Window Maker is a free and open-source window manager for the X Window System, allowing graphical applications to be run on Unix-like operating-systems. It is designed to emulate NeXTSTEP's GUI as an OpenStep-compatible environment.[2] Window Maker is part of the GNU Project.[3][4]
Window Maker has been characterized as reproducing "the elegant look and feel of the NeXTSTEP GUI" and is noted as "easy to configure and easy to use."[5] A graphical tool called Wprefs is included and can be used to configure most aspects of the UI. The interface tends towards a minimalist, high performance environment directly supporting XPM, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF and PPM icons with an alpha-channel and a right-click, sliding-scrolling application menu system which can throw off pinnable menus, along with window-icon miniaturization and other animations on multiple desktops. Menus and preferences can be changed without restarting. As with most window managers it supports themes and many are available. Owing to its NeXT inspiration, Window Maker has a dock like macOS, but Window Maker's look and feel hews mostly to that of its NeXT forebear.
Window Maker has window hints which allow seamless integration with the GNUstep, GNOME, KDE, Motif and OpenLook environments. Significantly it has almost complete ICCCM compliance and internationalization support for at least 11 locales. Window Maker uses the lightweight WINGs widget set which was built specifically for Window Maker as a way to skirt what its developers said would have been the "overkill" (or bloat) of using GNUstep.[6] WINGs is common to other applications including a login display manager called WINGs Display Manager (WDM) and many dockapps. Window Maker dock and clip applets are compatible with those from AfterStep's wharf.
Window Maker was written from scratch primarily by Brazilian programmer Alfredo Kojima as a window manager for the GNUstep desktop environment and originally meant as an improved take on the AfterStep window manager's design concept. The first release was in 1997.[7] For a time it was included as a standard window manager in several Linux distributions and is also available in the FreeBSD and OpenBSD ports collection.[8] Since the goal of the project has been to closely emulate the design of the defunct NeXTstep and OpenStep GUIs, further development has been light. In late 2007 the widely available, stable release version was at 0.92 from July 2005 with subsequent maintenance updates having been made to some distribution packages and ports.[9][10]
In late June 2008 a post on the project's website said active development would resume, noting, "...we are working very hard to revitalize Window Maker's presence on X Window (and perhaps beyond) desktops... We expect to once again provide the de-facto minimalist yet extremely functional window manager to the world."[11] On 29 January 2012, Window Maker 0.95.1 was released, making it the first official release in almost seven years. This was followed by a number of releases; As of October 2023[update] the latest release was 0.96,0, released on 5 August 2023.[12]
The program's name, a pun on the term widowmaker, was originally WindowMaker (camel cased and without the space) but a naming conflict arose with an older product called Windowmaker from Windowmaker Software Ltd, a UK company producing software for companies that manufacture windows and doors. A 1998 agreement between the developers of Window Maker and Windowmaker Software specified that Window Maker (in the X sense) should never be used as a single word.
Window Maker can be configured by double-clicking the screwdriver icon on the dock. An icon depicting a computer monitor is used to launch a command-window and a paperclip icon is used to cycle between workspaces. Any icon in Window Maker, including application icons, can be easily changed.
Icons representing running applications appear at the bottom of the screen (the user can extend application windows to cover these). By default, the dock appears at upper right. Icons can be dragged onto the dock to make them permanent. The edge of an icon can be right-clicked to adjust its settings. A separate, dockable application called wmdrawer features a slide-out drawer which can hold application and file launching icons.
While any X application can be docked in Window Maker, the archetypical WM dockable applications are called dockapps. These tend to be clocks and system monitoring applications. There are many clock implementations, including wmcalclock, wmtime, wmclock (a NeXTStep-like calendar clock clone) and wmclockmon. Monitoring applets include wmload, wmavgload, wmmon, wmnet and wmnd. Many other dockapps are available, typically ones intended to interact with other "full fledged" applications.
FSViewer is a separate, configurable Miller Columns file browser developed for Window Maker in 1998 by George Clernon as a visual and functional analogy to NeXTstep's Workspace Manager. In 2002, it was adapted to later versions of the WINGs libraries and Window Maker by Guido Scholz.[13]
aterm is an rxvt based terminal emulator developed for Afterstep mainly for visual appeal, featuring a NeXTstep style scrollbar (which matches Window Maker's look and feel) along with pseudo-transparency.
Many Linux distributions define their own applications menu for Window Maker. This cannot usually be edited using the configuration tool (which will instead offer to replace it with a generic default menu which can be edited).
Window Maker is a window manager (WM) for the X Window System. It is designed to emulate the NeXT user interface as an OpenStep-compatible environment, and is characterized by low memory demands and high flexibility. As one of the lighter WMs, it is well suited for machines with modest performance specifications.
All of the settings for Window Maker can be found in the GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT directory, under Default and Library. They are simple text files which can be edited by hand, or you can use the Preferences Utility (WPrefs) GUI application to change the settings; in the default installation WPrefs can be started by double-clicking the icon in the top right corner of the workspace.
Styles are simple text property list files that change the appearance of Window Maker. They have the same layout as the Defaults/WindowMaker file. Whatever settings are in the style file will be applied to the Defaults/WindowMaker file. Here is an example style that gives Window Maker a blue and gray Arch Linux like look:
Window Maker (git HEAD) has rudimentary HiDPI support (WMScaleX/WMScaleY) that scales Window elements according to the metrics of the default font. Open Defaults/WMGLOBAL and multiply the DefaultFontSize value by your current scale factor, i.e. DPI divided by 96.
To assign a keyboard shortcut to a window manager action, start the WPrefs application and navigate to the Keyboard Shortcut Preferences tab. Choose an action, click the Capture button and hit the desired keyboard combination. Then click Save.
You can also assign keyboard shortcuts to menu entries. For instance, if one wishes to use GNOME Screensaver to lock the screen, one could create a Lock Screen menu entry which runs the command gnome-screensaver-command --lock. To then assign a keyboard shortcut to this menu entry, start the WPrefs application and navigate to the Applications Menu Definition tab. In the root menu that appears on screen, click on the Lock Screen entry. In the WPrefs window, click the Capture button, hit the desired keyboard combination and then click Save.
The user interface of macOS evolved from the style of user interface that Window Maker uses. There is a "dock" that contains applications icons that are "pinned" to the dock by the user. Also, the dock can hold special small applications called "dockapps", which run only inside the dock. By default, all applications run in Window Maker will have an application icon, which you can use to run a new instance of the application, hide and unhide all windows of the application, or kill the application. The application icon does not represent a window. Instead, if you minimize a window, a small icon representing the window will appear on the desktop.
After starting any application, (for example, from the command line) the application icon will appear on the desktop. You can pin it to the dock by clicking and dragging the icon into the dock area. To remove the application icon from the dock, click and drag the icon away from the dock area. You change settings, such as making an application automatically start when Window Maker starts, by right clicking on the application icon in the dock.
The "clip" is a button that has the image of a paperclip on it. You can change the name of the current workspace by right clicking on the clip. You can change workspaces by clicking the arrows that are on the clip.
The clip also has similar functionality to the dock. Application icons that are added to the dock are visible on all workspaces, while application icons that are attached to the clip are only seen on the workspace where they are attached. This allows you to conveniently associate specific application icons with specific workspaces.
Since version 0.8 of stalonetray, basic dockapp support for Window Maker can be enabled using the --dockapp-mode wmaker command line option. The following options should also be used: --slot-size 32 --geometry 2x2 --parent-bg --scrollbars none.
PeksystrayAUR is a system tray designed for the light window managers that support docking. Peksystray provides a window where icons will automatically add up, according to the requests from the applications. Both the size of the window and the size of the icons can be selected by the user. If the window is full, it can automatically display another window in order to display more icons.
For some applications, you may not want Window Maker to display an application icon or appicon. To disable the appicon for an application, right click on the application's titlebar and choose Attributes... and from the drop down menu choose Application Specific. Tick the No application icon option and then hit Apply and Save.
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