[TUHS] Siemens RTL window manager

[TUHS] Siemens RTL window manager

[Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS]

Every time I spend time manually tiling windows, I think about the
Siemens RTL Window Manager. Despite being approximately X11R4 years
old in terms of coming to Unix, binaries of this built from
X11R3-contrib were still floating around when I started exploring
things past the base environment we were provided; Like the Andrew
Window Manager and the port for X11, the source for this was lost for
a while but unlike wmc, someone found, patched and shared a copy of
the source a while back(+), and I dug out my copy again recently to
hopefully play with.

Lest the tarball ever become unavailable at the URL from the email,
I've pushed a copy to GitHub here:
https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm


+ https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1112/10398.html

-- 
Daria Phoebe Brashear
AuriStor, Inc
dariaphoebe.com

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[Briam Rodriguez via TUHS]

Took a bit to get it to crank over, and the mouse support is a bit janky 
(def. not made for a trackpad!) but happy to report it compiles on macos 
26.2 using xquartz.

If anyone's interested i can supply the patches.

-- Briam R.

On 2/9/26 11:05 AM, Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS wrote:
> Every time I spend time manually tiling windows, I think about the
> Siemens RTL Window Manager. Despite being approximately X11R4 years
> old in terms of coming to Unix, binaries of this built from
> X11R3-contrib were still floating around when I started exploring
> things past the base environment we were provided; Like the Andrew
> Window Manager and the port for X11, the source for this was lost for
> a while but unlike wmc, someone found, patched and shared a copy of
> the source a while back(+), and I dug out my copy again recently to
> hopefully play with.
>
> Lest the tarball ever become unavailable at the URL from the email,
> I've pushed a copy to GitHub here:
> https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm
>
>
> +https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1112/10398.html
>

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[Larry McVoy via TUHS]

Does anyone remeber ctwm an offshoot of twm?  I ran ctwm for years, finally
gave in when I switched to Xubuntu and used their manager.  Did so because
what I was doing was weird and all sorts of stuff didn't work, xubuntu
just works.

On Mon, Feb 09, 2026 at 09:20:04PM -0500, Briam Rodriguez via TUHS wrote:
> Took a bit to get it to crank over, and the mouse support is a bit janky
> (def. not made for a trackpad!) but happy to report it compiles on macos
> 26.2 using xquartz.
> 
> If anyone's interested i can supply the patches.
> 
> -- Briam R.
> 
> On 2/9/26 11:05 AM, Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS wrote:
> >Every time I spend time manually tiling windows, I think about the
> >Siemens RTL Window Manager. Despite being approximately X11R4 years
> >old in terms of coming to Unix, binaries of this built from
> >X11R3-contrib were still floating around when I started exploring
> >things past the base environment we were provided; Like the Andrew
> >Window Manager and the port for X11, the source for this was lost for
> >a while but unlike wmc, someone found, patched and shared a copy of
> >the source a while back(+), and I dug out my copy again recently to
> >hopefully play with.
> >
> >Lest the tarball ever become unavailable at the URL from the email,
> >I've pushed a copy to GitHub here:
> >https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm
> >
> >
> >+https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1112/10398.html
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[George Michaelson via TUHS]

I wound up in tvtwm. I decided I wanted the simplicity of twm and the
framed desktop adjacency of fvwm, and tvtwm was in principle more fluid but
you could make keybindings jump in the virtual region aligned to "desktops"
and keep twm simplicity so I stopped there.

I didn't like fvwm because it reminded me of the OSF/1 CDE and I had
disliked that so it was tainted by association of L&F but was actually
perfectly cromulent.

I liked what Colas? Naboo?? did at INRIA. I think it was LISP and called
Koala or something. Only ran it briefly.

