Designing the Controls for my Window Manager
Preface / Disclaimer
Judging by the file’s timestamp I first took these notes on 2010-05-09. I have been using FVWM as my window manager back then and tried to figure out which actions should have which effect – or the other way round maybe: which effects do I need and which action should cause them, I can’t remember.
In any case, this is what I seem to have come up with and just because I still find it amazing how many different actions are configurable in FVWM where almost all other WMs I am aware of do not allow this fine-grained level of control, I thought I’d polish this list just a tiny bit and publish it. Maybe it helps someone, maybe I want to refer someone to it some day.
Also: this is not complete! These were just my initial thoughts when (re)designing the controls but they have not been updated with additional things I figured out during actual use of the WM. I’m also not using FVWM or any stacking WM but the tiling WM AwesomeWM so all this information has become obsolete for me.
Mouse Controls
| action | location | effect |
|---|---|---|
| click | background | menu mainmenu |
| click | title | raise |
| click | corner/border | raise |
| click | window content | raise |
| click+move | in window content | not raise |
| hold/move | title | move |
| hold/move | corner/border | resize |
| scroll | title | shade |
| scroll | corner/border | resize in steps (Shift/Meta/Control increase steps) |
| doubleclick | title | maximize |
| doubleclick | corner/border | maximize in direction |
| middleclick | title | grow (resize to fit free space) |
| middleclick | corner/border | grow in direction |
| rightclick | title | menu windowsops |
| rightclick | corner/border | menu windowsops |
| leftclick | windowbutton1 | close |
| rightclick | windowbutton1 | menu windowops |
| scroll | windowbutton1 | change layer |
Legend:
- windows have the following components: title frame border
- title bar geometry: windowbuttons title windowbuttons
- windowbuttons are numbered
- left side: 1 3 5 7 9
- right side: 0 8 6 4 2
Keyboard Controls
| Modifier | Key | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| S | ESC | menu windowsops |
| M | Space | menu windowsops |
| MC | M | menu mainmenu |
| MC | h or ← | go one page/workspace left |
| MC | j or ↓ | go one page/workspace down |
| MC | k or ↑ | go one page/workspace up |
| MC | l or → | go one page/workspace right |
Legend:
- S = Shift
- M = Meta / Alt
- C = Control
Keyboard & Mouse
| Modifier | Action | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| MC | leftclick | move |
| MC | rightclick | menu windowops |
| MC | middleclick | menu mainmenu |
References
http://web.archive.org/web/20180614115814/http://www.s-and-b.ru/syshlp/motif_guide/MotifStyleGuide/Window_Decorations.html for windowops menues and shortcuts