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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 is version 2.3. Metacity has no need for
your petty hangups about version numbers.
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COMPILING METACITY
===
You need GTK+ 1.3.x (to become 2.0), at least version 1.3.9. At the
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moment CVS HEAD works, but that can change. Metacity is a fairly
trivial 6000-line C program, so once you get GTK+ built it should be
no problem to build Metacity.
There are SRPMs and sometimes RPMs on the ftp site, but you'd be
pretty lucky to get them to work for now, since they are often out of
sync with GTK. You might try with the GTK from ftp.gtk.org, and also
the GTK from http://people.redhat.com/hp/gnomehide/.
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REPORTING BUGS AND SUBMITTING PATCHES
===
Report new bugs on http://bugzilla.gnome.org.
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Feel free to send patches too; Metacity is really 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.
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See the HACKING file for some notes on hacking Metacity.
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METACITY FEATURES
===
- Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers
are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios.
- Uses GTK+ 2.0 for drawing window frames. This means colors, fonts,
etc. come from GTK+ theme.
- There are 6 workspaces.
- Global keybindings:
Alt-F1 to Alt-F6 switch workspaces
Alt-1 to Alt-6 switch workspaces
Alt-Tab forward cycle window focus
Alt-Shift-Tab backward cycle focus
Alt-Escape focus previous window
Alt-Left Arrow previous workspace
Alt-Right Arrow next workspace
Ctrl-Alt-D minimize/unminimize all, to show desktop
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- 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.
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While moving, hold down Control to move slower, and
Shift to snap to edges.
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Choose Resize from menu, and nothing happens yet, but
eventually I might implement something.
- 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 moves the window,
without raising it.
If you click anywhere on the frame with button 3 it shows the
window menu.
If you hold down Alt and click inside a window, it will move the
window (buttons 1 and 2) or show menu (button 3).
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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
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a feature copied from Enlightenment.
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If you hold down Shift while moving a window, the window snaps
to edges of other windows and the screen.
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- Session management:
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Metacity connects to the session manager and will set itself up to
be respawned. It theoretically restores sizes/positions/workspace
for session-aware applications.
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- Here is an example of how you can configure the Metacity
window border appearance in ~/.gtkrc-2.0:
style "metacity-style"
{
font_name = "Sans 16"
MetaFrames::title_border = { 7, 7, 7, 7 }
MetaFrames::button_width = 25
bg[NORMAL] = { 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 }
}
class "MetaFrames" style "metacity-style"
You get the idea. It is just your basic GTK+ rc file, the
window borders are a widget called MetaFrames,
look in frames.c:meta_frames_class_init() for all the style
properties that you can configure.
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Metacity-specific styles can also be included in any GTK+
theme.
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- Metacity implements much of the new window manager spec from
freedesktop.org, and much of the ICCCM. But then there are
parts of each that it doesn't implement, just because I haven't
yet.
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- 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.
- if you have the proper X setup, set the GDK_USE_XFT=1
environment variable to get antialiased window titles.
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METACITY BUGS, NON-FEATURES, AND CAVEATS
===
- Metacity creates a big file in your home directory called
~/metacity.log with a bunch of debug spew.
- If you want a number of workspaces which is not 6, you have to
edit screen.c and recompile.
- If you want keybindings which are not the ones mentioned above
as features, you have to edit keybindings.c and recompile.
- The only way to unminimize at the moment is to use the Alt+Tab
move-between-windows feature.
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(If you had a WM-spec-compliant tasklist, it would work
for unminimization also.)
(Or you can use "test-wnck" from the libwnck CVS module to
unminimize, but it's not much of a UI ;-)
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- Metacity uses the new window manager spec, but only random bits of
the old GNOME spec. It correctly advertises exactly which parts of
the GNOME spec it supports, but it does not support enough of it to
make the GNOME task list and desk guide happy, and they do not
support the new spec. I don't want anyone to spend time sending me
patches to support the old GNOME spec in Metacity; instead, send
patches to the task list and desk guide to support the new spec. As
far as I know, Metacity does support enough of the new spec to
allow a working tasklist and pager.
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Upshot: task list and desk guide DO NOT WORK with Metacity.
- Metacity turns off its keybindings for Emacs, because I use
Alt-space in Emacs, and getting a window menu annoys me.
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This is a broken feature. My planned fix is to use super/hyper
instead of Alt as the main keybinding shortcut, if super/hyper
exist, and then keyboards with a windows key can use that for
WM functions and Alt for application shortcuts.
We'd fall back to Alt if no other suitable modifier existed.
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- I haven't even read the ICCCM section about colormaps. So if you
have an 8-bit display you are basically screwed.
- Metacity doesn't properly claim the window manager selection
as described in the ICCCM. But then, most other window managers
don't handle this correctly either.
