From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu ([130.207.3.207]) by hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <2701>; Wed, 6 Oct 1993 10:14:02 -0400 Received: from penfold.cc.gatech.edu by burdell.cc.gatech.edu with SMTP id AA21394 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Wed, 6 Oct 1993 10:13:50 -0400 Received: by penfold.cc.gatech.edu id AA04629 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for sam-fans@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu); Wed, 6 Oct 1993 10:13:48 -0400 From: Arnold Robbins Message-Id: <199310061413.AA04629@penfold.cc.gatech.edu> Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 10:13:47 -0400 X-Ultrix: Just Say NO! X-Important-Saying: Premature Optimization Is The Root Of All Evil. X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: sam-fans@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu Subject: simple acting window managers John Mackin (now no longer on the net, I believe) put together a window manager that looks very ``blit'' like. He did this using gwm (the generic window manager) which allows you to customize the window manager's behaviour by writing scripts in WOOL (Windows Object Oriented Lisp). (E.g., gwm comes with both twm and mwm emulations, which I haven't tried.) His code relies on gwm 1.7i, which is somewhat behind the current version of gwm (1.7o, I believe). He also included a blit.bdf file for a font that looks an awful lot like the original font in the rom of the DMD 5620. (Whether the blit font is a bug or a feature is a matter of opinion -- personally, I much prefer the Plan 9 fonts Matty's distributing.) I have been using his code for ~ a month or so and it's nice and simple, and although not exactly blindingly fast, it's not intorlerably slow either. ANYWAY, ``can you get this?'' The answer is yes. As of today, it could still be ftp'ed from the root directory of ftp.civil.su.oz.au, in the file gwm-dist.tar. If it ever disappears from there, I'll make it available. This file is not compressed, since its major contents are the compressed gwm distribution. Basically, get it, untar gwm, apply John's patch, and then build. Follow the rest of his instructions to install the stuff. You will have to manually patch John's gwm code to a) use the pelm.latin1.9 fonts in the menus instead of the blit font, and b) use 9term as the default terminal emulator (John used xterm). This is not hard, and if pressed, I will supply a patch to the mailing list. You will also have to supply an `rxterm' program that spawns xterms on remote systems. This is also not hard to do. You're better off using it with R5 than R4 - under R4 I've had weird behaviour dealing with colormaps and stuff. (I'm not an X jock, so I can't be more specific. When it comes to X, I type 'make' and pray that it works. :-) 9wm exists, but it is apparently in rather ``alpha'' shape at the moment. (I was told that it was crashing daily.) I don't have a copy of it, and don't know what the scoop is on its progress. Until it happens, John's blit+gwm is probably a good bet for most folks. In between it, 9term, and sam, I feel like I *finally* have a clean simple windowing environment. Enjoy, Arnold Robbins --- Continuing Education, College of Computing Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 Phone: +1 404 894 9214 (has voice mail) E-mail: arnold.robbins@cc.gatech.edu FAX: +1 404 853 9378 "He's not dead, he's metaphysically challenged." - Mystery Science Theatre 3000 P.S. If someone would just port libg to MGR, we'd all be in even better shape.