Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/magcius/mutter

mutter
https://github.com/magcius/mutter

Last synced: 7 days ago
JSON representation

mutter

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
Metacity is not a meta-City as in an urban center, but rather

Meta-ness as in the state of being meta. i.e. metacity : meta as

opacity : opaque. Also it may have something to do with the Meta key

on UNIX keyboards.



The first release of Metacity was version 2.3. Metacity has no need for

your petty hangups about version numbers.



The stable releases so far are 2.4.x, 2.6.x, 2.8.[01], 2.8.1.x, 2.8.5-,

2.10.x, 2.12.x, 2.14.x, 2.16.x.



Unstable branches are 2.3.x, 2.5.x, 2.8.2-4, 2.9.x, 2.11.x, 2.13.x,

2.15.x, 2.17.x.



COMPILING MUTTER

===



You need GTK+ 2.2.  For startup notification to work you need

libstartup-notification at

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/startup-notification/ or on the

GNOME ftp site. You also need GConf 1.2 (unless building a funky

extra-small embedded metacity with --disable-gconf, see below).

You need Clutter 1.0. You need gobject-introspection 0.6.3.



REPORTING BUGS AND SUBMITTING PATCHES

===



Report new bugs on http://bugzilla.gnome.org. Please check for

duplicates, *especially* if you are reporting a feature request. 



Please do *not* add "me too!" or "yes I really want this!" comments to

feature requests in bugzilla. Please read

http://pobox.com/~hp/features.html prior to adding any kind of flame

about missing features or misfeatures.



Feel free to send patches too; Metacity is relatively small and

simple, so if you find a bug or want to add a feature it should be

pretty easy.  Send me mail, or put the patch in bugzilla.



See the HACKING file for some notes on hacking Mutter.



MUTTER FEATURES

===



 - Uses GTK+ 2.0 for drawing window frames. This means colors, fonts, 

   etc. come from GTK+ theme.



 - Does not expose the concept of "window manager" to the user.  Some

   of the features in the GNOME control panel and other parts of the

   desktop happen to be implemented in metacity, such as changing your

   window border theme, or changing your window navigation shortcuts,

   but the user doesn't need to know this.



 - Includes only the window manager; does not try to be a desktop

   environment. The pager, configuration, etc. are all separate and

   modular. The "libwnck" library (which I also wrote) is available

   for writing metacity extensions, pagers, and so on. (But libwnck

   isn't metacity specific, or GNOME-dependent; it requires only GTK,

   and should work with KWin, fvwm2, and other EWMH-compliant WMs.)



 - Has a simple theme system and a couple of extra themes come with it.

   Change themes via gconf-editor or gconftool or GNOME themes control

   panel:

     gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/theme Crux

     gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/theme Gorilla

     gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/theme Atlanta

     gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/theme Bright



   See theme-format.txt for docs on the theme format. Use 

   metacity-theme-viewer to preview themes.



 - Change number of workspaces via gconf-editor or gconftool:

     gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 5



   Can also change workspaces from GNOME 2 pager.



 - Change focus mode:

     gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode mouse

     gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode sloppy

     gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode click



 - Global keybinding defaults include:   



    Alt-Tab                forward cycle window focus

    Alt-Shift-Tab          backward cycle focus

    Alt-Ctrl-Tab           forward cycle focus among panels

    Alt-Ctrl-Shift-Tab     backward cycle focus among panels

    Alt-Escape             cycle window focus without a popup thingy

    Ctrl-Alt-Left Arrow    previous workspace

    Ctrl-Alt-Right Arrow   next workspace

    Ctrl-Alt-D             minimize/unminimize all, to show desktop



   Change keybindings for example:



     unst gconftool-2 --type=string --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_1 'F1'

   

   Also try the GNOME keyboard shortcuts control panel, or

   gconf-editor.



 - Window keybindings:



    Alt-space         window menu



    Mnemonics work in the menu. That is, Alt-space then underlined

    letter in the menu item works.



    Choose Move from menu, and arrow keys to move the window.



    While moving, hold down Control to move slower, and 

      Shift to snap to edges.



    Choose Resize from menu, and nothing happens yet, but 

      eventually I might implement something.



    Keybindings for things like maximize window, vertical maximize,

    etc. can be bound, but may not all exist by default. See

    metacity.schemas.



 - Window mouse bindings:



    Clicking anywhere on frame with button 1 will raise/focus window

    

    If you click a window control, such as the close button, then the 

     control will activate on button release if you are still over it

     on release (as with most GUI toolkits)



    If you click and drag borders with button 1 it resizes the window

    

    If you click and drag the titlebar with button 1 it moves the 

     window.



    If you click anywhere on the frame with button 2 it lowers the 

     window.



    If you click anywhere on the frame with button 3 it shows the 

     window menu.



    If you hold down Super (windows key) and click inside a window, it

     will move the window (buttons 1 and 2) or show menu (button 3).

     Or you can configure a different modifier for this.



    If you pick up a window with button 1 and then switch workspaces

     the window will come with you to the new workspace, this is 

     a feature copied from Enlightenment.



