace can be accessed using the wmir(1) utility. The default rc script uses this utility to setup wmii and its components.

A namespace is a filesystem structure consisting of files and directories, which is specified by its underlying fileserver process, like wmii. Such namespaces can be bound (mounted) to userdefined namespaces using the wmifs(1) utility. In the default rc script the namespace provided by wmii, is bound to

There are four actions provided by the wmir(1) utility to manipulate your namespace: create, remove, write, and read.

Copyright © 2003 - 2005 by Anselm R. Garbe <garbeam (at) gmail (dot) com>

wmibar(1), wmifs(1), wmimenu(1), wmikeys(1), wmiplumb(1), wmir(1), wmiwarp(1), wmii.rc(5).