FVWM

The Cat-like (?) Virtual Window Manager is a manager of virtual windows for the system X Windows. At the beginning a derivative of Twm, FVWM evolved/moved in an environment for system highly configurable Unix.

History

In July 1993, during its work on the analysis of the acoustic signatures for the American department of defense, Rob Nation started with hacker Twm in order to find why it used as many resources memories and to add the support for a manager of virtual windows.

Already well-known for its popular emulator of terminal Rxvt, Rob worked to reduce consumption memory of its new manager of windows. Deciding to test the reception of FVWM, on June 1st 1993, Nation made it public with a release of rxvt, it was a success, FVWM proposing a valid alternative to twm.

Several developers based their own projects on FVWM in order to profit from its development. Several managers of popular windows used today are related to FVWM: AfterStep, XFce, Enlightenment (see section Derived ).

In 1994 Rob Nation stopped developing FVWM, and made of Chuck Hines the maintenor. The last release of Rob Nation is fvwm-1.24r. The following versions of FVWM used a format of different file of configuration and had an architecture significantly different. Thus much of Linux distributions proposed fvwm-1.24r and the last versions of FVWM as different programs. In 2005, fvwm-1.24r always compiles and turns on the modern Linux systems. Certain users continue to use the old version of FVWM.

Significance of initials FVWM and the logo

The significance of the letters VWM is obviously related to its history, inherited Twm and other managers of virtual windows.

At the beginning, FVWM was the Feeble Virtual Window Manager , but at one time, the significance of the F was lost. When Google published the old files of the newsgroup S acquired by the repurchase of DejaNews, the original significance was Re-discovery, however the developers of FVWM decided to keep the " F mystérieux" , and until today this decision was followed (as its FAQ testifies some).

The term Feline was largely presented on the official site maintained by the team of Chuck Hines (which devotes a section to it to the passion of the Chat S) and the topic of the Félin S.A. inspired its current logo (whose letters form a cat) resulting from a contest where this topic was very present in the various proposals. It seems that it is this term (of recent invention) which is now most popular (also mentioned in the FAQ).

Functionalities

Many the functionalities of FVWM can be decontaminated with compilation or the execution, or in a dynamic way for windows specific or charged and discharged as modules. There are no rigid functionalities, the developers of FVWM do not claim to know how your office should function or with what it should resemble, FVWM can be configured to function as you wish it and to resemble so that you want.

List nonexhaustive:

complete Support of Hints EWMH, ICCM2 and GNOME.

These standards make it possible FVWM to interact with the environments of office like GNOME and KDE.

Support of complete internationalization, including the characters multi-bytes and the bidirectional text.

FVWM was translated into many languages by using Gettext, and supports the Asian characters and the bidirectional languages, such as for example the Hebrew . FVWM can be used to make a very accessible environment, for example operations without mouse.

Support of Xft2.

Antialiasing.

the title bars can be decontaminated or returned on any edge of the window.
Icônification animated of the windows in all the directions, including in diagonal.
the rolling up of the windows enables you to hide a window while you work with something of other.
complete Support of png Support, including the Alpha blending.

You can create images png to use them in your title bars and menus, alpha blending enables you to create some very attractive effects.

the library Perl to extend the possibilities of FVWM by using Perl, scripts and by pretreating the files of configuration by using m4, FvwmPerl or CP.
FVWM can be easily wide by scripts and the preprocessing enables you to make configurations FVWM of manner dynamic.
It is possible to build dialog boxes, menus and applications with FvwmForm, FvwmGtk and FvwmScript.
FvwmButtons Module.

FvwmButtons is a powerful module making it possible to create panels on your desk, it can contain other applications, change dynamically, and has many of other functionalities.

Support of the movements of mouse.

the movements of mouse make it possible to draw forms with the mouse and to bind them with orders.

To create dynamic menus, much of utilities using this functionality is included in FVWM.

FVWM comprises utilities to sail in your filesystem, to recover titles on Internet and much more, starting from the menus.

Support of the management of session.

Use a manager of session to record the states of your office, save your session exactly as you left and recreate when you are of return.

Support of the extension Xinerama.

Use FVWM with two or more monitors, FVWM will allow you work on these monitors in a transparent and effective way.

Extensible dynamically by using modules.

You can use only the functionalities which you need, to charge and discharge from the modules according to your needs.

Quotations

" FVWM is the good way of doing. It is beautiful, walk well, has all the important functionalities and is small to start. I appreciate what twm proposes, but twm is rather ugly and has some problems. FVWM is more beautiful, does all and is very configurable."

Linus Torvalds, Coordinator of project and original developer of the core Linux, on December 16th, 1993 in comp.os.coherent Usenet post.

" Question: Which is your preferred manager of window? Alan: Are you trying to begin a combat with somebody? I do not know. Most of the time, I use FVWM. the manager of windows who is I think more ordered, and that I do not use, is window maker."

Alan Cox, Programmer of the Linux core, 2nd Linux-Tag conference (Nov. 28, 1999).

" I was a confirmed fan of FVWM even since I started to use his layout; that improved my effectiveness in a fantastic way. Any other manager of Linux windows has bad ideas on the x-ray one -- each option of KDE and GNOME is broken in a certain rather important way! "

Donald Knuth, 31 Dec. 2003 posting on the mailing list fvwm.

" Did name FVWM want to say something, but I forgot what (Feeble, fameuw, foobar? That does not have really importance, it is in any event a society based on an acronym.) "

Rob Nation, in an old page of handbook. See also: fvwm FAQ.

Derived

See too

FVWM-Hook: Environment of office based on FVWM

External bonds

official Site FVWM
Forums Fvwm
Captures of screen FVWM
Advertisement of the first version by Rob Nation
Topics for FVWM with screen printings

Random links: