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<title>Yet Another Window Manager Issue 21</title>
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<H4>
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H2>Yet Another Window Manager</H2>
<H4>By Larry Ayers,
<a href="mailto:layers@marktwain.net">layers@marktwain.net</a></H4>
</center>
<P><HR><P>
<center><h3>Introduction</h3></center>
<p>Marco Macek, a Slovenian computer-science student, has been developing a
quite powerful and configurable editor called FTE for the past couple of
years. FTE is a multi-platform folding editor, available for Linux, OS/2, DOS, and
Windows; I wrote a short review of an earlier beta in issue 7 of LG. Lately
Marco has turned his hand to developing a new window-manager. Unlike some
Linux projects, which are released to the FTP sites in the early stages of
development, the Ice window-manager seems to have been under development as a
non-public project throughout the early beta versions. It just showed up one
day in the Sunsite incoming directory in a remarkably complete and usable
form.
<h3><center>Differences and Features</center></h3>
<p>Lately window-managers seem to be proliferating, with offshoots and variants
of fvwm predominating. Icewm is in large part inspired by the OS/2 Workplace
Shell interface. Though OS/2 has been never gained the market acceptance its
adherents have hoped for, the Workplace Shell is a remarkably advanced
object-oriented GUI, and Macek has attempted to adapt some of its
"look-and-feel" to the Linux environment. Another influence is the common
Windows 95 interface, which does have some useful features worth emulating.
<p>Win95's bottom-of-the-screen icon bar , with its cascading menus and dynamic
window indicators, has been nicely reproduced in Icewm. The equivalent of
the "Start" menu (which functions much like Win95's) has a "Linux" label with
a penguin icon.<br>
<p>
<img alt="icewm bottom-bar" src="./gx/ayers/icebar.gif">
<p>The general appearance of the windows (borders, titlebars, et al) is very
reminiscent of OS/2. Various types of "X" kill buttons are available, but the
general appearance of the window-borders seems to be hard-coded; that is, not
configurable. Here's a screenshot of a typical window:<br>
<p>
<img alt="Icewm window" src="./gx/ayers/icewindow.gif">
<hr>
<p>I liked the cascading mouse button menus, with a different menu shown for
each mouse button. The Enlightenment window-manager has a similar feature.
These menus are hierarchical and behave like their OS/2 equivalents.<br>
<p>
<img alt="ice menu" src="./gx/ayers/icemenu.gif">
<hr>
<p>This window-manager really doesn't have such compellingly new features that
many long-time Fvwm2 or AfterStep users would want to adopt it, but for new Linux
users more familiar with Win95 or OS/2, the similarities might serve to ease
the transition. It compiled easily on my 2.0.30 system, and it seemed to be
stable and dependable.
<p>The source archive is available from
<a href="http://ixtas.fri.uni-lj.si/~markom/icewm/">the icewm home-page</a>, as well
as the sunsite FTP site. Icewm's home page also has Redhat RPM's of the source.
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1997, Larry Ayers<BR>
Published in Issue 21 of the Linux Gazette, September 1997</H5></center>
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