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-MATE Marco is a fork of GNOME Metacity.
-
-COMPILING MARCO
-===
-
-You need GTK+ 3.14. For startup notification to work you need
-libstartup-notification at
-http://www.freedesktop.org/software/startup-notification/.
-
-REPORTING BUGS AND SUBMITTING PATCHES
-===
-
-Report new bugs on https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco.
-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; Marco 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 Marco.
-
-SHRINKING MARCO
-===
-
-Not that marco is huge, but a substantial amount of code is in
-preferences handling, in static strings that aren't essential, and in
-the theme engine.
-
-You can strip about 70K from the marco binary by compiling with
-options such as:
-
- --disable-sm
- --disable-verbose-mode
- --disable-startup-notification
-
-However the result is no good for desktop use, all prefs have to be
-hardcoded in the binary, for example. If you wanted to make a really
-small marco, here's some additional stuff you might consider
-implementing:
-
- - add --disable-themes, which would replace theme.c and theme-parser.c
- with a hardcoded implementation of the interface in theme.h,
- should save about 80K. This should be fairly easy.
-
- - add --disable-gtk, which would implement the interface in ui.h
- without using GTK. This one is easier than you think because the
- main part of the window manager doesn't use GTK directly, but is
- still fairly hard to do. You would probably have to give up some
- of the features, such as window menus, as menus are pretty complex
- to implement well. So time may be better spent adding a GTK
- configure script feature to build GTK with only a small core set of
- functionality.
-
-MARCO FEATURES
-===
-
- - Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers
- are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Marco is like Cheerios.
-
- - Uses GTK+ 3.0 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 MATE control panel and other parts of the
- desktop happen to be implemented in marco, 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 marco extensions, pagers, and so on. (But libwnck
- isn't marco specific, or MATE-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 gsettings:
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general theme Crux
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general theme Gorilla
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general theme Atlanta
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general theme Bright
-
- See theme-format.txt for docs on the theme format. Use
- marco-theme-viewer to preview themes.
-
- - Change number of workspaces via gsettings:
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general num-workspaces 5
-
- Can also change workspaces from MATE 2 pager.
-
- - Change focus mode:
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general focus-mode mouse
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general focus-mode sloppy
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.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:
-
- gsettings set org.mate.Marco.global-keybindings switch-to-workspace-1 '<Alt>F1'
-
- Also try the MATE keyboard shortcuts control panel.
-
- See marco.schemas for all available bindings.
-
- - 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
- marco.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:
-
- Marco connects to the session manager and will set itself up to
- be respawned. It theoretically restores sizes/positions/workspace
- for session-aware applications.
-
- - Marco 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 marco 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 "marco --replace" to replace it
- with Marco.
-
- - does basic colormap handling
-
- - and much more! well, maybe not a lot more.
-
-HOW TO ADD EXTERNAL FEATURES
-===
-
-You can write a marco "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 Marco (or other
-EWMH-compliant WMs).
-
-MARCO BUGS, NON-FEATURES, AND CAVEATS
-===
-
-See github: https://github.com/mate-desktop/marco/issues
-
-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. Marco 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: Why does Marco remember the workspace/position of some apps
- but not others across logout/login?
-
-A: Marco 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, Marco 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 Marco 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, Marco 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 MATE apps, use the
- MateClient 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. Marco 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
-
- 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 marco has done this?
-
-A: There are quite a few, though many opportunities remain. Sometimes
- the real fix involves application changes. The marco approach is
- that it's OK to require apps to change, though there are also
- plenty of workarounds in marco 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, marco
- 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 marco sucks.
-
-A: Feel free to use any WM you like. The reason marco follows the
- ICCCM and EWMH specifications is that it makes marco a modular,
- interchangeable part in the desktop. libwnck-based apps such as the
- MATE 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.