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- There are probably other ICCCM-compliance issues.
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- Window placement is always cascade for now; I want to implement
"first fit, falling back to cascade if no fit."
(Configurable placement algorithms are stupid though, don't
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send me patches for any bogus ones. Let's just pick a good one.)
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- Maximization and movement constraints do not take the
GNOME panel into account. Most of the code already handles
this (using workspace->workarea in workspace.h), but
workspace->workarea isn't ever actually calculated.
Metacity needs to keep this area up-to-date using the hints the
panel sets.
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- Should support click-to-focus as an option.
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- Should Metacity support flipping in right-to-left locales?
I don't know what window managers look like in a right-to-left
locale. I assume the window titles should be right-justified;
should the window controls also be flipped?
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- Need keyboard shortcuts for focusing dock windows (though since
current GNOME panel has no useful keynav, this doesn't get you far
at the moment).
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- Resize menu item doesn't do anything. It's intended to enter
resize-with-the-keyboard mode, similar to Move menu item.
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- If you switch from sawfish to metacity without restarting X,
the panel often ends up buried behind the Nautilus desktop window.
What happens is that the panel detects Sawfish has gone away, and
turns on override redirect mode because no GNOME-aware WM is
running (i.e. it goes into "ignore the window manager" mode). But
the panel doesn't notice that Metacity has appeared and is
(partially) GNOME-compliant. So Metacity doesn't see the override
redirect panel, and leaves it behind the Nautilus desktop. I'm not
sure whether Metacity or the panel is to blame for this.
(To debug - use "xwininfo" on the panel, if override redirect is
"Yes" then Metacity won't have any awareness of a window and can't
properly stack it above the desktop. If override redirect is "No"
then Metacity can see the panel and handle it properly. Look at
xstuff.c:xstuff_is_compliant_wm() in the panel to get started on
how the panel deals with this.)
- If you have "put panel below other windows" turned on
in panel Global Preferences, Miscellaneous tab, you need to change
this to "Put panel on top of other windows." That's because
Metacity uses semantic categories, not the legacy layer system
in the GNOME spec. It treats things in the legacy "dock" layer
as semantic type dock, but if you have the panel set to be
in another layer, Metacity will think it's a normal window.
You can diagnose this problem because Metacity will put panels in
the wrong place, and Alt+rightclick will let you perform operations
like minimize/maximize, and Alt+leftclick will let you move the panel.
If Metacity has detected that the panel is a panel, then none of
this will be enabled.
I put a patch in the CVS version of the panel to fix this by
setting the new non-legacy type hint, but a panel with that
patch hasn't been released yet.
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FAQ
===
Q: Will you add my feature?
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A: If it makes sense to turn on unconditionally,
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or is genuinely a harmless preference that I would not
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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.
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This is part of a "no crackrock" policy, despite some exceptions
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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.
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Sloppy focus is probably crackrock too. Oh, and my Alt-1 thru Alt-6
keybindings are definitely on crack.
But don't think unlimited crack is OK just because I slipped up a
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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.
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Q: How do I add a configuration option?
A: You don't, until GConf 2 is relatively easy to compile and I feel
like adding it as a dependency.
Q: Will Metacity be part of GNOME?
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A: This is not the current plan, though of course I'm happy to see the
code used by anyone who's interested. Metacity may continue to suck
forever because I might get tired of working on it; or Metacity's
feature set might not make sense for GNOME. Who knows.
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For now Metacity is my toy hobby project that I work on when I feel
like it.
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Q: Is Metacity a Red Hat project?
A: Metacity is in no way funded, endorsed, or encouraged by Red Hat,
Inc. - I'm guessing Red Hat would not consider "insufficient number
of window managers for Linux" an urgent problem. Just a wild guess
though.
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Q: Why can't I move XMMS?
A: Because XMMS is broken and is trying to move itself. Metacity
does not tolerate insolent windows who believe they can
self-manage. Use Alt-button1 to move XMMS using Metacity.
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Q: Why does Metacity remember the workspace/position of some apps
but not others?
A: Metacity 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
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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
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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, Metacity 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:
ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6.4/xc/doc/hardcopy/SM/xsmp.PS.gz
ftp://ftp.x.org:21/pub/R6.4/xc/doc/hardcopy/SM/SMlib.PS.gz
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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.
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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.
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Q: Did you spend a lot of time on this?
A: Metacity is about 6000 lines of code, which took a few weekends and
evenings to write. If it ever becomes more polished it will
probably grow 2-3 more thousand lines of code and suck a few more
weekends of time. If I started adding all kinds of features and
crack-ridden configuration options, it might take more time than that.
Q: How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still
writing a window manager?
A: I have no comment on that.