CTWM Change History

4.1.0 (2023–03–26)

Backward-Incompatible Changes And Removed Features

  1. Support for VirtualScreens has been removed. This was an early attempt to allow some manual configuration of multiple monitors, but carried with it a lot of caveats and strange behaviors. The current automatic RANDR and manual MonitorLayout features are a replacement for anywhere this ever really worked.

  2. ctwm’s captive mode support has been removed. This includes the --window and --name command line arguments, and the f.adoptwindow and f.hypermove functions. Be sure to remove any references to those functions from your config file.

  3. Support for WindowBox has been removed, along with the f.fittocontent function related to it.

  4. The minimum cmake version has been bumped to 3.6. This is available in standard packages back to CentOS 6, and we appear to have actually been using syntax requiring 3.5 for a while unknowingly anyway.

New Features

  1. Support for understanding multi-monitor layouts as something other than a single giant rectangle added. The RANDR X extension is used for determining how your monitors are laid out. The various f.\*zoom functions now zoom on the monitor the window is currently on, and new f.x\*zoom functions are added to zoom across your entire display. Various internal geometries can be specified RANDR-output-relative; see doc of e.g. IconManagers. Contributed by Maxime Soulé btik-ctwm@scoubidou.com.

  2. Added MonitorLayout {} config var for overriding the layout of multiple monitors. In normal cases with multiple monitors and a modern X server, this is unnecessary. It’s useful if the X server doesn’t support RANDR (e.g., older servers), or if the info it provides is wrong (e.g., multi-display simulation with Xephyr), or if you just prefer to specify things differently than they would otherwise be (e.g., treat an ultra-wide display as 2 separate monitors).

  3. The EWMH _NET_FRAME_EXTENTS property is now set on windows when we take control of them. This should fix clients mispositioning other windows on top of themselves; visible with Firefox’s form autofilling and context menus. Contributed by Maxime Soulé btik-ctwm@scoubidou.com.

Bugfixes

  1. When restarting ctwm, the icon managers for the current workspace will now initially show up, rather than those for first WS.

  2. When restarting ctwm, the stacking order of windows is now preserved.

  3. Running --cfgchk without an available X server will now work. Some errors may only be discovered when it can talk to X (things relating to colors are a likely suspect). Checking configs for multi-Screen setups will now properly check all of them as well.

  4. Fix display of combined modifiers in TwmKeys menu. Contributed by Maxime Soulé btik-ctwm@scoubidou.com.

  5. Fix window icon name spilling out into the border of icon manager entries. Contributed by Carl Svensson ctwm@datagubbe.se.

  6. Fix minor mis-sizing and postitioning of squeezed titlebar when window is squeezed away. Contributed by Maxime Soulé btik-ctwm@scoubidou.com.

  7. Fix window placement when DontMoveOff is enabled without 3D borders. Contributed by Maxime Soulé btik-ctwm@scoubidou.com.

  8. When window titles overflow the available space, always treat them as left-justified, to avoid bad behavior of other justifications and provide the best available behavior. Found by Carl Svensson ctwm@datagubbe.se.

4.0.3 (2019–07–21)

Bugfixes

  1. Perform various manipulations and overrides of WM_HINTS property when it gets reset during runtime, like we do when initially adopting the window. The most visible effect of this was in windows that don’t give a focus hint (which we override to give focus), but then reset WM_HINTS later and still don’t give us a hint, where we wound up not re-overriding previously. Reported for xvile by Wayne Cuddy.

  2. The font height estimation changes in 4.0.0 were not applied correctly when UseThreeDMenus was set, leading to some odd vertical misalignment of the text with some fonts. Reported by Wayne Cuddy.

  3. A failure in OTP consistency checks caused by the handling of transients of fullscreen windows has been fixed. This manifested as failures in OtpCheckConsistencyVS() assertions.

4.0.2 (2018–08–25)

Backward-Incompatible Changes And Removed Features

  1. The UseThreeDIconBorders config var has been removed. It came in silently and undocumented in 3.4 and has never done anything.

  2. The attempts to use DNS lookups for setting the HOSTNAME m4 variable have been removed; it is now just a duplicate of CLIENTHOST.

New Features

  1. The EWMH _NET_WM_NAME property is now supported, and used for the window name in place of the ICCCM WM_NAME when set. By default, we also accept UTF8_STRING encoded WM_NAME as a result of this change; see below for var to restore historical strictness.

  2. The EWMH _NET_WM_ICON_NAME property is now supported, and used for the icon name in place of the ICCCM WM_ICON_NAME when set. Similar comments as above apply to the encodings.

  3. Support has been added for CTWM_WM_NAME and CTWM_WM_ICON_NAME properties, which will override any window/icon names otherwise specified. This may be useful for applications that set unhelpful names themselves, or for manually adjusting labelling. These properties can be set from the command line via xprop; as an example, xprop -f CTWM_WM_NAME 8u -set CTWM_WM_NAME "awesome windowsauce". See xprop(1) manual for details; the s, t, and u field type specifiers will all work.

  4. When no icon name is set for a window, we’ve always used the window name for the icon name as well. But that only happened the first time the window name is set; after that, the icon name is stuck at the first name. It now updates along with the window name, if no icon name is set.

  5. All icon manager windows will now have the TwmIconManager class set on them, so they can be addressed en mass by other config like NoTitle by that class name.

New Config Options

  1. Added DontNameDecorations config option to disable setting names on the X windows we create for window decoration (added in 4.0.0). These have been reported to confuse xwit, and might do the same for other tools that don’t expect to find them on non-end-app windows. Reported by Frank Steiner.

  2. Added StrictWinNameEncoding config option to enable historical behavior, where we’re reject invalid property encoding for window naming properties (like a UTF8_STRING encoded WM_NAME).

Bugfixes

  1. Fix up broken parsing of IconifyStyle "sweep". Bug was introduced in 4.0.0.

  2. When multiple X Screens are used, building the temporary file for m4 definitions could fail with an error from mkstemp(). Reported by Manfred Knick.

  3. When multiple X Screens are used, the OTP code didn’t recognize the difference, and kept everything in one list. This caused the internal consistency checks to trip when it didn’t find all the windows it expected. Reported by Terran Melconian.

  4. When ReverseCurrentWorkspace is set, mapping windows not on the current workspace (e.g., via restarting ctwm, or creating new windows with the desktop set via EWMH properties) could segfault. Reported by Sean McAllister.

  5. Fix some edge cases where we’d fight other apps' focus handling. When an application moved focus itself to an unrelated (in X terms) window, our processing would often race and re-move the focus to the root ourselves. This was visible with e.g. sub-windows in Firefox for context menu and urlbar dropdown, which would flash on and then disappear.

  6. When creating a new transient window of an existing full-screen window, the OTP stacking may cause it to be stuck below the main window due to the special handling of full-screen focused windows in EWMH. It should now be forced to the top.

  7. Building ctwm since 4.0.0 in certain locales could misorder functions in the lookup table, leading to troubles parsing the config file. You’d get some loud “INTERNAL ERROR” lines from ctwm when running it if this were the case. Now fixed. Reported by Richard Levitte.

4.0.1 (2017–06–05)

User Visible Changes

  1. Fix a bug where fullscreen windows could sometimes wind up incorrectly stacked due to a focus-handling issue. This would lead to ctwm aborting with an assertion failure in the OTP code, like Assertion failed: (PRI(owl) >= priority), function OtpCheckConsistencyVS.

  2. Fix an edge case (probably only triggerable via manual work with EWMH messages) where a window could wind up resized down to nothing.

Internals

  1. Systems with the ctfconvert/ctfmerge tools available will now use them to include CTF info in the compiled binary. This allows more detailed inspection of the running process via DTrace (e.g., the layout of the structs).

  2. The initial rumblings of a Developer’s Manual are now in doc/devman/. This isn’t tied into the main build, and there’s no real reason it ever will be. Things of interest to users should wind up in the main manual; this should only have things of interest to people developing ctwm.

4.0.0 (2017–05–24)

Build System Change

The old imake build system has been replaced by a new structure using cmake. This makes cmake a requirement to build ctwm. See the README.md file for how to run it.

A fallback minimal build system is available in the minibuild/ directory for environments that can’t use the main one. This is likely to need some manual adjustment on many systems, and the main build is strongly preferred. But it should suffice to get a runnable binary if all else fails.

Platform Support

Support for many non-current platforms has been dropped. In particular, remnants of special-case VMS support have been removed. Many old and now dead Unix variants have been similarly desupported. Generally, platforms without support for C99 and mid-2000’s POSIX are increasingly less likely to work.