    If you hold down Shift while moving a window, the window snaps

     to edges of other windows and the screen.



 - Session management:



    Mutter connects to the session manager and will set itself up to

     be respawned. It theoretically restores sizes/positions/workspace

     for session-aware applications.



 - Mutter implements much of the EWMH window manager specification

   from freedesktop.org, as well as the older ICCCM.  Please refer to

   the COMPLIANCE file for information on mutter compliance with

   these standards.



 - Uses Pango to render text, so has cool i18n capabilities. 

   Supports UTF-8 window titles and such.



 - There are simple animations for actions such as minimization, 

   to help users see what is happening. Should probably 

   have a few more of these and make them nicer.



 - if you have the proper X setup, set the GDK_USE_XFT=1 

   environment variable to get antialiased window titles.



 - considers the panel when placing windows and maximizing

   them.



 - handles the window manager selection from the ICCCM. Will exit if

   another WM claims it, and can claim it from another WM if you pass

   the --replace argument. So if you're running another

   ICCCM-compliant WM, you can run "mutter --replace" to replace it

   with Metacity.



 - does basic colormap handling



 - and much more! well, maybe not a lot more.



HOW TO ADD EXTERNAL FEATURES

===



You can write a mutter "plugin" such as a pager, window list, icon

box, task menu, or even things like "window matching" using the

Extended Window Manager Hints. See http://www.freedesktop.org for the

EWMH specification. An easy-to-use library called "libwnck" is

available that uses the EWMH and is specifically designed for writing

WM accessories.



You might be interested in existing accessories such as "Devil's Pie"

by Ross Burton, which add features to Mutter (or other

EWMH-compliant WMs).



MUTTER BUGS, NON-FEATURES, AND CAVEATS

===



See bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/query.cgi



FAQ

===



Q: Will you add my feature?



A: If it makes sense to turn on unconditionally, or is genuinely a

   harmless preference that I would not be embarrassed to put in a

   simple, uncluttered, user-friendly configuration dialog.



   If the only rationale for your feature is that other window

   managers have it, or that you are personally used to it, or

   something like that, then I will not be impressed. Metacity is

   firmly in the "choose good defaults" camp rather than the "offer 6

   equally broken ways to do it, and let the user pick one" camp.



   This is part of a "no crackrock" policy, despite some exceptions

   I'm mildly embarrassed about. For example, multiple workspaces

   probably constitute crackrock, they confuse most users and really

   are not that useful if you have a decent tasklist and so on. But I

   am too used to them to turn them off.  Or alternatively

   iconification/tasklist is crack, and workspaces/pager are good. But

   having both is certainly a bit wrong.  Sloppy focus is probably

   crackrock too.



   But don't think unlimited crack is OK just because I slipped up a

   little. No slippery slope here.



   Don't let this discourage patches and fixes - I love those. ;-)

   Just be prepared to hear the above objections if your patch adds

   some crack-ridden configuration option.



   http://pobox.com/~hp/free-software-ui.html

   http://pobox.com/~hp/features.html   



Q: Will Mutter be part of GNOME?



A: It is not officially part of GNOME as of GNOME 2.27. We are

   hoping to have mutter officially included as of GNOME 2.28. 



Q: Why does Mutter remember the workspace/position of some apps 

   but not others across logout/login?



A: Mutter only stores sizes/positions for apps that are session

   managed. As far as I can determine, there is no way to attempt to

   remember workspace/position for non-session-aware apps without

   causing a lot of weird effects.



   The reason is that you don't know which non-SM-aware apps were

   launched by the session. When you initially log in, Metacity sees a

   bunch of new windows appear. But it can't distinguish between

   windows that were stored in your session, or windows you just

   launched after logging in. If Metacity tried to guess that a window

   was from the session, it could e.g. end up maximizing a dialog, or

   put a window you just launched on another desktop or in a weird

   place. And in fact I see a lot of bugs like this in window managers

   that try to handle non-session-aware apps.



   However, for session-aware apps, Mutter can tell that the

   application instance is from the session and thus restore it

   reliably, assuming the app properly restores the windows it had 

   open on session save.

   

   So the correct way to fix the situation is to make apps

   session-aware. libSM has come with X for years, it's very

   standardized, it's shared by GNOME and KDE - even twm is

   session-aware. So anyone who won't take a patch to add SM is more

   archaic than twm - and you should flame them. ;-)



   Docs on session management:

    http://www.fifi.org/doc/xspecs/xsmp.txt.gz

    http://www.fifi.org/doc/xspecs/SMlib.txt.gz



   See also the ICCCM section on SM. For GNOME apps, use the

   GnomeClient object. For a simple example of using libSM directly,

   twm/session.c in the twm source code is pretty easy to understand.



Q: How about adding viewports in addition to workspaces?



A: I could conceivably be convinced to use viewports _instead_ of

   workspaces, though currently I'm not thinking that. But I don't

   think it makes any sense to have both; it's just confusing. They

   are functionally equivalent.



