UNIX SIG
By Christopher J. Fearnley

FVWM: An Exciting New Window Manager for the X Windows System: A Review

The F virtual window manager is a freely available window manager for X
maintained by its original developer, Robert Nation, and a horde of
"netizens". The README file gives a good overall description: "Fvwm is
a just another window manager, which provides a simple virtual desktop,
a 3-D look for window decorations, and shaped, color icons. It can be
configured to use far less memory than twm [approximately 1/3 less] or
to give a very good emulation of mwm. A nice button-bar can be used to
provide convenient access to frequently used functions or programs." In
order to keep fvwm small yet full-featured there are six add-on modules
(nine in the latest beta release) which can be loaded from one's .fvwmrc
file (there is a default system.fvwmrc file that is well-documented and
easy to modify to suit your system and preferences) or with a mouse
click or keyboard equivalent. Fvwm has been ported to many systems -
basically it should work under any X11R5 system (or R4 with a few
modifications to the Imakefile). Some of the add-on modules contain
system specific routines which may affect portability. Pre-made
binaries are available for Linux.

The last public release of fvwm was March 10 (version 1.21c), but new
releases are available weekly. The most recent beta version (at the
time of this writing, April 23) is 1.21zo. There have been a flurry of
bug fixes and releases lately in preparation for 1.22. It's
time-consuming and mostly unnecessary to keep up with beta releases, but
I wanted to include the latest information for PACS members (beware: new
bugs are often released and the man pages aren't updated with each beta
release). Fvwm is available by anonymous ftp from sunsite.unc.edu:
/pub/Linux/X11/window-managers (latest released version),
spcot.sanders.com: /pub/fvwm (where fvwm lives - alpha/beta releases)
which is mirrored by shrug.org: /pub/fvwm. There is a mailing list for
discussion of the development and use of fvwm. To subscribe send e-mail
to majordomo@shrug.org with the body of the message consisting of
"subscribe fvwm" and nothing else (it is moderately active with about 15
messages per day - Robert Nation announces important new beta releases
here). For those who don't have ftp access, call me and I'll put it on
my machine for you to download (my number is on the back cover of the
Data Bus).

I downloaded and built version 1.21zo in preparation for this article on
my Linux-box with gcc 2.5.8. I had a problem with the Xpm (X PixMap)
library (this allows storing and retrieving X pixmap files to and from
files). Once I figured out where my Xpm libraries were located
(/usr/X11/include/X11 on my XFree86 system - on your system it will
probably be elsewhere) and put it in the configure.h file, there were no
problems. In order to use the Xpm images that fvwm supports, you will
need Xpm 3.3 which is located on sunsite.unc.edu: pub/Linux/libs.
(Note: Xpm 3.4 has been released but is NOT backward compatible with Xpm
3.3 so you may need both depending on which applications your running -
fvwm can use 3.3, I haven't tried 3.4 (motif cannot use 3.3)). Xpm is
needed to use X pixmaps which are really neat icon-sized pictures).
There are xpixmap editors available (try ftp.x.org). Fvwm can be built
without support for Xpm.

How to describe a 3-D virtual window manager in words alone? I don't
know, but here goes! Fvwm provides a "viewport" into your virtual
office (through either the built-in pager (now obsolete) or the
FvwmPager Module). This viewport is divided into (typically 4) "desks".
Each desk has (typically 4) virtual windows or "working areas". Only
one such "working area" is active at any given time. Each working area
can have as many windows open on it as you want. The FvwmPager module
gives a complete picture of your whole virtual office (it names the
desks that are available and puts the programs title on the pager
representation of each window). A mouse click in the pager will move
the pointer and the focus (the window which receives input) to the
window in the "pile" of whichever desk you clicked. You can move an
application to another virtual window or even another desk by dragging
and dropping with the second mouse button. One can organize their desks
around projects. The C development tools for some project might be on
desk2 called "foo" where you might have a man page on your debugger
opened, the project proposal in a text window, and another window for
the current compilation. These could all be opened for you
automatically and placed on the correct desk/window location from your
.fvwmrc file. Moreover, each window's properties (like window
decorations, starting location, icons to use, etc.,) can be specified
in the .fvwmrc file with the built-in "Style" command. Style's are
assigned by name of the program.

FvwmPager lets us navigate through the viewport, now to discuss the
other modules. The GoodStuff module provides an easy way to launch
frequently needed applications with one mouse click (on a button). In
the .fvwmrc file you tell GoodStuff which applications to make
available, how to launch them (which parameters, location, etc), and how
to decorate the button. FvwmWinList (written by Mike Finger) lists all
the windows opened (anywhere) on buttons in a pop-up menu format; also,
it can be fixed to some part of the display. Depressing the button will
move the focus to that window (it can even be arranged to deiconify the
window) even if it's on another desk. Each mouse button click can be
bound to a different response: a fvwm built-in, module, or function (as
specified in the .fvwmrc file). Another nice module is FvwmScroll which
allows one to add Athena scroll bars to any window. FvwmBanner can be
launched at startup or with a mouse or keyboard invocation. It displays
a banner for fvwm and then exits after five seconds. FvwmClean can
iconify or even kill applications that have been left running for more
than X seconds (you fill X in in the .fvwmrc file, of course).
FvwmIdent identifies many of the properties of the window you ask it
about. This can be useful in trying to get the right geometry loaded
into your initialization files. FvwmSave saves to a file "new.xinitrc"
candidate lines for your .xinitrc based on the window geometry on the
display when it is invoked. You must edit the new.xinitrc file (or
suffer the consequences). xpmroot is a program that will set the root
window of the display to whatever Xpm pixmap file you indicate.
Finally, there is a module FvwmDebug which "captures the stream of
module packets coming from fvwm, and displays them on stderr" according
to the man page, but I saw no real use for it.

CONCLUSIONS:

Fvwm is a very powerful, full-featured window manager for X. It is
highly configurable, fast, has color, a 3-D look, and is easy to build.
Development is proceeding rapidly, too rapidly in fact. The only real
complaint I have is that I spend too much time tweeking my .fvwmrc file!
Mwm (the Motif window manager) is the main "competition" to fvwm.
Motif's advantage is that it is commercial. So, presumably, one can get
help and assurance that it will work on your X system. Many people on
the mailing list have switched from mwm to fvwm. They complain of some
of the stupid ways mwm does certain things. It seems that unless you
need corporate support fvwm is better. The last straw is that fvwm can
emulate mwm. So if you like a few mwm features, you can pick and choose
mwm and fvwm features according to your preference.

NEXT MONTH:

We will continue our discussion "Introduction to Perl" with Gordon Fink,
examples from other PACS members. Discussion will be our focus.