Backward-Incompatible Changes And Removed Features

  1. Argument parsing has been rewritten to use getopt_long(). All -long options are now --long instead. -version, -info, -cfgchk, and -display are still accepted if they’re the first option given, to make it easier for scripts to simultaneously support before/after versions; this shim will be removed in a later version.

  2. Support for the SDSC imconv library, and the IMCONV options related to it, has been removed. The last release is almost 20 years old, and doesn’t support any remotely recent platforms.

  3. The USE_SIGNALS code to use signal-driven animations has been removed. It’s been non-default since 3.2 (more than 20 years ago), and not documented anywhere but in the code and a comment in this file.

  4. The USE_GNOME option and code for GNOME1 support has been removed.

  5. The old-style title button action specifications (without an = in them) deprecated since 3.8 are no longer supported. Just replacing the “:” with “= :” should suffice to make it work right in 3.8+. If you need to share configs with older versions, you’ll have to conditionalize the syntax with m4 or some other preprocessing.

  6. The f.cut (and ^ alias for it), f.cutfile, and f.file functions have been removed. These functions for messing with the clipboard were never visibly documented, and came into the manpage in 3.0 already commented-out and saying they were obsolete.

  7. The f.source function has been removed. It’s never done anything (except beep) as far back as 1.1 and has never been documented.

  8. The f.movemenu function has been removed. It was added silently in 2.1, has never done anything, and has never been documented.

  9. The NoVersion config parameter has been removed. It’s been undocumented, obsoleted, and done absolutely nothing since 1.1.

  10. Support for non-flex versions of lex(1) is deprecated, and will take some manual work to build. Note that release tarballs include prebuild lexers, so this probably only matters to people building from a development tree. (And if you are, and really need AT&T or some other lex to work, talk to us!)

  11. Support for building with internal regex implementation has been disabled; we now require regex support from libc. It is still possible to enable by manually editing files, but this will be removed in the future. If you have to mess with this, please bring it up on the mailing list so we can figure out a long-term solution.

  12. Parsing of the ctwm.workspaces X resource (i.e., setting -xrm "ctwm.workspaces: something" on program command-lines) since 3.0 has collapsed doubled backslashes (\\) into a single (``). However, there were no other escapes, so this didn’t gain anything. Using a single will work with both variants, unless you need multiple backslashes in a row in your workspace names.

  13. The IconRegion and WindowRegion config params both take a vgrav hgrav pair of parameters to control layout. Previous versions would accept a hgrav vgrav ordering in the parsing, and would mostly work by odd quirks of the code. The parsing has been made stricter, so only the documented vgrav hgrav ordering is accepted now.

User Visible Changes

  1. The default install locations have been changed. See the README for details about where things are installed and how to change them.

  2. Several default settings have been changed. ctwm now defaults to acting as though RestartPreviousState, NoGrabServer, DecorateTransients, NoBackingStore, RandomPlacement, OpaqueMove, OpaqueResize, SortIconManager, and StartInMapState have been set. Those settings that didn’t previously have an inverse (to get the behavior previously seen when they weren’t specified) have such added; see below.

  3. Added various config parameters as inverses of existing params. New params (with existing param they invert in parens):

  4. Added DontShowWelcomeWindow config option to not show welcome splashscreen image.

  5. Selected a number of cleanups from Stefan Monnier monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA, including rate-limiting of animations using a new _XA_WM_END_OF_ANIMATION message. Font height is estimated based on used characters only. Added some similar changes, improved the prevention of placing windows off-screen, the f.rescuewindows function for emergencies, a hack-fix for f.adoptwindow. More virtual screen tweaks/fixes.

  6. Added the remaining OnTopPriority changes from Stefan Monnier monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA: AutoPopup, AutoPriority, OnTopPriority, PrioritySwitching, f.changepriority, f.priorityswitching, f.setpriority, f.switchpriority, f.tinylower, f.tinyraise. Currently consistency checking code is enabled, which will terminate with an assertion failure if something unexpected happens. Smoothed out various inconsistencies that this check discovered when virtual screens are used.

  7. Basic support for EWMH (Extended Window Manager Hints) added and enabled by default. EWMHIgnore {} config option allows selectively disabling bits. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert, Matthew Fuller]

  8. Icon manager windows are no longer included in the window ring (that had confusing effects on the focus sequence).

  9. Added --dumpcfg command-line option to print out the compiled-in fallback config file.

  10. The Occupy {} specification now accepts “ws:” as a prefix for workspaces. This may break things if you have workspaces with names that differ only by that prefix (e.g., you have workspaces “abc” and “ws:abc”, and your Occupy {} declarations affects both.

  11. If ctwm is built with rplay support, sounds may now be configured with the RplaySounds {} parameter in the config file in place of the ~/.ctwm-sounds file. If so, ctwm will give a warning if .ctwm-sounds exists; support for the external file will be removed in a future version. Also the SoundHost config parameter is replaced by RplaySoundHost; the old name is still accepted, but will be removed in a future version.

  12. Added MWMIgnore {} config option to allow selectively disabling honoring of some Motif WM hints.

  13. Warping to a window now explicitly sets focus on that window. This would generally (but not always, in the presence of odd X server behavior) have already happened for users with focus following mouse, but now occurs for ClickToFocus users as well. [Alexander Klein]

  14. Several bugs relating to the Occupy window were fixed. Iconifying the Occupy window no longer loses it and leaves you unable to pull it up again. Minor undersizing in some cases fixed.

  15. Windows which fail to use the WM_HINTS property to tell us things like whether they want us to give them focus are now explicitly given focus anyway. This should fix focus problems with some apps (Chromium is a common example).

  16. Added ForceFocus {} config option to forcibly give focus to all (or specified) windows, whether they request it or not. Previously the code did this unconditionally (except when no WM_HINTS were provided; x-ref previous), but this causes problems with at least some programs that tell us they don’t want focus, and mean it (some Java GUI apps are common examples).

  17. OpaqueMoveThreshold values >= 200 (the default) are now treated as infinite, and so will always cause opaque moving.

Internals

  1. A new code style has been chosen and the entire codebase reformatted into it. Configs for Artistic Style to generate the proper output are in the source tree.

  2. The full_name element of the TwmWindow structure has been removed. Consumers should just use the name element instead.

3.8.2 (2014–05–18)

  1. Various code cleanups.

  2. Fix a bug where insufficient validation of the size hints resulted in a division by zero when considering aspect ratio.

  3. Lots of minor compiler warnings and build fixes, a few of which were real current or latent bugs. Leave warnings enabled by default. A few of the build system adjustments may break very old systems (e.g., those with original AT&T yacc).

  4. Fix incorrect inclusion of $DESTDIR in some paths.

  5. Update for new website and mailing list at http://www.ctwm.org.

  6. Look at _MOTIF_WM_HINTS for titlebar-less or border-less windows.

3.8.1 (2012–01–05)

  1. Fix bug causing [de]iconified status of windows to not be maintained across workspaces. [Matthew Fuller]

  2. Quiet a bunch of compiler warnings. [Matthew Fuller]

  3. Make sure we fully initialize our WorkSpaceWindow structure so we don’t try to dereference uninitialized pointers later on. [Matthew Fuller]

  4. Increased the number of supported mouse buttons again, having just heard of a mouse with 9 possible buttons… [Richard Levitte]

  5. Fix a bug in the warping “next” function, where if there is a single window and the cursor is not on it, invoking f.warpring "next" does nothing. [Martin Blais]

  6. Introduce a new feature called “SaveWorkspaceFocus”, which when enabled, makes ctwm remember which window has the focus within each virtual workspace. As you switch workspaces, the cursor is automatically warped to the window previous in focus in the workspace. This significantly reduces the amount of mouse use. [Martin Blais]

  7. f.fill patch from Matthias Kretschmer kretschm@cs.uni-bonn.de. Without the patch, you might get windows which are increased by two times the border width more than it should be. Additionally if you place a window with no/not much size contrainst like firefox in the upper left corner and perform f.fill "top" or f.fill "left" the size of the window will increase by two times the border width in width and height without changing the top-left coordinate without the patch. Of course in such a situation the size should not change at all… [via Olaf Seibert]

3.8 (2007–02–16)

  1. Global cleanup. There were some variables shadowing others, things not being safely initialized, that sort of thing. [Richard Levitte]

  2. Fixed several memory leaks found by “Nadav Har’El” nyh@math.technion.ac.il. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  3. Merged in the f.movetitlebar command. By default this is bound to alt-left-click in the titlebar. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  4. Fixed the following issue:

    [Todd Kover]

  5. Adjustments to ctwm.man. I noticed a couple of small errors. [Ross Combs]

  6. Improve algoritm to deal with mismatched geometry of virtual screens

    [Todd Kover]

  7. WMapCreateCurrentBackGround() and WMapCreateDefaultBackGround() would skip remaining virtual screens if not all parameters are present. Small type errors. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  8. There were some directives in the config file that wanted to set some setting for all virtual screens. However since that list is (now) only set up after parsing the config file, they failed to work. Moreover, these settings were basically meant to be global to all virtual screens, so a better place for them is somewhere in *Scr. They all related to the Workspace Manager, so I moved them from struct WorkSpaceWindow to struct WorkSpaceMgr.