   You may think this means that you won't have certain keybindings, 

   or something like that. This is a misconception. The only 

   _fundamental_ difference between viewports and workspaces is that 

   with viewports, windows can "overlap" and appear partially on 

   one and partially on another. All other differences that

   traditionally exist in other window managers are accidental - 

   the features commonly associated with viewports can be implemented

   for workspaces, and vice versa.



   So I don't want to have two kinds of

   workspace/desktop/viewport/whatever, but I'm willing to add

   features traditionally associated with either kind if those

   features make sense.



Q: Why is the panel always on top?



A: Because it's a better user interface, and until we made this not

   configurable a bunch of apps were not getting fixed (the app

   authors were just saying "put your panel on the bottom" instead of

   properly supporting fullscreen mode, and such).



   rationales.txt has the bugzilla URL for some flamefesting on this,

   if you want to go back and relive the glory.

   Read these and the bugzilla stuff before asking/commenting:

     http://pobox.com/~hp/free-software-ui.html

     http://pobox.com/~hp/features.html   



Q: Why is there no edge flipping?



A: This one is also in rationales.txt. Because "ouija board" UI, where

   you just move the mouse around and the computer guesses what you

   mean, has a lot of issues. This includes mouse focus, shade-hover

   mode, edge flipping, autoraise, etc. Metacity has mouse focus and

   autoraise as a compromise, but these features are all confusing for

   many users, and cause problems with accessibility, fitt's law, and

   so on.



   Read these and the bugzilla stuff before asking/commenting:

     http://pobox.com/~hp/free-software-ui.html

     http://pobox.com/~hp/features.html   



Q: Why does wireframe move/resize suck?



A: You can turn it on with the reduced_resources setting.



   But: it has low usability, and is a pain

   to implement, and there's no reason opaque move/resize should be a

   problem on any setup that can run a modern desktop worth a darn to

   begin with.



   Read these and the bugzilla stuff before asking/commenting:

     http://pobox.com/~hp/free-software-ui.html

     http://pobox.com/~hp/features.html   



   The reason we had to add wireframe anyway was broken 

   proprietary apps that can't handle lots of resize events.



Q: Why no XYZ?



A: You are probably getting the idea by now - check rationales.txt,

   query/search bugzilla, and read http://pobox.com/~hp/features.html

   and http://pobox.com/~hp/free-software-ui.html



   Then sit down and answer the question for yourself.  Is the feature

   good? What's the rationale for it? Answer "why" not just "why not."

   Justify in terms of users as a whole, not just users like

   yourself. How else can you solve the same problem? etc. If that

   leads you to a strong opinion, then please, post the rationale for

   discussion to an appropriate bugzilla bug, or to

   [email protected].



   Please don't just "me too!" on bugzilla bugs, please don't think

   flames will get you anywhere, and please don't repeat rationale

   that's already been offered.



Q: Your dumb web pages you made me read talk about solving problems in

   fundamental ways instead of adding preferences or workarounds.

   What are some examples where metacity has done this?



A: There are quite a few, though many opportunities remain.  Sometimes

   the real fix involves application changes. The metacity approach is

   that it's OK to require apps to change, though there are also

   plenty of workarounds in metacity for battles considered too hard

   to fight.



   Here are some examples:



   - fullscreen mode was introduced to allow position constraints,

     panel-on-top, and other such things to apply to normal windows

     while still allowing video players etc. to "just work"



   - "whether to include minimized windows in Alt+Tab" was solved 

     by putting minimized windows at the *end* of the tab order. 



   - Whether to pop up a feedback display during Alt+Tab was solved by

     having both Alt+Tab and Alt+Esc



   - Whether to have a "kill" feature was solved by automatically

     detecting and offering to kill stuck apps. Better, metacity

     actually does "kill -9" on the process, it doesn't just

     disconnect the process from the X server. You'll appreciate this

     if you ever did a "kill" on Netscape 4, and watched it keep

     eating 100% CPU even though the X server had booted it.



   - The workspaces vs. viewports mess was avoided by adding

     directional navigation and such to workspaces, see discussion

     earlier in this file.



   - Instead of configurable placement algorithms, there's just one 

     that works fairly well most of the time.



   - To avoid excess CPU use during opaque move/resize, we rate limit

     the updates to the application window's size.



   - Instead of configurable "show size of window while resizing,"

     it's only shown for windows where it matters, such as terminals.

     (Only use-case given for all windows is for web designers

     choosing their web browser size, but there are web sites and

     desktop backgrounds that do this for you.)



   - Using startup notification, applications open on the workspace

     where you launched them, not the active workspace when their

     window is opened.



   - and much more.



Q: I think mutter sucks.



A: Feel free to use any WM you like. The reason metacity follows the

   ICCCM and EWMH specifications is that it makes metacity a modular,

   interchangeable part in the desktop. libwnck-based apps such as the

   GNOME window list will work just fine with any EWMH-compliant WM.



Q: Did you spend a lot of time on this?



A: Originally the answer was no. Sadly the answer is now yes.



Q: How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still 

   writing a window manager?



A: I have no comment on that.