Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 18:28:32 -0700 From: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard) To: ports@freebsd.org Message-ID: <199507080128.SAA01257@violet.berkeley.edu>
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From: colas@AYE.INRIA.FR (Colas Nahaboo)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.announce
Subject: GWM 1.8 released (window manager)
Date: 7 Jul 1995 08:45:50 -0700
Organization: Koala Project, Bull Research France
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GWM 1.8 is now available. This is a major final release of this "emacs of
window managers" that has been freely available since 1989.
Distribution is ftp.x.org:/contrib/window_managers/gwm/gwm-1.8.tar.gz
(and on mirrors)
Pre-compiled binaries for linux, sparc (sunos & solaris), decstations mips
& alpha, rs6000s, SGIs are on koala.inria.fr:/pub/gwm
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______ ____ __ _
/ ___\ \ / / \/ | _ __ ___ __ _ __| |_ __ ___ ___
| | _ \ \ /\ / /| |\/| | | '__/ _ \/ _` |/ _` | '_ ` _ \ / _ \
| |_| | \ V V / | | | | | | | __/ (_| | (_| | | | | | | __/
\____| \_/\_/ |_| |_| |_| \___|\__,_|\__,_|_| |_| |_|\___|
* What is GWM?
* What is new in this version?
* Where is GWM? Current version: 1.8, June 30 1995
For all inquiries, contact:
gwm@sophia.inria.fr (or see W3 page: http://www.inria.fr/koala/gwm)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is GWM?
============
The GWM (Generic Window Manager) is an extensible Window Manager for the X
Window System Version 11. It is based upon a WOOL (Window Object Oriented
Langage) kernel, which is an interpreted dialect of Lisp with specific window
management primitives. The user builds a window manager by writing WOOL files
to describe objects on the screen, including a Finite State Machine triggering
WOOL actions on response to X events (e.g. mouse buttons) on that object. These
objects can be used as decorations around X applications windows, as pop-up
menus or as independent windows. GWM should be able to emulate efficiently
other window managers, and play the same role for window managers as EMACS does
for text editors.
GWM comes with already defined profiles (standard, vtwm-like, twm-like,
mwm-like) Here are some screenshots. Or you can design exactly what you want.
Copyright
---------
Freeware, with sources. GWM is Copyrighted by Bull, but bears the same
licensing conditions as the X distribution, i.e. you are free to do anything
with it, but Bull offers no guarantee nor support.
Author
------
GWM has been designed and realized by Colas Nahaboo, in the Koala Project with
the invaluable help of the community of GWM users all over the world on the
internet since 1989.
History
-------
Our Koala project was one of the first to base its experiments on the new X11
window system. One of our ambitions was to continue the research work of the
ROOMS team at Xerox, who designed this revolutionary window managing system
back in 1986 but on proprietary systems. We planned to realize a research
prototype flexible enough to prototype easily new ideas, but at the same time
always validate our ideas by making real users use our prototype in everyday
use to gain relevant feedback, so the system could be run on low-end
workstations currently in use, e.g. 68020s with 4M ram total.
I decided to go the emacs way, but with a lisp dialect that would be much more
efficient in machine ressource use. So I designed WOOL, a very special kind of
lisp dialect in January 1988. After a first rewrite, GWM was running better
than we could expected so we make it publicly available in July 1989.
GWM was a success, but was overwhelmed by its maintenance and support due to
the feedback brought back by the internet community, so that in the following
years I did not have time to put actual research work on the original goal, the
profiles on top of the kernel. Then I became too busy to maintain it so I kept
a low profile so as not to attract new user and keep a small base of faithful
users. I wanted to change a lot of things but did not want as it would have
induced incompatibilties for my users. So I waited for GWM to die slowly and
some other new Window Manager to come and replace it.
Present state
-------------
But, 6 years after, I still use GWM. Why? because it stills offers the best
environment a hacker can dream of among the available WMs. So I decided to
clean the distribition, integrate all the patches sent to me by contributors,
and issue the 1.8 release (30 June 1995) to offer a stable useful base for all
hackers to use while I could begin writing a new incompatible incarnation with
all insight gained by these years. GWM now can now do a suprising amount of
things, at the expense of a quite involved hacking part from profile writers.
So gwm 1.8 can be seen as the "final edition" of gwm.
What is GWM for?
----------------
Although GWM can be used by normal users, hackers will feel much more at ease
with it. If you do not want to edit your emacs profiles, chances are that GWM
is not for you.
On what machines does GWM run?
------------------------------
All unixes. It cannot be compiled on DEC Alphas (but the Decstation-mips
executable translated by "mx" to the alpha-osf1 format works perfectly).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is new in this version?
============================
This version (1.8) has three important new features, thanks to the main
contribution of Anders Holst aho@nada.kth.se:
* recursive bars. now GWM decorations are quite flexible.
* shaped elements anywhere. weird shapes are now possible.
* bug fixes. all known bugs or memory leaks have been fixed.
You can see the list of changes in detail.
What about the next version?
----------------------------
The last version (1.7o) was issued 18 months ago (sept. 1993), and this 1.8
version should be the last one as far as the C code is concerned (except bug
fixes or patches to work around some buggy applications). It is very likely
that I will make a new version of gwm, but it will be incompatible with the
current gwm , so I will likely call it by another name, but dont hold your
breath! The lisp part is ready, however (see /pub/Klone on ftp at
koala.inria.fr, but I need to re-design the C part and the base profiles, in my
spare time...
Support
-------
GWM is not what I am paid for. It serves me a lot to test my ideas, and I want
to help people to use it, but most of the time I will be too busy to answer
beginner questions, so try to post questions about its use on the news or
mailing list instead of mailing only to me. Moreover, as I use only the
standard profile, I am of very little help on questions specific to the other
profiles (mwm, twm, vtwm...)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where is GWM?
=============
GWM is available by FTP on the X consortium ftp site, ftp.x.org, in
/contrib/window_managers/gwm and all its mirrors, or on the koala project ftp
site, koala.inria.fr, in /pub/gwm, where pre-compiled executables are also
stored for some architectures.
Mailing list
------------
Discussions on GWM happen on the GWM mailing list, gwm-talk@sophia.inria.fr.
You can subscribe/unsubscribe by mailing to:
gwm@sophia.inria.fr
And on the koala.inria.fr ftp site you can browse:
* The list of mailing list members
* The archive of past mails
* General info on this list
Newsgroups
----------
Best places to ask questions are comp.windows.x.apps and comp.windows.x. Please
try to put the uppercase "GWM" in the subject of the post to allow easy
spotting by other users among the numerous messages there.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colas Nahaboo, Koala, BULL @ INRIA Sophia, http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas
colas@sophia.inria.fr
33 (FRANCE) 93.65.77.70 (VOICE PHONE)
Colas Nahaboo (SURFACE MAIL)
INRIA
B.P. 93
06902 Sophia Antipolis cedex
FRANCE
--
Colas Nahaboo, Koala, BULL @ INRIA Sophia, http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas
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