    The affected directives are StartInMapState, WMgrVertButtonIndent, WMgrHorizButtonIndent, MapWindowCurrentWorkSpace, MapWindowDefaultWorkSpace. The window and icon_name, even though not user-settable, were also moved.

    This is basically the previous change above done right. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  9. Re-introduced TwmWindow.oldvs, used to avoid calling XReparentWindow() when possibe (it messed up the stacking order of windows). However, maybe the use of .vs should be rethought a bit: in Vanish() it is now set to NULL with the old value kept in .oldvs. However the window is still a child of the same vs. Maybe it is better not to set it to NULL and then, when really changing the virtual screen, .vs can be used instead of .oldvs.

    This whole “virtual screen” thing is unexplained in the manual, which even uses it as a synonym for “workspace” already in the introduction paragraph. (There also does not seem to be a way now to test virtual screens in captive windows) I suspect that all this causes lots of confusion, and when cleared up, can simplify the code a lot.

    I also fixed up the horrible indentation in the functions where I changed something. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  10. Fixed interaction between “inner” and “outer” workspace selection with “captive” windows. This was because the Gnome _WIN_WORKSPACE property is used in 2 conflicting ways: for client windows it indicates which workspace they are in, for root windows it indicates which workspace they show. Captive windows are both. Also, the initially selected inner workspace is now the first, not the same as the outer workspace (this had a different cause). [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  11. Introduce Scr->XineramaRoot to store the root window that encompasses all virtual screen rootwindows. This further reduces any need to use RealRoot and/or CaptiveRoot. Add a schematic drawing that clarifies the relation between the various root-type windows. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  12. Get rid of all non-locale code and make I18N the silent default (doesn’t have to be mentioned any more). THIS WILL BREAK CTWM ON OLDER (PRE-LOCALE) ENVIRONMENTS. I strongly recommend an upgrade to “post-locale” standards. [Richard Levitte]

  13. Enhance RandomPlacement with a displacement argument, so the pseudo-radomness can be of displacements other than +30+30. Here’s an example for a pretty funky displacement:

    RandomPlacement "on" "-30-100"
    

    [Richard Levitte]

  14. Extend the Info window with the geometry seen from the lower right corner as well. [Richard Levitte]

  15. Extend the pointer button specification for title buttons to take modifiers. As part of this change, the following title pointer button specification is deprecated:

    Button {j} : {function}
    

    in favor of the following, for consistency:

    Button {j} = {function}
    

    The old way still works, but is considered bad form and will be removed in a future version (“ctwm 4.0”). [Richard Levitte]

  16. Fix position of buttons in Occupy window, to make them centered. (and spread the remaining space evenly in 4). [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  17. TwmWindow.group was once apparently set to 0 when a window had no group leader but this was changed to pointing to its own window. This resulted however in many places checking for both conditions, and several checking only for 0 which could not occur anymore. Changed it back to 0 (so we can now distinguish again windows that really indicate themselves as group leader, if we wish) and this gave rise to some simplifications.

    Also, there were various loops through all TwmWindows looking for a group leader (or a transientfor), I replaced them with GetTwmWindow() which uses the Xlib function XFindContext() which uses a hash table lookup. This should be more efficient.

    When you change the occupation of a group member window, it is now applied to the group leader (which in turn affects all members).

    I tried this with ExMH, the only program that uses a real group leader that I could find. Iconifying the leader unmaps the members. What should “squeezing” do? ExMH also has an icon window (see ICCCM 4.1.9, 3rd option) which behaves weirdly; this may be a bug in ExMH (see exmh-2.7.2/exmh.BUGS) even though fvwm somehow handles it better. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  18. When Squeezing a window group leader, unmap the member windows, just like happens with iconification. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  19. Simplifications c.q. de-duplications of code regarding the WorkSpaceManager and Occupation windows. This includes coding the layout of these windows only once instead of twice (at initialisation and when resizing). If it’s wrong now at least it should be consistent.

    When changing occupation via functions like f.movetonextworkspace, also move complete window groups (just like when you do it via the Occupation window). Also fixed changing the occupation of the Occupation window. Documented (so far) undocumented possibility to edit the labels of workspaces on the fly (what use this is, I’m not sure). Removed some unused variables. [Olaf “Rhialto” Seibert]

  20. Get rid of the USE_SESSION and X11R6 macros and make them the silent default. Also cleaned out a few references to the macro X11R4, which hasn’t been used for ages. THIS WILL BREAK CTWM ON OLDER (PRE-X11R6) ENVIRONMENTS. I strongly recommend an upgrade to a newer X11 release. [Richard Levitte]

  21. Modified the random placement so a negative X displacement has the first “random” window start near the right edge instead of the right and a negative Y displacement has the first “random” window start near the bottom edge instead of the top. [Richard Levitte]

3.7 (2005–07–19)

  1. Workspace context (bkctwmws.patch)

    Makes it possible to bind keys specific to the workspace manager (by Björn Knutsson). Use the event context “workspace” for this.

  2. New keyword : AlwaysSqueezeToGravity

    If it is enabled, window squeezing always follows window gravity (instead of northward when the window has a title). (by Rudolph T. Maceyko).

  3. TwmKeys and TwmVisible menus (dlctwmmenu.patch)

    Adds TwmKeys (rootmenu listing all keybindings) and TWM Visible (rootmenu showing only deiconified windows) (by Dan Lilliehorn).

  4. Preliminary GNOME compliance (see README.gnome and TODO.gnome) (by Nathan Dushman).

  5. IconifyStyle : “normal” “mosaic” “zoomin” “zoomout” “sweep”

    A few “fancy” graphical effects when you iconify windows, just for fun.

  6. JPEG images support : You can now use jpeg image files wherever you can use images. Use the jpeg:imagename syntax.

  7. f.showbackground

    Since we can now use fancy jpeg image for root backgrounds, this function unmaps all windows in the current workspace. This is a toggle function, if all windows are unmapped, they are all remapped. Better bind this function in the root context.

  8. Preliminary support for Xinerama extention. You can define “virtual” screens (it’s better if they correspond to you actual screens). The thing is that you can see several workspaces at the sams time, one per virtual screen. Of course, you cannot view the same workspace (or the same window) in 2 vscreens at the same time. The syntax is:

    VirtualScreens {
        "1280x1024+0+0"
        "1600x1200+1280+0"
    }
    

    for 2 screens, the first one (on the left) is 1280x1024, the second one (on the right) is 1600x1200.

    This is preliminary, because this has not been extensively tested. I did this because I have now 2 screens, but I was unable to get them working properly, so I use only one.

  9. [ At this point, Claude has stopped working on CTWM, and the project is now in the hands of Richard Levitte richard@levitte.org. ]

  10. Changed Imakefile to support a distribution target.

  11. Changed :xpm:cross to become a bit larger and have a slightly more 3D appearance, and is visible even in very dark configurations.

  12. Make AlwaysSqueezeToGravity to work for all windows (if no window list is given).

  13. New keyword: NoImagesInWorkSpaceManager

    If it’s enabled, background images aren’t displayed in the workspace map.

    This was contributed by Thomas Linden.

  14. New command line option: -cfgchk

    If used, CTWM will only parse the configuration file and indicate if it found errors or not.

    This was contributed by Matthew D. Fuller.

  15. DontMoveOff patch (by Björn Knutsson)

    Change the behavior of DontMoveOff / MoveOffResistance so that when you attempt to move a window off screen, it will not move at all until it’s been moved MoveOffResistance pixels (as before), but at this time it will no longer “snap”, but instead it will start moving off screen. This means that you still have the old behavior of DontMoveOff, but now with the ability to move a window off screen less that MoveOffResistance pixels.

