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From: Bill Dubuque <wgd@martigny.ai.mit.edu>
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Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 04:25:16 -0500
To: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org, dmoore@ucsd.edu
Subject: ICCCM in html; GWM: Lisp-based Window Manager [was: 20.1-b6: pasting text]

: From: David Moore <dmoore@ucsd.edu>
: Date: 13 Mar 1997 14:07:21 -0800
: 
: Walking to campus, I started to think that this schizophrenic behaviour
: might actually be correct according to the X ICCCM.  Ie, you should not
: friviously put things in the clipboard.  When you sweep things with
: mouse1, they should generally only go in a selection.  You should have
: to do something more explicit to stuff them into the clipboard.
: 
: I'll check my X manuals later, although maybe there's someone on the
: list who knows how these things are supposed to work?  (pretty please :)

The ICCCM is online in html, see http://tronche.lri.fr:8000/gui/x/icccm/

While browsing Tronche's home page I also noticed GWM, a Generic X11
Window Manager with a lisp-like extension language!

This looks like a pretty cool WM.  Does anyone have any experience with
this WM?  In particular, does it work well with (X)Emacs?

In the hypermail archives for gwm-talk there are discussions about 
replacing the GWM lisp interpreter (WOOL) with Guile, or various
schemes. This sounds like a promising direction. For more see the
URL below. I've appended an extract.

-Bill Dubuque

http://www.inria.fr/koala/gwm/

GWM: THE X11 GENERIC WINDOW MANAGER WWW PAGE

This is the WWW home page for all informations about the GWM X11 window
manager. A very powerful freeware tool for power users.
    o [IMAGE(new.gif)] [[What is new on these Web pages?]] ~(26-Nov-96)~
    o [[What is GWM?]]
    o [[What is new in this version?]]
    o [[What are the patches to this version?"]] (last one: none). No
      recompilation needed, patches apply only to data files.
    o [[Where is GWM?]] Current version: *1.8c*, December 08 1995,
      distributions, updates, mailing list, discussions...
    o [IMAGE(warning.gif)] [[A warning]] GWM by default sends me a message on
      startup

For all inquiries, contact: [[gwm@sophia.inria.fr]]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 do it 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). In
fact this is not even true anymore. The new -taso flag on alpha seems to allow
compiling gwm in 32 bit mode on these platforms.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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_]]:
    o recursive bars. now GWM decorations are quite flexible. the mwm look is
      the true one now. ([[show me!]])
    o shaped elements anywhere. weird shapes are now possible. Look at this
      [[netscape icon]] for instance.
    o 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...)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CURRENT PATCHES

I will only release new version when the C code itself will change, imposing a
recompilation. All modifications to wool (lisp) files will be made by patches
that can be applied directly into the gwm library directory already installed
without recompiling. Patches can be found in the distributions FTP sites, in
the subdir [[patches]] Current patches there to 1.8c are:



      None available
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHERE IS GWM?

GWM full distrib (gwm-1.8c.tar.gz) 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]]. All is
accessible via WWW on the URL [[http://www.inria.fr/koala/gwm]]

Pre-compiled executables are also stored for some architectures (linux, sun,
dec, sgi, aix) on [[koala.inria.fr]], see gwm_exec* files.

A postscript version of the [[manual]] (~120 pages) is also available there,
but the full postscript documentation, with its LaTeX source is included in
the distribution. There is also a [[1990 paper]] (10 pages) describing gwm at
the 1990 X conference

MAILING LIST

Discussions on GWM happen on the GWM mailing list,
*gwm-talk@sophia.inria.fr*. You can see [[more information]] about it. You can
subscribe/unsubscribe by mailing to *majordomo@sophia.inria.fr* (NOT
gwm-talk!) a mail with in the body (not in the subject, which is ignored):
    o *subscribe gwm-talk*
      to subscribe to the list
    o *unsubscribe gwm-talk*
      to be removed from the list
    o *help*
      for the list of available commands, such as subscribing/removing another
      email adress than the one you are mailing from, listing the current
      subscribers...

The mailing list archive can be browsed by [[hypermail]], see
[[http://www.inria.fr/koala/gwm/gwm-talk-hypermail]], or can be retrieved by
FTP at [[ftp://koala.inria.fr/pub/gwm/gwm-talk-archive/]], in the files
year-month.gz in the form the archive of past mails, stored by months

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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[IMAGE(WARNING.GIF)] A WARNING

By default, when GWM starts it sends me an UDP packet transparently for me to
have a rough idea of gwm use in the world. By default the only value inside
the packet is the hostname of the machine, and I will keep these data private,
but you can of course supress this feature if you want. Just (re)compile with
the compilation flag *-DNO_GWM_LOG*, or for 1.8a or later you can also set the
shell environments *NO_GWM_LOG* or *NO_KOALA_SPY* to disable this feature
without recompilation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[IMAGE(NEW.GIF)] WHAT IS NEW ON THE GWM WWW PAGES?

History of the modifications to these WWW pages, listed most recent first.
    o ~26-Nov-96 ~gwm-talk mailing list handled by majordomo
    o ~08-Dec-95 ~*1.8c* released
    o ~22-Sep-95 ~*1.8b* released, patches to 1.8a removed
    o ~25-Jul-95 ~the [[patches]] section listing the patches to the current
      version
      A [[screenshot]] of the new mwm-win deco (patch 005)
    o ~18-Jul-95 ~the [[hypermail archiving]] of the gwm-talk list
    o ~30-Jun-95 ~creation of these web pages for GWM, with release of *1.8a*
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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