CTWM: Claude’s Tab Window Manager for the X Window System

NOTE: This is a variant of the original [CTWM][CTWM].

This variant is maintained as a fork of the original.

This CTWM uses BSD Make for building, and it includes a few minor bug fixes and other enhancements (such as using scalable fonts for the default built-in fontSets). See the Git history. Further fixes or enhancements are welcome.

This fork is maintained in [robohack’s GitHub][GHRC] by Greg A. Woods.

Motto: Write Portable C without complicating the build!

See, e.g.: https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/03/30/

Intro

Ctwm is an extension to twm, and was originally enhanced by Claude Lecommandeur. It supports multiple virtual screens, and a lot of other goodies.

You can use and manage up to 32 virtual screens called workspaces. You swap from one workspace to another by clicking on a button in an optionnal panel of buttons (the workspace manager) or by invoking a function either by keystroke or from a context menu.

You can customize each workspace by choosing different colors, names and pixmaps for the buttons and background root windows.

Major features include:

• Optional 3D window titles and border (ala Motif).

• Shaped, colored icons.

• Multiple icons for clients based on the icon name.

• Windows can belong to several workspaces.

• A map of your workspaces to move quickly windows between different workspaces.

• Animations: icons, root backgrounds and buttons can be animated.

• Pinnable and sticky menus.

• etc…​

The sources files were once the twm ones only workmgr.[ch] added (written from scratch by Claude Lecommandeur) and minor modifications to some twm files. Since then much more extensive changes and reorganization have been done, so the codebase is now significantly different from plain twm.

If you find bugs in ctwm, or just want to tell us how much you like it, please send a report to the mailing list.

There is a manual page, which always needs more work (any volunteers?). Many useful information bits are only in the CHANGES.md file, so please read it.

Configuration

ctwm is built using a very simple BSD Makefile.

In the common case, the included Makefile will do the necessary invocations, and you won’t need to worry about it; just run a normal make; make install invocation.

Building

In the simple case, the defaults should work. Most modern or semi-modern systems should fall into this, though it may depend on how your system provides X11, both as the user environment, as well as for development.

$ make

You can put the build objects in another directory easily enough:

$ mkdir build; MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd -P)/build make obj
$ mkdir build; MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd -P)/build make

Required Libraries

ctwm requires various X11 libraries to be present. That list will generally include libXmu, libXext, libXt, libSM, and libICE, as well as of course libX11, libxcb, libXau, and libXdmcp.

Depending on your host environment, you may require extra libraries, such as libXpm, libjpeg, libXrandr, and lXrender. These can very easily be installed with [pkgsrc][pkgsrc] (though libXpm, libXrandr, and libXrender should normally come installed with the rest of your X11 libraries).

You can tell make where any extra libraries (and their header files) are installed by setting EXTLIBS on the command line, e.g. as in:

$ mkdir build; MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd -P)/build make EXTLIBS=/usr/pkg

Installation

Installation as root is easy:

# make install

You can set the installation directory for make install by setting PREFIX on the command line (and if your mk-files support it, DESTDIR can be set for staging as well, see Packaging below).

PREFIX defaults to X11ROOTDIR, which should be defined automatically if your system has <bsd.x11.mk>. On the other hand X11ROOTDIR defaults to PREFIX if there is no system <bsd.x11.mk>, so one of X11ROOTDIR or PREFIX must be set in that case.

PREFIX and/or X11ROOTDIR must be set during the build phases as well.

Packaging

BSD Makes generally support DESTDIR installs — to create a binary distribution archive just do the following:

$ mkdir build; MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd -P)/build make obj
$ MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd -P)/build make
$ mkdir dist; MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=$(pwd -P)/build make DESTDIR=$(pwd -P)/dist install

Notes for Specific Systems

• NetBSD:

  • You can use "make obj dependall" on NetBSD, all in one command (with MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX, obviously).

• FreeBSD:

  • Don’t use make depend on FreeBSD — it maintains dependency information automatically.

  • Do the make obj step separately, or better yet set WITH_AUTO_OBJ=yes on the command-line (with MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX).

• Systems using pkgsrc’s bmake and bootstrap-mk-files:

  • just set PREFIX if you want to install with your pkgsrc install, else set EXTLIBS to where packages are installed and set PREFIX to where you want to install ctwm, such as PREFIX=/usr/local or PREFIX=$HOME.

Dev and Support

Mailing list

There is a mailing list for discussions: <ctwm@ctwm.org>. Subscribe by sending a mail with the subject "subscribe ctwm" to <minimalist@ctwm.org>.

Repository

This CTWM is maintained in [robohack’s GitHub][GHRC] by Greg A. Woods.

Further information

Additional information can be found from the project webpage, at https://www.ctwm.org/.

[GHRC]: https://github.com/robohack/ctwm-mirror/ [CTWM]: https://github.com/fullermd/ctwm-mirror/ [pkgsrc]: https://pkgsrc.org/