  16. Random placement and DontMoveOff patch (by Björn Knutsson, changed)

    When random placement was used, DontMoveOff wasn’t honored. This behavior has now changed so a window will be kept within the screen when at all possible. When the window is too large, it’s top or left edge (or both) will be placed in coordinate 0. This change differs a little bit from Björns contribution by not using rand() at all.

  17. f.warpring patch (by Björn Knutsson)

    If IconManagerFocus is set, there’s no reason why the icon manager should get enter and leave events. This fixes some disturbing in the warpring that would otherwise happen.

  18. f.movetoprevworkspace, f.movetonextworkspace, f.movetoprevworkspaceandfollow, f.movetonextworkspaceandfollow patch (by Daniel Holmström)

    Makes it possible to move a window to the previous or next workspace and, if you like, go to that workspace and focus the moved window.

  19. f.fill “vertical” patch (by Daniel Holmström)

    Expands the window vertically without overlapping any other window, much like { f.fill "top" f.fill "bottom" } but with the exception that it doesn’t expand over window borders. It also sets the windows “zoomed” to F_FULLZOOM, so one can toggle between this size, original and maximized.

  20. RESIZEKEEPSFOCUS bugfix patch (by Daniel Holmström)

    If a window is maximized with togglemaximize and then restored it might loose focus if the cursor is outside the restored window. This hack puts the cursor at the left-top corner of the window.

  21. f.zoom bugfix patch (by Daniel Holmström)

    f.zoom now doesn’t move the window up (as it sometimes did before)

  22. IgnoreTransient patch (by Peter Berg Larsen)

    New keyword with list of windows for which to ignore transients.

  23. Workspace switch peformance optimization (by MC)

    Stops ctwm from redrawing windows that occupy all workspaces when switching from one workspace to another.

  24. GTK “group leader” bugfix (by Olaf ‘Rhialto’ Seibert)

    Makes ctwm aware of the mysterious GTK group leader windows.

  25. Resize cursor with non-3D-borders bugfix (by Olaf ‘Rhialto’ Seibert)

    BorderResizeCursors now works also for top and left borders when non-3D-borders are used.

  26. Memory leak bugfix (by Simon Burge)

    GetWMPropertyString in util.c no longer leaks memory.

  27. Warpring bugfix (by Takahashi Youichirou)

    Solves these two problems when warping the pointer to the next/previous mapped window:

  28. NoWarpToMenuTitle patch (by Julian Coleman)

    Fixes the sometimes annoying feature that the cursor is warped to the menu title if the menu won’t fit on the screen below the current pointer position.

    This patch introduces a new keyword NoWarpToMenuTitle keyword to turn this off.

  29. Scr->workSpaceMgr.windowFont font init bugfix (by Martin Stjernholm)

    The Scr->workSpaceMgr.windowFont in workmgr.c is now initialized.

  30. Full GNU regex patch (by Claude Lecommandeur)

    It is now possible to use full GNU regex for window or class names by defining USE_GNU_REGEX in Imakefile. It is disabled in the default Imakefile.

  31. DontToggleWorkSpaceManagerState patch (by Dan ‘dl’ Lilliehorn)

    New keyword to turn off the feature toggling the workspace manager state to/from map/button state when you press ctrl and the workspace manager window is in focus.

  32. TWMAllIcons patch (by Dan ‘dl’ Lilliehorn)

    Adds the TWMAllIcons menu, listing all iconified windows on all workspaces.

  33. f.changesize patch (by Dan ‘dl’ Lilliehorn)

    Adds the function f.changesize which allows you to change the size of the focused window via menus and keybindings.

    Examples:

    "Down"     = c|s: all           : f.changesize "bottom +10"
    "F1"       = c|s: all           : f.changesize "640x480"
    
  34. When crashing, ctwm now refers to ctwm-bugs@free.lp.se instead of Claude.Lecommandeur@epfl.ch. NOTE: This is historical information: neither of these addresses are the current contact.

  35. Changed all the code to use ANSI C prototypes instead of the old K&R style. [Richard Levitte]

  36. Only use the DefaultFunction if no function was found. [Richard Levitte]

  37. Correct DontMoveOff

    The DontMoveOff checks when calculating random placement wasn’t satisfactory. It ended up placing all windows that were small enough to fit in a random place at +50+50 with no exception. The behavior has now been changed to only apply to very large windows (almost as large as or larger than the screen). At the same time, the RandomPlacement algorithm and the DonMoveOff checks have been tweaked to keep the title height in mind, so centering and coordinates correspond to the realities of the rest of CTWM. [Richard Levitte]

  38. Correct resizing from menu

    Choosing resize from the menu when not having 3D borders moved the target window down and right by a border width. This was an error in window position calculations. [Richard Levitte]

  39. Enhanced info window

    Added the outer geometry. Added the 3D border width. [Richard Levitte]

  40. Restart on subsequent SIGHUPs

    Reworked the code that catches a SIGHUP and has ctwm restart as a result. The restarting code has moved from Restart() to the new DoRestart(). Restart() now only sets a flag, and CtwmNextEvent() has been changed to react to that flag and call DoRestart(). From now on, CtwmNextEvent() is always used to get the next event, even when no animations are going on. [Richard Levitte]

  41. A number of VMS-related changes

    DEC/HP PC is a bit picky, the X11 environment is a little bit different, and there were some sign/unsigned conflicts and one too large symbol (the VMS linker truncates anything beyond the 31 first characters of any symbol name), so some tweaks were needed to get CTWM to build cleanly on VMS. [Richard Levitte]

  42. Allow gcc users to build with paranoia

    To make it easier to find possible problems, the Imakefile macro GCC_PEDANTIC can be defined in Imakefile.local. [Richard Levitte]

  43. Allow spaces in sound files.

    The .ctwm-sounds file parser would clip sound files at the first spaces. That won’t do for sound libraries where file names may have spaces in them. The parser now accepts spaces in file names, and will trim spaces from the beginning and the end of both file names and event tokens, allowing for a slightly more flexible format. [Richard Levitte]

  44. ctwm.spec

    Added a specification file for RPM building. [Richard Levitte]

  45. More info for m4

    The m4 subprocess now gets the variable PIXMAP_DIRECTORY, which is defined to the directory where the pixmaps are installed, and the new flags IMCONV, GNOME, SOUNDS, SESSION and I18N. [Richard Levitte]

  46. Document sounds

    The sounds system is now documented in the man page. [Richard Levitte]

  47. Build RPMs

    Added the target “rpm” to build an RPM directly from a distribution tarball. [Richard Levitte]

  48. Make life easier for package builders

    Added the possibility to configure where some libraries can be found through the use of USER_* make variables in Imakefile.local. Added a lot more commentary in Imakefile.local-template. [Richard Levitte]

  49. Make it easier to configure on VMS

    Moved all the configuration definitions to descrip.local-template, and instruct the users to copy that file to descrip.local and make all needed changes there. [Richard Levitte]

  50. Changed all relevant occurences of levitte@lp.se to richard@levitte.org. [Richard Levitte]

3.6 (2002–08–08 or earlier)

  1. Fix line numbers for errors when using m4 preprocessor. Send thanks to Josh Wilmes josh@hitchhiker.org.

  2. Fix the way menu entries are selected with the keyboard. Now when you type a letter, the pointer moves to the next entry whose first letter is this letter, but does not activate it. The new keyword IgnoreCaseInMenuSelection, can be used to ignore case for this delection.

  3. New keyword: DontSave. Takes a window list as argument. All listed windows won’t have their characteristics saved for the session manager. Patch from Matthias Baake Matthias.Baake@gmx.de

  4. Also from Matthias Baake Matthias.Baake@gmx.de: With the new keywords BorderLeft, BorderRight, BorderBottom and BorderTop (each of them is optional with a default value of 0 and takes a nonnegative integer as argument) you can declare a border “off limits” for f.move etc.. These borders act the same way as the real borders of the screen when moving windows; you can use f.forcemove to override them.

  5. Sloppy Focus added with keyword “SloppyFocus” in configuration file (DINH V. Hoa dinh@enserb.fr).

  6. The keyword “ClickToFocus” has been correctly implemented (DINH V. Hoa dinh@enserb.fr).

  7. The keyword “IgnoreModifier” has been added, to use this feature, you have to add a line IgnoreModifier { lock m2 } in the configuration file. All bindings (buttons and keys) will ignore the modifiers you specified. It is useful when you use caps locks or num locks. You don’t need IgnoreLockModifier any more with this option. (DINH V. Hoa dinh@enserb.fr).

