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From: Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: getting the most out of TWM
Date: 13 Jul 2024 18:06:51 -0300
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Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> writes:

> Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/140172/getting-the-most-out-of-twm-x11s-default-window-manager/
> 
> Graham's TWM page[1] has been around for like two decades or so and
> still isn't even remotely as old as TWM itself....few people know it
> exists -- how many people even know X has a default window manager?
> -- and even fewer people know you can actually style it, too.

I've been using twm since 1999.  My very first Linux install (Caldera)
came up with KDE and XEmacs by default.  I had used uwm -- even fewer
frills that twm -- on Unix guest accounts for a decade before that.
So real soon, switched to Slackware, GNU Emacs and twm.  Never looked
back.

An annoyance I've encountered with twm is that in more recent
Linuxen, programs have specs for their own icons.  So, e.g., when you
iconify xterm, Seamonkey or Firefox, you get great, huge icons rather
than minimal ones just big enough to hold the related window's title.

I keep a column of icons stacked down the left side of my screen --
emacsen, xterms some of which hold running apps such as wicd-curses,
dmesg -w or tail -f, Seamonkey etc. and a non-iconified xclock. The
icons are all small and the column tidy.  Huge icons screw it up.

Tnx to Ivan Shmakov (comp.misc, 09 Sep 2017) I learned how to fix
that.  In .twmrc I have:

ForceIcons
 Icons {
   "UXTerm"     "vlines2"
   "XTerm"      "vlines2"
   "Firefox"    "vlines2"
   "SeaMonkey"  "vlines2"
   "Emacs"      "vlines2"
 }

where the left column is what is returned by xprop(1) for a given
window and my be camel case:

WM_CLASS(STRING) = "Navigator", "SeaMonkey"

With this fix in .twmrc, all icons are just big enough to hold the
window title.

The only other annoyance is that some programs won't run unless they
can find a system "tray".  I use wicd-curses (for which I have been
reproved somewhat snarkily) because NetworkManager(8)  is one of them
and wicd-curses(8) works fine in an xterm.

I see there is some stuff about "stand-alone tray" usable with twm but
I haven't yet pursued it.

BTW, I run XEarth for my root window.  Does anybody have/know the
location of the source code for XEarth?  I'd hate to give it up when
I'm eventually forced into 64 bits and I seem to have lost the source
if I ever had it.

> Links:
>
> [1]: https://www.cpcnw.co.uk/twm/twmrc.htm (link)
> [2]: https://www.cpcnw.co.uk/twm2/Grahams_TWM_page2.html (link)

Thanks for the pointers. Configuring twm is "easy" but the details
tend to be opaque.  Examples such and those are invaluable.

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada