NAME

       windowlab - a window manager for X11

SYNOPSIS

       windowlab [options...]

DESCRIPTION

       windowlab is a small and simple window manager of novel design.

       It  has  a  click-to-focus but not raise-on-focus policy, a window resizing mechanism that
       allows one or many edges of a window to be  changed  in  one  action,  and  an  innovative
       menubar  that  shares  the  same  part  of the screen as the taskbar. Window titlebars are
       prevented from going off the edge of the screen by constraining  the  mouse  pointer,  and
       when  appropriate  the pointer is also constrained to the taskbar/menubar in order to make
       target menu items easier to hit.

       WindowLab places a taskbar at the top of the screen and adds a titlebar to the top of each
       window.  These  titlebars  consist  of a draggable area, and three icons on the right hand
       side. When left clicked, these icons:

       * hide the window
       * toggle the window's Z order Amiga style (if it's not at  the  front,  bring  it  to  the
       front, otherwise send it to the back)
       * close the window

       Another  way  of  toggling  a  window's  Z order (depth) is by double left clicking on the
       draggable part of its titlebar.

       Windows' titlebars are prevented from leaving the screen and cannot overlap the taskbar.

       The taskbar should list all windows currently in use. Left clicking on a window's  taskbar
       item will give that window focus and toggle its Z order (depth).

       To  resize  the  active  window hold down alt and push against the window's edges with the
       left mouse button down.

       If you right click outside  a  client  window,  WindowLab's  taskbar  becomes  a  menubar.
       Releasing  the  right  mouse  button  over a selected menu item will start a corresponding
       external program. WindowLab will  look  in  each  of  the  following  files  in  turn  for
       definitions of the menu labels and commands:

       * ~/.windowlab/windowlab.menurc
       * ../etc/windowlab.menurc (from the directory containing the executable)
       * /etc/X11/windowlab/windowlab.menurc

       Each  line  in  the  menurc  file  should  have  the  menu  label,  a  colon, and then the
       corresponding command, eg:

       The GIMP:gimp

       New  windows  (that  don't  specify  their  location)  are  positioned  according  to  the
       coordinates of the mouse - the top-left hand corner of a new window is set to the location
       of the mouse pointer (if necessary the window will be moved to ensure that all of it is on
       the screen).

       WindowLab has the following keyboard controls. Hold down alt and press:

       * tab to give focus to the previous window
       * q to give focus to the next window
       * F11 to toggle fullscreen mode on and off for non transient windows
       *  F12  to  toggle the window's depth. This is the same as left clicking a window's middle
       icon

OPTIONS

       -font font-spec
              Draw window titles with the font defined by font-spec.

       -border color, -text color, -active color, -inactive color, -menu color, -selected  color,
       -empty color
              Use  color  for  the  borders,  the  text,  the  active  background,  the  inactive
              background, the menubar, the selected menu item and empty parts of the screen.

       -about Print information to stdout and exit.

       -display
              Sets which X display will be managed by windowlab.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       DISPLAY Sets which X display will be managed by windowlab.

MENU SYSTEM

       This version of WindowLab supports the Debian Menu subsystem.  To  update  the  menus,  it
       suffices to execute the command update-menus. If executed as root, the system setting in

             /etc/X11/windowlab/windowlab.menurc

       will  be  affected, whereas execution by any underprivileged user only effects the private
       resource file in

             ~/.windowlab/windowlab.menurc.

       The following files tune the compilation of auto-generated menus:

       /etc/X11/windowlab/debian_config, ~/.windowlab/debian_config
              Debian-specific system configuration and user-specific overrides.

       /etc/X11/windowlab/common_menu
              A common tail part, that currently encompasses About, Reload and  Quit.  All  users
              get these entries included in their menu.

       ~/.windowlab/user_menu
              Menu entries hand-picked by the individual user.

SIGNALS

       When  WindowLab receives a SIGHUP signal, it will reload all relevant menu resource files,
       thus updating the menu bar.

SEE ALSO

       X(7), The Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (from the X11R6 documentation).

AUTHOR

       Nick Gravgaard (me at nickgravgaard.com)