  8. New keyword: WindowBox. Creates a new window called a box, where all the client windows that match the windows list are opened in, instead of the roor window. This is useful to group small windows in the same box (xload for instance) :

    WindowBox "xloadbox" "320x100+0-0" {
        "xload"
    }
    
  9. New function: f.fittocontent. Can be used only with window boxes. The result is to have the box have the minimal size that contains all its children windows.

  10. New keyword: WindowGeometries. Used to give a default geometry to some clients:

    WindowGeometries {
        "Mozilla*"       "1000x800+10+10"
        "jpilot*"        "800x600-0-0"
    }
    
  11. New keyword: IconMenuDontShow. Don’t show the name of these windows in the TwmIcons menu.

  12. And, as usual, a few bug fixes here and there.

3.5.2 (1999–09–10 or earlier)

  1. f.moveresize: Takes one string argument which is a geometry with the standard X geometry syntax (e.g. 200x300+150-0). Sets the current window to the specified geometry. The width and height are to be given in pixel, no base size or resize increment are used.

  2. AutoLower et f.autolower: from Kai Großjohann (Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE). Same as autoraise but with lower.

  3. WindowRingExclude: Takes a window list as argument. All listed windows will be excluded from the WarpRing.

  4. A new menu: “TwmIcons” same as “TwmWindows”, but shows only iconified windows. I did this when I got bored of having icons. Now I have no icons and no icon managers. I use this menu to deiconify windows. When I was young, I liked to have brightly colored icons, but now that I am getting old(er), I prefer a bare desktop.

3.5.1 (1999–05–02 or earlier)

  1. f.initsize: resets a window to its initial size given by the WM_NORMAL_HINTS hints.

  2. f.ring: Selects a window and adds it to the WarpRing, or removes it if it was already in the ring. This command makes f.warpring much more useful, by making its configuration dynamic (thanks to Philip Kizer pckizer@tamu.edu).

  3. f.jumpleft, f.jumpright, f.jumpup, f.jumpdown : takes one integer argument (the step). These function are designed to be bound to keys, they move the current window (step * {X,Y}MoveGrid) pixels in the corresponding direction. stopping when the window encounters another window (ala f.pack).

3.5 (1997–11–27 or earlier)

  1. f.pack [direction]. Where direction is one of: “right”, “left”, “top” or “bottom”. The current window is moved in the specified direction until it reaches an obstacle (either another window, or the screen border). The pointer follows the window. Examples:

    "Right" = m   : window        : f.pack "right"
    "Left"  = m   : window        : f.pack "left"
    "Up"    = m   : window        : f.pack "top"
    "Down"  = m   : window        : f.pack "bottom"
    
  2. f.fill [direction]. Where direction is either : “right”, “left”, “top” or “bottom”. The current window is resized in the specified direction until it reaches an obstacle (either another window, or the screen border).

    "Right" = s|m   : window        : f.fill "right"
    "Left"  = s|m   : window        : f.fill "left"
    "Up"    = s|m   : window        : f.fill "top"
    "Down"  = s|m   : window        : f.fill "bottom"
    
  3. f.savegeometry. The geometry of the current window is saved. The next call to f.restoregeometry will restore this window to this geometry.

  4. f.restoregeometry Restore the current window geometry to what was saved in the last call to f.savegeometry.

  5. ShortAllWindowsMenus Don’t show WorkSpaceManager and IconManagers in the TwmWindows and TwmAllWindows menus.

  6. f.toggleworkspacemgr Toggle the presence of the WorkSpaceManager. If it is mapped, it will be unmapped and vice verça.

  7. OpenWindowTimeout number number is an integer representing a number of second. When a window tries to open on an unattended display, it will be automatically mapped after this number of seconds.

  8. DontSetInactive { win-list } These windows won’t be set to InactiveState when they become invisible due to a change workspace. This has been added because some ill-behaved clients (Frame5) don’t like this.

  9. UnmapByMovingFarAway { win-list } These windows will be moved out of the screen instead of being unmapped when they become invisible due to a change workspace. This has been added because some ill-behaved clients (Frame5) don’t like to be unmapped. Use this if the previous doesn’t work.

  10. AutoSqueeze { win-list } These windows will be auto-squeezed. i.e. automatically unsqueezed when they get focus, and squeezed when they loose it. Useful for the workspace manager. (Note, it is not possible to AutoSqueeze icon managers).

  11. StartSqueezed { win-list } These windows will first show up squeezed.

  12. RaiseWhenAutoUnSqueeze Windows are raised when auto-unsqueezed.

  13. Now if the string “$currentworkspace” is present inside the string argument of f.exec, it will be substituated with the current workspace name. So it is possible to do something like :

    f.exec "someclient -xrm ctwm.workspace:$currentworkspace &"
    

    and the client will popus up in the workspace where the command was started even if you go elsewhere before it actually shows up.

  14. Fixes for the VMS version. From Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker levitte@lp.se.

  15. Better I18N. From Toshiya Yasukawa t-yasuka@dd.iij4u.or.jp. (Define I18N in Imakefile to activate it).

  16. Better Session Management interface. Patches from Matthew McNeill M.R.McNeill@durham.ac.uk.

  17. new flag : -name, useful only for captive Ctwm. Sets the name of the captive root window. Useful too for next point. If no name is specified ctwm-n is used, where n is a number automatically generated.

  18. Two new client resources are now handled by Ctwm :

  19. If the string “$redirect” is present inside the string argument of f.exec, it will be substituated with a redirection to the current captive Ctwm if any (or nothing if in a main Ctwm). So it is possible to do something like :

    f.exec "someclient $redirect &"
    

    and the client will popus up in the right captive Ctwm.

  20. New function f.hypermove. With it, you can drag and drop a window between 2 captives Ctwm (or between a captive and the root Ctwm).

  21. 2 new m4 variables defined in your startup file:

  22. RaiseOnClick: if present a window will be raised on top of others when clicked on, and the ButtonPress event will be correctly forwarded to the client that owns this window (if it asked to).

    RaiseOnClickButton <n> : <Button number to use for RaiseOnClick>
    
  23. IgnoreLockModifier: if present, all bindings (buttons and keys) will ignore the LockMask. Useful if you often use caps lock, and don’t want to define twice all your bindings.

  24. AutoFocusToTransients Transient windows get focus automatically when created. Useful with programs that have keyboard shortcuts that pop up windows. (patch from Kai Grossjohann grossjohann@charly.cs.uni-dortmund.de).

  25. PackNewWindows Use f.movepack algorithm instead of f.move when opening a new window.

3.4 (1996–09–14 or earlier)

  1. 2 new keywords: XMoveGrid and YMoveGrid with an integer parameter. Constrains window moves so that its x and y coordinates are multiple of the specified values. Useful to align windows easily.

  2. New function: f.deleteordestroy. First tries to delete the window (send it WM_DELETE_WINDOW message), or kills it, if the client doesn’t accept such message.

  3. New function : f.squeeze. It squeezes a window to a null vertical size. Works only for windows with either a title, or a 3D border (in order to have something left on the screen). If the window is already squeezed, it is unsqueezed.

  4. New built-in title button: :xpm:vbar (a vertical bar).

  5. CenterFeedbackWindow : The moving and resizing information window is centered in the middle of the screen instead of the top left corner.

  6. 2 New options:

  7. WarpToDefaultMenuEntry (Useful only with StayUpMenus) : When using StayUpMenus, and a menu does stays up, the pointer is warped to the default entry of the menu. Try it. Can emulate double click. For example :

    Button2 =       : icon          : f.menu "iconmenu"
    menu "iconmenu" {
        "Actions"           f.title
        ""                  f.separator
        "*Restore"          f.iconify
        "Move"              f.move
        "Squeeze"           f.squeeze
        "Occupy ..."        f.occupy
        "Occupy All"        f.occupyall
        ""                  f.separator
        "Delete"            f.deleteordestroy
    }
    

    will result in DoubleButton2 on an icon uniconifies it.

  8. When you popup a menu that is constrained by the border of the screen the pointer is warped to the first entry. (Avoid exiting ctwm when you just want to refresh the screen).

  9. When compiled with X11R6 defined, ctwm supports ICE session management. (the code has been stolen directly from the X11R6 twm, it has not been thoroughly tested, humm… actually, not tested at all).

  10. SchrinkIconTitles: A la Motif schrinking of icon titles, and expansion when mouse is inside icon. (Yes, it’s misspelt. Yes, the misspelling is accepted.)

  11. AutoRaiseIcons: Icons are raised when the cursor enters it. Useful with SchrinkIconTitles.

  12. XPM files for title bars or buttons may include the following symbolic colors. These symbolic colors allow the possiblity of using the same 3d XPM file with different colors for different titlebars.

    Background
    The main color to be used by the title bar
    HiShadow
    The color to be used as the highlight
    LoShadow
    The color to be used as the dark shadow.

    Using these colors, I have built some 3d XPM files for various titlebars while still keeping the ability to change titlebar colors. [Matt Wormley mwormley@airship.ardfa.calpoly.edu]

  13. Added a keyword to the .ctwmrc file: “UseSunkTitlePixmap”. This makes it so the shadows are inversed for title pixmaps when focus is lost. This is similar to having the SunkFocusWindowTitle, but it makes your 3d XPM sink instead of just the whole bar. [Matt Wormley mwormley@airship.ardfa.calpoly.edu]

  14. Added 3 new builtin 3d buttons for “Iconify”, “Resize” and “Box”. They are available with the :xpm: identifier in the .ctwmrc file. [Matt Wormley mwormley@airship.ardfa.calpoly.edu]

  15. Added another keyword to the .ctwmrc file: “WorkSpaceFont”. This allows you to specify the font to use in the workspace manager. [Matt Wormley mwormley@airship.ardfa.calpoly.edu]

  16. 8 new xpm pixmaps for buttons, title highlite, etc… : 3dcircle.xpm 3ddimple.xpm 3ddot.xpm 3dfeet.xpm 3dleopard.xpm 3dpie.xpm 3dpyramid.xpm 3dslant.xpm [Matt Wormley mwormley@airship.ardfa.calpoly.edu]

  17. 2 new functions : f.forwmapiconmgr and f.backmapiconmgr, similar to f.forwiconmgr and f.backiconmgr but only stops on mapped windows. [Scott Bolte scottb@cirque.moneng.mei.com]

  18. Last minute: PixmapDirectory now accept a colon separated list of directories.

  19. If you use m4, ctwm now defines TWM_VERSION which is the version in the form of floating point (e.g. 3.4).

  20. I forgot to tell that IconRegion has now 3 more optionnal parameters iconjust, iconregjust and iconregalign. That can be used to give special values to IconJustification, IconRegionJustification and IconRegionAlignement for this IconRegion. The new syntax is :

    IconRegion geomstring vgrav hgrav gridwidth gridheight \
        [iconjust] [iconregjust] [iconregalign] [{ win-list }]
    

3.3 (pre-1995–02–11 or 1995–05–04)

  1. Better 3D borders with SqueezeTitle.

  2. New keywords : BorderShadowDepth, TitleButtonShadowDepth, TitleShadowDepth, MenuShadowDepth and IconManagerShadowDepth. You can modify the depth of the 3D shadow of all the objects.

  3. f.altcontext. a new context named “alter” is introduced. The next key or button event after a call to f.altcontext will be interpreted using the alternate context. To define bindings in the alternate context, use the keyword alter in the context field of the binding command.

  4. f.altkeymap. Up to 5 alternate modifiers (a1 to a5). The next key or button event after a call to f.altkeymap will be interpreted with this alternate modifies set. To define bindings with an alternate modifier, use the keyword ‘a’ followed by the number of the modifier in the modifier field of the binding command. Only the root, window, icon and iconmgr context are allowed when an alternate modified is used.

  5. Default menu entry : If a menu entry name begins with a “*” (star), this star won’t be displayed and the corresponding entry will be the default entry for this menu. When a menu has a default entry and is used as a pull-right in another menu, this default entry action will be executed automatically when this submenu is selected without being displayed. It’s hard to explain, but easy to understand.

  6. New keywords:

    ReallyMoveInWorkspaceManager
    tells ctwm to move the actual window when the user is moving the small windows in the WorkSpaceMap window.
    AlwaysShowWindowWhenMovingFromWorkspaceManager
    tells ctwm to always map the actual window during the move, regardless of whether it crosses the current workspace or not. The Shift key toggles this behaviour.
  7. 4 new functions:

    Do what you expect.

  8. The function f.raiseicons (from Rickard Westman ricwe@ida.liu.se). Raises all icons.

  9. A new keyword: IconRegionAlignement. Like IconRegionJustification but align vertically. The parameter is “top”, “center”, “bottom” or “border”.

  10. f.addtoworkspace, f.removefromworkspace and f.toggleoccupation. (idea from Kai Grossjohann grossjoh@linus.informatik.uni-dortmund.de). They take one argument that is a workspace name. When applied to a window, they add to, remove from, or toggle the occupation of this window in this workspace.

  11. AlwaysOnTop (from Stefan Monnier monnier@di.epfl.ch). Accept a list of windows as argument. Ctwm will do it’s best to keep these windows on top of the screen. Not perfect.

  12. Some moving stuff.

    f.movepack
    is like f.move, but it tries to avoid overlapping of windows on the screen. When the moving window begin to overlap with another window, the move is stopped. If you go too far over the other window (more than MovePackResistance pixels), the move is resumed and the moving window can overlap with the other window. Useful to pack windows closely.
    f.movepush
    Instead of stopping the move, tries to push the other window to avoid overlap. f.movepush is here mainly because I found it amusing to do it. Is is not very useful.
  13. TitleJustification: Takes one string argument : “left”, “center”, or “right”. Tells ctwm how to justify the window titles.

  14. UseThreeDWMap: Tells ctwm to use 3D decorations for the small windows in the workspace map.

  15. ReverseCurrentWorkspace: Tells ctwm to reverse the background and foreground colors in the small windows in the workspace map for the current workspace.

  16. DontWarpCursorInWMap: Tells ctwm not to warp the cursor to the corresponding actual window when you click in a small window in the workspace map.

  17. If there is neither MapWindowBackground, nor MapWindowForeground in the config file,the window title colors are used for the small windows in the workspace map.

3.2 (1994–11–13 or earlier)

  1. I have considerably reworked the focus handling. So I have probably introduced some problems.

  2. New keyword: NoIconManagerFocus. Tells ctwm not to set focus on windows when the pointer is in an IconManager.

  3. new option: -W. Tells ctwm not to display any welcome when starting. To be used on slow machines.

  4. New keyword: StayUpMenus. Tells ctwm to use stayup menus. These menus will stay on the screen when ButtonUp, if either the menu has not yet been entered by the pointer, or the current item is a f.title.

  5. Now ctwm tries to use welcome.xwd instead of welcome.xpm if it exists. On my machine the ctwm process size went from 2.3MB to 1MB when changing this. Xpm is very greedy.

  6. New keyword: IconRegionJustification. Tells ctwm how to justify icons inside their place in the IconRegion. This keyword needs a string value. The acceptable values are : “left”, “center”, “right” and “border”. If “border” is given, the justification will be “left” if the icon region gravity is “west” and “right” if the icon region gravity is “east”. (clever, isn’t it)

  7. If you specify the -f filename option, ctwm will first try to load filename.scrnum, where scrnum is the screen number. If it fails, it will try to load filename as usual.

  8. TitleButtons can now have different bindings for buttons with the following syntax :

    LeftTitleButton ":xpm:menu" {
        Button1 : f.menu "WindowMenu"
        Button2 : f.zoom
        Button3 : f.hzoom
    }
    

    The old syntax is of course accepted. Patch from Stefan Monnier Stefan_Monnier@NIAGARA.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU.

  9. A lot of new animated title buttons : %xpm:menu-up, %xpm:menu-down, %xpm:resize-out-top, %xpm:resize-in-top, %xpm:resize-out-bot, %xpm:resize-in-bot, %xpm:maze-out, %xpm:maze-in, %xpm:zoom-out, %xpm:zoom-in and %xpm:zoom-inout. From Stefan Monnier Stefan_Monnier@NIAGARA.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU.

  10. 2 new builtin menus: TwmAllWindows and TwmWorkspaces. Guess what they do.

  11. You can now bind menus to keys. When a menu is visible, you can navigate in it with the arrow keys. “Down” or space goes down, “Up” goes up, “Left” pops down the menu, and “Right” activates the current entry. The first letter of an entry name activates this entry (the first one if several entries match). If the first letter is ~ then Meta-the-second-letter activates it, if this first letter is ^ then Control-the-second-letter activates it, and if this first letter is space, then the second letter activates it.

