======================================================================
=                                FVWM                                =
======================================================================

                            Introduction
======================================================================
The F Virtual Window Manager (FVWM) is a virtual window manager for
the X Window System. Originally a twm derivative, FVWM has evolved
into a powerful and highly configurable environment for Unix-like
systems.


                              History
======================================================================
In 1993, during his work analyzing acoustic signatures for the United
States Department of Defense, Robert Nation began hacking twm with the
intent of simultaneously reducing memory usage and adding support for
virtual desktops.

Already known for his rxvt terminal emulator, Nation worked on
reducing the memory consumption of his new window manager. Deciding to
test FVWM's reception, on June 1, 1993, he bundled it with a rxvt
release.

In 1994 Rob Nation stopped developing FVWM and made Charles Hines the
maintainer. Rob Nation's last release of FVWM was fvwm-1.24r. The
post-Rob Nation version of FVWM uses a different configuration file
format and has a significantly different architecture. Many Linux
distributions, as a result, distributed both fvwm-1.24r and later
releases of FVWM as separate programs. , fvwm-1.24r still compiles and
runs on a modern Linux system without any problems. A small number of
users continue to use the older FVWM release. In late 1998 the office
of FVWM maintainer was abolished and further development has been
conducted by a group of volunteers.

Many developers have based their own projects on FVWM in order to
benefit from the years of refinement and development. Many of the
popular window managers in use today are related to FVWM: Afterstep,
Xfce, Enlightenment, Metisse and many more.


Name origin
=============
Originally, FVWM was the 'Feeble Virtual Window Manager', which was
clearly stated by Robert Nation in a 1997 Linux Journal interview with
him, who also claimed the name had been chosen because original
releases had almost no user selectable features, so it really was
feeble. However, at some point the meaning of the 'F' was lost. When
Google published the old news group archives acquired from DejaNews,
the original meaning was re-discovered. However, when Chuck Hine was
maintaining the official FVWM Frequently Asked Questions, Chuck had
never agreed with the 'feeble' explanation, and added alternate
possible meanings of 'F' to the FAQ, with many entries coming from
mailing list messages.


                              Features
======================================================================
This is a partial list based on the documentation distributed with
FVWM.

Many of these features can be disabled at runtime or compile time, or
dynamically for specific windows or loaded and unloaded as modules, or
many other possibilities. These are not rigid features, FVWM does not
dictate how the user's desktop should work or look like but provides
the mechanisms to configure the desktop to work, look and behave the
way the user wants it to.

* Supports any number of virtual desktops, each divided into multiple
pages.
* The viewport (the physical screen) can be moved smoothly (in
configurable steps) in the virtual desktop area, independent of pages
* The viewport can move automatically when the mouse hits the border
of the screen
* Full EWMH, ICCCM-2 and GNOME Hints support.
* Full internationalization support, including multi-byte characters
and bidirectional text.
* Xft2 font support with anti-aliasing, drop shadows of any size, at
any offset and at any direction, text rotation.
* Any behaviour, action or event is fully configurable.
* Support of user defined Window Decoration Styles.
* Titlebars can be disabled, or rendered on any window edge. This can
be done individually for each window type.
* Titlebars may have up to ten icons including minimize, maximize and
close buttons.
* Animated Window Shading in all directions.
* Iconification
* Full PNG Support, including alpha blending.
* Perl programming library for extending FVWM using Perl, scripting
and pre-processing of configuration files.
* Can be extended via scripting. Preprocessing allows dynamic
configurations.
* Toolkit to build dialogs, menus and applications at runtime.
* Configurable desktop panels.
* Mouse Gestures allow to draw shapes with the mouse, and bind them to
commands.
* Dynamic menus; utilities to browse the filesystem, fetch headlines
from the internet from menus included.
* [http://linuxgazette.net/100/adam.html Session management] support.
* Xinerama extension support to use more than one monitor.
* Dynamically extensible using modules.
* Supports focus stealing


                            Derivatives
======================================================================
Image:fvwm_family.svg|left|600px|thumb|FVWM family tree, displaying
some of the FVWM derivatives

rect  15  17 228  97 twm
rect  15 117 228 197 FVWM
rect  15 278 228 358 Window Maker
#rect 315  17 528  97 Bowman (window manager)
rect 315 117 528 197 FVWM95
rect 315 217 528 297 Amiwm
#rect 315 317 528 397 FVWM-XPM
rect 315 417 528 497 LessTif
rect 315 517 528 597 Macintosh-Like Virtual Window Manager
rect 315 617 528 697 Scwm
rect 315 717 528 797 Xfwm
rect 570  17 783 117 AfterStep
rect 570 317 783 397 Enlightenment (window manager)
#rect 570 517 783 597 HaZe
desc none


                           Notable users
======================================================================
* Donald Knuth


                              See also
======================================================================
* Comparison of X window managers
* FVWM-Crystal, a theme.
* FVWM95


                           External links
======================================================================
* [https://www.fvwm.org/ Official FVWM Web Site].
* .
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20040203131154/http://xwinman.org/fvwm.html
Matt Chapman's Window Managers for X].
*
[https://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1993Jun1.201340.7363%40klaava.Helsinki.FI
Announcement of first FVWM release from Rob Nation].
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110816221935/http://fvwmwiki.xteddy.org/IRC/HashFvwm/
#fvwm IRC Channel FAQ].
* [http://www.fvwmforums.org FVWM community forums].
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20101121181951/http://fvwmwiki.xteddy.org/
FVWM community wiki].
* [http://www.zensites.net/fvwm/guide/ FVWM Beginners Guide] by Jaimos
F Skriletz.


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