wmii/cmd/wm/wmiiwm.1

.de FN
\fI\|\\$1\|\fP\\$2
..
.TH wmii 1
.SH NAME
wmii \- window manager improved 2 for X11

.SH DESCRIPTION
.B wmii
is a dynamic window manager for the X Window System.
It provides a synthesis of conventional, tiled and tabbed window
management based on dynamic layouts.
Several roots of these window management capabilities have been
introduced by the Ion and LarsWM window managers.
Apart from this, it implements a socket-based fileserver,
which is accessed to configure and interoperate with wmii. The idea
behind this file-based approach is derived from the plan9
operating system and can be found in the Acme programming environment.
.B wmii
consists of the core window manager itself and several utilities, such
as
.BR wmibar (1),
.BR wmifs (1),
.BR wmimenu (1),
.BR wmikeys (1),
.BR wmiplumb (1),
.BR wmir (1)
and
.BR wmiwarp (1).

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B wmii
.RB [ \-s
.IR socketfile ]
.br
.B wmii
.RB \-v

.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.BI \-s " socketfile"
lets you override the default socketfile which
.B wmii
should use for connecting fileserver clients.
.TP
.B \-v
prints version information to stderr, then exits.

.SH FILES
.TP
.FN /tmp/.ixp-$USER/wmii\-$WMII_IDENT
this file is the default socket file used by
.B wmii.
.TP
.FN $HOME/.wmii/rc [start|stop]
this file is executed when
.B wmii
starts up or shuts down. If it is not present,
.B wmii
executes
.FN $WMII_CONFDIR/rc [start|stop]
as fallback.
The rc script is used to customize and setup
.B wmii
beside its components to match the users needs.
It can be a simple shell script, a native binary or whatever executable.
The only condition is, that it understands the command line arguments
.IR start
, which is provided while startup and
.IR stop
, which is provided on shutdown.
For details about the shipped default rc configuration system, see
.BR wmii.rc (5).

.SH STRUCTURE
The structure of
.B wmii
consists of following objects which are described in more detail.
.TP
.B Display
The display is a running X server which consists of at least one
.B Screen (Monitor),
.B Keyboard,
and the
.B Mouse.
Applications with X11 support can connect to such X server display in
order to be used.
.TP
.B Screen (Monitor)
A screen is the physical device which displays a part or the whole
display driven by the X server. Each screen consists of a root window
which matches the physical conditions the X server is configured to
drive the graphics adaptor and the connected screen, such as color
depth and resolution.
.TP
.B (Root) Window
A window is a rectangular area which is drawn by the X server. A root
window is the complete drawable area of a screen. Root windows are
top-level windows which are always at the most-background position. If
you have set a wallpaper, the root window displays the wallpaper. 
All other windows are children of the root window. Thus, windows of X
clients, frames surrounding them and bars are all windows.
.TP
.B Client
A client is the window provided by X applications (clients) without the
surrounding frame. There're X clients supported, such as xmms, which
request not to be surrounded by a frame, those are called borderless.
.TP
.B Frame
A frame is a parent window of a client or of nested frames in a layout.
Mostly a frame consists of a border and a titlebar. The titlebar
provides tabs, if the frame contains nested frames, otherwise it shows the title
of the surrounded client.
.TP
.B Layout
A layout defines how to arrange nested frames of a frame. See
CUSTOMIZATION section for further details about how such definitions look
like.
.TP
.B Page
A page is a container of the size of the root window which contains
nested frames. It can be compared to workspaces in other window
managers, but with the exception, that a page behaves very similiar to a
frame, except that it reuses the root window as frame window.
.TP
.B Action
An action is an internal interface command or an external process call
in order to reach a specific window management result, ie resizing a
frame or launching a terminal.

.SH CUSTOMIZATION
.B wmii
is customized through the rc script, which manipulates the namespace its
fileserver provides to other processes. This namespace can be accessed
using the
.BR wmir (1)
utility. The default rc script uses this utility to setup wmii and its
components.
.P
A namespace is a filesystem structure consisting of files
and directories, which is specified by its underlying fileserver
process, like 
.B wmii.
Such
namespaces can be bound (mounted) to userdefined namespaces using the
.BR wmifs (1)
utility. In the default rc script the namespace provided by wmii, is
bound to
.FN /wmii
.P
There are four actions provided by the
.BR wmir (1)
utility to manipulate your namespace:
.BR create ,
.BR remove ,
.BR write ,
and
.BR read .
.P

.SH AUTHOR
Copyright \(co 2003 - 2005 by Anselm R. Garbe <garbeam (at) gmail (dot) com>
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR wmibar (1),
.BR wmifs (1),
.BR wmimenu (1),
.BR wmikeys (1),
.BR wmiplumb (1),
.BR wmir (1),
.BR wmiwarp (1),
.BR wmii.rc (5).