  12. Support for VMS. Patch from Peter Chang peterc@v2.ph.man.ac.uk. Completely untested. If you have problems to build on VMS ask Peter Chang.

  13. New keyword: MoveOffResistance. Idea borrowed to fvwm. If you set MoveOffResistance to a positive (n) value, dontmoveoff will only prevent you from going off the edge if you’re within n pixels off the edge. If you go further, dontmoveoff gives up and lets you go as far as you wish. f.forcemove still allows you to totally ignore dontmoveoff. A negative value puts you back into “never moveoff” mode (it’s the default).

  14. The files background[1-7].xpm and background9.xpm have been removed from the distribution. Someone tells me that they are copyrighted. I tried to contact him in order to join his copyright, but his mail address is invalid. desktop-textures@avernus.com. Most of these backgrounds and much more can be obtained in the AIcons package on ftp.x.org. Particularly in cl-bgnd/Textures: bg_blu.gif, concrete.gif, marble1.gif, sharks.gif bg_grn.gif, granite_dark.gif, marble2.gif, snails.gif, coarse.gif, granite_light.gif and pool.gif.

  15. New keyword: BorderResizeCursors with no parameter. If used ctwm will put nice cursors when the cursor in on the window borders. To be used when you have bound a button to f.resize in the frame context.

  16. The xpm files are now installed in $(TWMDIR)/images instead of $(TWMDIR).

  17. Due to the many problems I had with signals being slightly different on different systems, I rewrote the animation handling without using signals anymore. I hope it is more portable. The old code is still available if you define USE_SIGNALS.

3.1 (1994–01–28)

  1. Ctwm is moving. You can now have animated images for icons, root backgrounds, title buttons and focus window title image. This adds one new keyword: AnimationSpeed, and 4 new function: f.startanimation, f.stopanimation, f.speedupanimation and f.slowdownanimation. An image name is considered an animation if it contains the percent (%) character. In which case ctwm replaces this character by numbers starting a 1, and will play an animation with all these images. There is only 2 examples : ball%.xpm suitable for icons, and supman%.xbm suitable for title highlight. Another example (much more beautiful) can be found in the Mosaic distribution. There is also one built-in animation for title buttons : %xpm:resize, for example :

    RightTitleButton                "%xpm:resize" = f.resize
    
  2. Add the WMgrButtonShadowDepth keyword to control the depth of the shadow of the workspace manager buttons.

  3. The RandomPlacement command has now an optionnal parameter: “on”, “off”, “all” or “unmapped”.

  4. Three new keywords : ChangeWorkspaceFunction, IconifyFunction and DeIconifyFunction, the argument is the name of a function that is executed whenever the corresponding event occurs. Useful for sounds :

    ChangeWorkspaceFunction !"cat /users/lecom/sounds/bom.au 2>/dev/null 1>/dev/audio &"
    
  5. A new keyword : IconJustification with 1 argument, either: “left”, “center” or “right”. Tells ctwm how to justify the icon image on the icon title (if any).

  6. flex is now supported.

  7. The IconRegion keyword now support an optionnal winlist argument. Thanks to Mike Hoswell hoswell@ncar.ucar.edu for adding this.

  8. f.separator now works (does something) with 3D menus.

  9. The format xwd is now accepted for images (icons, background, …). You have to prefix the image file name with xwd: to use this format. If the first character of an image file name is |, the filename is supposed to be a command that output a xwd image, and it is executed. For example, to use a gif file, use :

    "|(giftoppm | pnmtoxwd) < /users/lecom/images/2010.gif"
    
  10. A new keyword: MaxIconTitleWidth with an integer argument. If an icon title is larger than this integer, it is truncated.

  11. A sound extension is supported. To use it you have to define USE_SOUND in the Imakefile (not defined by default). In order to use this option you need the rplay package. The documentation for this extension is in sounds.doc. Warning: this extension is not mine, and I don’t use it, so don’t expect a good support if you have problems with it.

  12. A new keyword : NoBorder with a window list argument. These windows won’t have borders. Thanks to J.P. Albers van der Linden albers@pasichva.serigate.philips.nl for this patch.

  13. Ctwm has a new option selectable with the flag -w, if used, ctwm will not take over the whole screen(s), instead it will create a new window and manage it. The -w has an optional argument which is a window id of an existing window, if specified, ctwm will try to manage this window. This is totally useless, but I like it. The f.adoptwindow function can be used to capture an existing window into such a captive ctwm. A possible use of such mode can be to test new configuration file without restarting ctwm.

  14. Now the welcome file can be of any type understood by ctwm. So it must be prefixed with its type. The default is xpm:welcome.xpm if the XPM option is compiled in, else it is xwd:welcome.xwd. You use for example:

    setenv CTWM_WELCOME_FILE "|(giftoppm | pnmtoxwd) < ~/images/2010.gif"
    
  15. You can now have 3D window borders with the keyword: UseThreeDBorders. In which case the 3D border width is given with: ThreeDBorderWidth. The default value is 6. The color is BorderColor for the window that has focus and BorderTileBackground for all others windows. Note: The 3D borders do not merge very well with squeezed titles, as the top edge of the window where the title is missing does not get a 3d border.

  16. Now, WindowRing can be specified without argument, in this case all the windows are in the ring. (Alec Wolman wolman@blue.cs.washington.edu)

  17. New keyword: WarpRingOnScreen, if present, tells ctwm that f.warpring should warp pointer only to windows visible in the current workspace.

3.0 (1993–07–21)

  1. A few bugs fixes.

  2. A 3D presentation of menus, titles and IconManagers can be selected with UseThreeDMenus, UseThreeDTitles and UseThreeDIconManagers. If UseThreeDTitles is set the default values for TitleButtonBorderWidth, FramePadding, TitlePadding, ButtonIndent are set to 0 pixels. I am not that proud of the appearance of 3D titles but 3D menus look nice. If UseThreeDTitles is set the flag SunkFocusWindowTitle tells ctwm to sunk the title of the window that the focus. 3D features look ugly on monochrome displays, but I have no such display for testing purpose. If a monochrome display owner can have a look, he is welcome. The contrast of the clear and dark shadows can be tuned via the ClearShadowContrast and DarkShadowContrast parameters. These parameters are percentages. The formulas used are :

    clear.{RGB} = (65535 - color.{RGB}) * (ClearShadowContrast / 100)
    dark.{RGB}  = color.{RGB} * ((100 - DarkShadowContrast) / 100)
    

    If you choose UseThreeDIconManagers, icon titles are also 3D. By defaults new colors are allocated for shadows, but you can specify BeNiceToColormap to inform ctwm to use stipple instead of new colors, the effect is less beautiful, but acceptable.

  3. A new keyword: NoIconTitle with an optionnal window list.

  4. A new keyword: TransientOnTop with an integer parameter. This paramater is a percentage and tells ctwm to put transient (and non-group leader) windows always on top of their leader only if their surface is smaller than this fraction of the surface of their leader.

  5. OpaqueMove and OpaqueResize now accept an optionnal list of windows as parameter. They also have their NoOpaqueMove and NoOpaqueResize counterpart with the same syntax.

  6. Two new keywords: OpaqueMoveThreshold and OpaqueResizeThreshold with one integer parameter. The parameter represent a percentage of the screen surface. If Opaque{Move,Resize} is active for a window, (via point 4) the opaque {move, resize} is done only if the window surface is smaller than this percentage of the screen. The default is large enough.

  7. Startup is optionally piped into m4 before ctwm parse it, ypu can now have a common startup file for ctwm, tvtwm, etc … It can be disabled at compile time by undefining USEM4 in Imakefile. It can be disabled at execution time by using the -n option. Take care if you have backquotes (`) in your .ctwmrc file. This character is special to m4. In that case, put something like :

    changequote(,)
    changequote(``,'')
    

    at the beginning of your .ctwmrc.

  8. The startup looks nicer (I think). If you use XPM and the file welcome.xpm is present in your PixmapDirectory, it is displayed while the startup is in progress. Unfortunately, the PixmapDirectory is known only after the .ctwmrc is loaded, and this loading is a large part of the startup time. So you can define the environnement variable CTWM_WELCOME_FILE to point to an XPM file, in which case it will be displayed very quickly.

  9. A new function: f.separator, valid only in menus. The effect is to add a line separator between the previous and the following entry. The name selector part in the menu is not used. f.separator works only with conventionnal menus, not with 3D menus.