-G

On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 9:51 AM Larry McVoy via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Does anyone remeber ctwm an offshoot of twm?  I ran ctwm for years, finally
> gave in when I switched to Xubuntu and used their manager.  Did so because
> what I was doing was weird and all sorts of stuff didn't work, xubuntu
> just works.
>
> On Mon, Feb 09, 2026 at 09:20:04PM -0500, Briam Rodriguez via TUHS wrote:
> > Took a bit to get it to crank over, and the mouse support is a bit janky
> > (def. not made for a trackpad!) but happy to report it compiles on macos
> > 26.2 using xquartz.
> >
> > If anyone's interested i can supply the patches.
> >
> > -- Briam R.
> >
> > On 2/9/26 11:05 AM, Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS wrote:
> > >Every time I spend time manually tiling windows, I think about the
> > >Siemens RTL Window Manager. Despite being approximately X11R4 years
> > >old in terms of coming to Unix, binaries of this built from
> > >X11R3-contrib were still floating around when I started exploring
> > >things past the base environment we were provided; Like the Andrew
> > >Window Manager and the port for X11, the source for this was lost for
> > >a while but unlike wmc, someone found, patched and shared a copy of
> > >the source a while back(+), and I dug out my copy again recently to
> > >hopefully play with.
> > >
> > >Lest the tarball ever become unavailable at the URL from the email,
> > >I've pushed a copy to GitHub here:
> > >https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm
> > >
> > >
> > >+https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1112/10398.html
> > >
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[Larry McVoy via TUHS]

I think I went there for a bit but somehow ctwm sucked me in.  Maybe it was
the virtual desktops?  That's a big deal for me, I have 6 right now.

On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 01:05:47PM +1000, George Michaelson wrote:
> I wound up in tvtwm. I decided I wanted the simplicity of twm and the
> framed desktop adjacency of fvwm, and tvtwm was in principle more fluid but
> you could make keybindings jump in the virtual region aligned to "desktops"
> and keep twm simplicity so I stopped there.
> 
> I didn't like fvwm because it reminded me of the OSF/1 CDE and I had
> disliked that so it was tainted by association of L&F but was actually
> perfectly cromulent.
> 
> I liked what Colas? Naboo?? did at INRIA. I think it was LISP and called
> Koala or something. Only ran it briefly.
> 
> -G
> 
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 9:51???AM Larry McVoy via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone remeber ctwm an offshoot of twm?  I ran ctwm for years, finally
> > gave in when I switched to Xubuntu and used their manager.  Did so because
> > what I was doing was weird and all sorts of stuff didn't work, xubuntu
> > just works.
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 09, 2026 at 09:20:04PM -0500, Briam Rodriguez via TUHS wrote:
> > > Took a bit to get it to crank over, and the mouse support is a bit janky
> > > (def. not made for a trackpad!) but happy to report it compiles on macos
> > > 26.2 using xquartz.
> > >
> > > If anyone's interested i can supply the patches.
> > >
> > > -- Briam R.
> > >
> > > On 2/9/26 11:05 AM, Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS wrote:
> > > >Every time I spend time manually tiling windows, I think about the
> > > >Siemens RTL Window Manager. Despite being approximately X11R4 years
> > > >old in terms of coming to Unix, binaries of this built from
> > > >X11R3-contrib were still floating around when I started exploring
> > > >things past the base environment we were provided; Like the Andrew
> > > >Window Manager and the port for X11, the source for this was lost for
> > > >a while but unlike wmc, someone found, patched and shared a copy of
> > > >the source a while back(+), and I dug out my copy again recently to
> > > >hopefully play with.
> > > >
> > > >Lest the tarball ever become unavailable at the URL from the email,
> > > >I've pushed a copy to GitHub here:
> > > >https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >+https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1112/10398.html
> > > >
> >
> > --
> > ---
> > Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing
> > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[Hauke Fath via TUHS]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 18:51:01 -0800, Larry McVoy via TUHS wrote:
> Does anyone remeber ctwm an offshoot of twm?  I ran ctwm for years, finally
> gave in when I switched to Xubuntu and used their manager.

ctwm has been NetBSD's default window manager for a while:
<https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/default_window_manager_switched_to>

Cheerio,
Hauke

-- 
Hauke Fath                        <hauke@Espresso.Rhein-Neckar.DE>
Linnéweg 7
64342 Seeheim-Jugenheim
Germany

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS]

Fork it and pull request? I planned to do this anyway (at this point
macOS is all I actually have physical hardware for anyway)

