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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.
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
- 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.
- 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).
If you pick up a window with button 1 and then switch desktops
the window will come with you to the new desktop, this is
a feature copied from Enlightenment.
- Session management:
Metacity connects to the session manager and will set itself up
to be respawned.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- Metacity does not have any way to unminimize a window. So
clicking the minimize button is sort of a bad idea.
- 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;
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.
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.
- Cycling windows with Alt-Tab is flickery, AFAIK because
Metacity passes the entire window stack to XRestackWindows()
every time you restack. Instead it should probably only restack
windows that have changed their stacking with respect to one
another.
- Various operations, such as minimize, maximize, etc., should
have simple animations to make them clearer to users.
- Metacity registers with the session manager, but doesn't actually
remember window sizes and positions.
- 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.
- I know there's at least one race condition involving rapidly
created and destroyed windows that will crash Metacity.
- 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
send me patches for any bogus ones.)
- 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.
COMPILING METACITY
===
You need GTK+ 1.3.x (to become 2.0). See configure.in for the exact
version you need. Metacity is a fairly trivial 6000-line C program, so
once you get GTK+ built it should be no problem to build Metacity.
REPORTING BUGS
===
Report new bugs to hp@redhat.com for now. Will switch to Bugzilla
sometime probably.
FAQ
===
Q: Will you add my feature?
A: Probably not, unless it makes sense to turn on by unconditionally,
or is genuinely a harmless preference that I would not
be embarrassed to put in a user-friendly configuration dialog.
Metacity has a "no crackrock" policy, with 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.
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
little. No slippery slope here.
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?
A: If Metacity is ever better than the other options, and the GNOME
Project so chooses. But Metacity may continue to suck forever
because I might get tired of it; or Metacity's conservative
nature might not make sense for the snazzy world of
GNOME. Who knows. I'm not worrying about this, and you shouldn't
either.
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.
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.