  10. Thanks to bret@essex.ac.uk, the man page is integrated with the original twm one, and is of a much better quality.

  11. While moving a window, the position is displayed in a similar way as the size when resizing.

  12. The info window now display the compile time options of the current version of ctwm.

  13. You can now specify xpm pixmap title buttons and TitleHighlight. There is 5 built-in scalable pixmap for buttons, :xpm:menu, :xpm:dot, :xpm:resize, :xpm:zoom and :xpm:bar.

  14. Ctwm now restarts when receiving signal SIGHUP, so to restart it from a shell, use kill -1 the_ctwm_pid.

  15. 2 New keywords: WMgrVertButtonIndent and WMgrHorizButtonIndent with 1 parameter, specifying the vertical and horizontal space beetween buttons in the workspace manager.

  16. Some more xpm files given. Among them several backgrounds.

  17. Ctwm set the property WM_WORKSPACELIST (type STRING) on the root window, this property contains the null separated list of all the workspaces. Now the WM_OCCUPATION property on each window is a null separated list instead of a space separated list, it was wrong since workspace names can contain spaces. So, the first time you will start the this version, your windows will show up anywhere.

  18. A new library libctwm.a and an include file ctwm.h are given. The library contains functions for an external program to have some control over ctwm. The functions are:

    Bool    CtwmIsRunning                   ();
    char    **CtwmWorkspaces                ();
    char    *CtwmCurrentWorkspace           ();
    int     CtwmChangeWorkspace             ();
    char    **CtwmCurrentOccupation         ();
    int     CtwmSetOccupation               ();
    int     CtwmAddToCurrentWorkspace       ();
    

    There is no documentation. A program demolib.c is given to help.

2.2 (1993–02–05)

  1. Bugs:

  2. Transient windows and non group leader windows are now always on the top of their leader.

  3. When an icon name changes, the icon itself changes automatically according the Icons list in your .ctwmrc. This is very useful for clients that have several states. For example xrn or some X mail readers can have two differents icons for new mail (news) / no new mail (news).

  4. A new keyword: TransientHasOccupation has been added for people annoyed by the fact that since ctwm-2.1, transient-for non group-leader windows have the same occupation that their leader. If you specify this, these windows have their own occupation.

  5. A new keyword: AutoOccupy. If specified, the occupation of a client is changed automatically when it’s name or icon name changes, according to the Occupy list in your .ctwmrc. For example a mail reader can popup instantly in the current workspace when mail arrives.

  6. A new keyword: DontPaintRootWindow. If specified, the root window is not painted, whatever you told in the Workspaces specification. This is useful to have pixmaps in the Workspace Map but not on the root window.

  7. You can use XPM pixmaps for your background root window. Use xpm:filename instead of @filename. The latter is still accepted. Of course if your XPM file has transparent parts, there are not transparent on the root window, i.e. you dont see the electron gun through it.

  8. XPMIconDirectory is replaced by PixmapDirectory. (XPMIconDirectory is still accepted).

  9. You can now use colored root background pixmap and icons in many formats. Ctwm use the imconv library from the San Diego Supercomputer Center. To use these formats, specify: “im:filename” for the pixmap name.

    But take care :

  10. Two new functions : f.nextworkspace, f.prevworkspace.

  11. Xpm examples files are now automatically installed in $(TWMDIR)

  12. An example of .ctwmrc is given, showing some aspect of ctwm (example.ctwmrc). It is not a complete .ctwmrc, only the ctwm aspects are shown.

  13. A new file PROBLEMS has been added that lists some problems you can have while using ctwm and some solutions.

Is there any good pixmap designer out there, that i can add beautiful icons and background to the distribution. Don’t use too many colors, try to use the same few already used in the example icons.

2.1 (1992–12–22)

  1. Cleanup code to make gcc happy.

  2. Bugs fixed

  3. Ctwm now maintains the WM_CURRENTWORKSPACE property on the root window and WM_OCCUPATION on every windows. They mean what you think. These properties are string properties and are in clear text instead of an obscure mask. If an external application changes these properties ctwm respond with the correct actions, changing the current workspace or the occupation of a window. I give a small example (gtw.c). An application can manage its occupation and it is even possible to write an external workspace manager. It is of course not ICCCM compliant because ICCCM says nothing on multiple workspaces. The special names “all” and “current” can be used. And you can specify relative occupations if the workspace names list begin with a “+” or “-” (ex: “+current” adds a window to the current workspace).

  4. 3 new functions:

    f.pin
    Pin/Unpin a menu on the screen. Only usable inside a root menu.
    f.vanish
    Remove a window from the current workspace. Works only if the window occupies at least one other workspace.
    f.warphere "win-name"
    Adds the window whose name matches win-name to the current workspace and warps the pointer to it.
  5. And a new keyword: NoShowOccupyAll. Tells ctwm not to show OccupyAll windows in the WorkSpaceMap window.

  6. All window names can now be specified as (shell-like) regular expressions.

2.0 (date unknown)

  1. A few bugs fixed:

  2. Better support of monochrome displays: video inverse instead of 3d buttons.

  3. WorkSpaceManager and Occupy Window are now resizable. Don’t forget to verify you have a powerful server before resizing the workspace manager with OpaqueResize set.

  4. X11R4 support with Imakefile.X11R4 (i didn’t try so tell me).

  5. The visibility of the workspace manager is now consistant with the visibility of the icon managers. This mean that by default the workspace manager is NOT visible at startup. Use the ShowWorkSpaceManager to make it visible at startup.

  6. Two new functions: f.showworkspacemgr and f.hideworkspacemgr have been added. They do what you imagine.

  7. And now, the cherry on the cake. The workspace manager has now 2 states, the button state (the usual one) and the map state (the new one). In the map state the buttons are replaced by windows displaying a synthetic view of the corresponding workspaces. All the non-iconified windows of the workspace are shown as small windows with the icon name written in it. It looks like the virtual screen of [t]vtwm, but, of course, much nicer.

  8. AutoRaise with RaiseDelay. Thanks to Johan Vromans jv@mh.nl who gave me this patch. I think Warren Jessop whj@cs.washington.edu wrote it for twm.

1.3 (1992–09–16)

  1. Many bugs fixed:

  2. Add the Occupy command in .ctwmrc, you can now specify at startup which window occupy which workspace. Example:

    Occupy {
                  "xload"  {"all"}
        Window    "xterm"  {"here" "there" "elsewhere"}
                  "xv"     {"images"}
        WorkSpace "images" {"xloadimage"}
    }
    

1.2 (date unknown)

  1. You can now directly edit workspace names in their buttons. only printable characters, delete and backspace keys are honored.

  2. Ctwm now handle shaped colored icons in XPM format. This added the variable XPMIconDirectory, and slightly modified the syntax of the Icons command. The XPM icon file names should be prefixed by the character ‘@’ to distinguished them from the ordinary bitmap files.

    Example:

    XPMIconDirectory  "/usr/lib/X11/X11/XPM"
    
    Icons {
        "Axe"    "@xedit.xpm"
        "xterm"  "@xterm.xpm"
        "xrn"    "@xrn.xpm"
        "HPterm" "@hpterm.xpm"
        "XAlarm" "@datebook.xpm"
        "Xman"   "@xman.xpm"
    }
    

    These above xpm pixmap are given.

  3. Many bugs fixed:

1.1 (1992–06–24 or 26)

  1. Correction of a few bugs

  2. Add the OpaqueResize flag: similar to OpaqueMove, but redraw the window you are resizing at each motion event. Extremely resource consuming, but beautiful with fast server/client/network.

  3. Now if you don’t specify any background/foreground/pixmap indication for the root window, ctwm leave it alone so you can have your own root background pixmap.

  4. You can now specify on the command line a list of workspaces in which a new client opens. The syntax is:

    whatever_client -xrm 'ctwm.workspace: name1 name2 ... namen'
    
    or
    
    whatever_client -xrm 'ctwm.workspace: all'
    

    where ‘name1’, ‘name2’, …, ‘namen’ are names of workspaces and ‘all’ refers to all workspaces. Example:

    xload -xrm 'ctwm.workspace: all'
    
  5. Add the OccupyAll command in .ctwmrc, you can now specify at startup a list of windows that occupy all the workspaces. Example:

    OccupyAll {
        "xload"
        "xconsole"
        "xbiff"
    }
    
  6. Add the f.gotoworkspace function. It goes the workspace specified by its name. Example:

    "F1"      =    : root           : f.gotoworkspace "cognac"
    

1.0 (after 1992–04–22)