On Mon, Feb 9, 2026 at 9:20 PM Briam Rodriguez via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> Took a bit to get it to crank over, and the mouse support is a bit janky
> (def. not made for a trackpad!) but happy to report it compiles on macos
> 26.2 using xquartz.
>
> If anyone's interested i can supply the patches.
>
> -- Briam R.
>
> On 2/9/26 11:05 AM, Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS wrote:
> > Every time I spend time manually tiling windows, I think about the
> > Siemens RTL Window Manager. Despite being approximately X11R4 years
> > old in terms of coming to Unix, binaries of this built from
> > X11R3-contrib were still floating around when I started exploring
> > things past the base environment we were provided; Like the Andrew
> > Window Manager and the port for X11, the source for this was lost for
> > a while but unlike wmc, someone found, patched and shared a copy of
> > the source a while back(+), and I dug out my copy again recently to
> > hopefully play with.
> >
> > Lest the tarball ever become unavailable at the URL from the email,
> > I've pushed a copy to GitHub here:
> > https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm
> >
> >
> > +https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1112/10398.html
> >



-- 
Daria Phoebe Brashear
AuriStor, Inc
dariaphoebe.com

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS]

On Mon, Feb 9, 2026 at 10:12 PM George Michaelson via TUHS
<tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> I wound up in tvtwm. I decided I wanted the simplicity of twm and the
> framed desktop adjacency of fvwm, and tvtwm was in principle more fluid but
> you could make keybindings jump in the virtual region aligned to "desktops"
> and keep twm simplicity so I stopped there.
>
> I didn't like fvwm because it reminded me of the OSF/1 CDE and I had
> disliked that so it was tainted by association of L&F but was actually
> perfectly cromulent.

I started with wmc (the Andrew window manager fork), then mwm: had I
liked mwm, fvwm probably would have sufficed.
But my life took a twisted path of briefly twm, tvtwm, olwm, then
olvwm; I then carried private patches and a set of menus for a custom
version of olvwm for YEARS, across SunOS 4, Solaris, and Linux.


-- 
Daria Phoebe Brashear
AuriStor, Inc
dariaphoebe.com

[TUHS] Re: Siemens RTL window manager

[Briam Rodriguez via TUHS]

Hi Daria,

I got rtl-wm building and running on macOS (tested on Apple Silicon with 
MacPorts). Opened a PR with the changes:

https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm/pull/1

The changes are minimal:
- Two small source fixes (NULL → '\0' for char assignments - these were 
causing errors on modern clang)
- A Makefile.macos for building with MacPorts X11
- Updated README with macOS instructions

No changes to the original Imakefile or build system. Requires liboldX 
which isn't in MacPorts anymore, but builds fine from source.

Let me know if you'd like any changes to the PR.

-- Briam R.

On 2/10/26 12:08 PM, Daria Phoebe Brashear wrote:
> Fork it and pull request? I planned to do this anyway (at this point
> macOS is all I actually have physical hardware for anyway)
>
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2026 at 9:20 PM Briam Rodriguez via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>> Took a bit to get it to crank over, and the mouse support is a bit janky
>> (def. not made for a trackpad!) but happy to report it compiles on macos
>> 26.2 using xquartz.
>>
>> If anyone's interested i can supply the patches.
>>
>> -- Briam R.
>>
>> On 2/9/26 11:05 AM, Daria Phoebe Brashear via TUHS wrote:
>>> Every time I spend time manually tiling windows, I think about the
>>> Siemens RTL Window Manager. Despite being approximately X11R4 years
>>> old in terms of coming to Unix, binaries of this built from
>>> X11R3-contrib were still floating around when I started exploring
>>> things past the base environment we were provided; Like the Andrew
>>> Window Manager and the port for X11, the source for this was lost for
>>> a while but unlike wmc, someone found, patched and shared a copy of
>>> the source a while back(+), and I dug out my copy again recently to
>>> hopefully play with.
>>>
>>> Lest the tarball ever become unavailable at the URL from the email,
>>> I've pushed a copy to GitHub here:
>>> https://github.com/dariaphoebe/rtl-wm
>>>
>>>
>>> +https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1112/10398.html
>>>
>
>