NAME

olwm − OPEN LOOK window manager for OpenWindows

SYNOPSIS

olwm [ −2d ] [ −3d ] [ −c ] [ −click ] [ −f ] [ −follow ] [ −parent ]
[ −display displaystring ] [ −fn fontname ] [ −font fontname ] [ −name rsrcname ] [ −xrm rsrcstring ]
[ −all ] [ −debug ] [ −orphans ] [ −synchronize ]

DESCRIPTION

olwm is a window manager for the X Window System that implements parts of the OPEN LOOK graphical user interface.  It is the standard window manager for Sun’s OpenWindows product, but it will work properly with any X11 system. 

OPTIONS

Most command-line options have counterparts in the resource database.  A command-line option will override any setting from the resource database. 

−2d Use two-dimensional look.  This is the default for monochrome systems. 

−3d Use three-dimensional look.  This is the default for color systems.  This option is ignored for monochrome systems. 

−c,  −click
Use click-to-focus mode.  This is the default focus mode.

−display displaystring
Specify the name of the display to manage.  Overrides the DISPLAY environment variable, if any.  In addition, the display string is exported to olwm’s environment, so processes forked from olwm will inherit this value. 

−f,  −follow
Use focus-follows-mouse mode.  Default mode is click-to-focus.

−fn fontname,  −fontname  fontname
Set the font for window titles.

−name resource-name
Use resource-name to look up resources in the resource database.

−parent
Ignore windows that are already on the screen.  Windows ignored in this fashion cannot be moved, or resized, and they will never receive the input focus.

−xrm resource-string
Specify resources on the command-line.  Resources specified here will override resources found in resource files.

DEBUGGING OPTIONS

The following options are strictly for debugging.  They are not recommended for general use.  Don’t use them unless you know what you are doing. 

−all Print a message for every event received. 

−debug
Equivalent to turning on all debugging options.

−orphans
Print orphaned events.  Orphaned events are events that are associated with a window or frame that has no entry in the frame hash table, or events that are not handled by the various event handlers.

−synchronize
Run the window manager in synchronous mode.

INPUT FOCUS

The input focus

is the window that will receive keystrokes.  olwm has two different input focus modes, which are different ways of transferring the input focus from one window to another.  By default, olwm uses "click-to-focus" (also known as "click-to-type") mode.  This means that you must click on the window in order to get the focus to it.  While a window has the input focus, the mouse can be anywhere on the screen; the keyboard events will still go to that window.  You can set the input focus to a window and simultaneously raise it to the top by clicking the left mouse button in the window’s title bar or border. 

olwm has another focus mode called "focus-follows-mouse."  In this mode, whatever window the mouse is pointing to will receive the input focus.  To switch the input focus from one window to another, you simply move the mouse to the other window; you don’t have to click at all.  Note, however, that to transfer the focus amongst subwindows of a single top-level window, you must click in the subwindow, or you must use focus transfer function keys (if available from the application). 

The input focus mode can be controlled with command-line options or by entries in the resource database.  Neither focus mode has inherent advantages.  Which one you choose is a matter of personal preference. 

MANIPULATING WINDOWS

olwm uses a three-button mouse to manipulate windows.  The left mouse button, referred to as SELECT in the OPEN LOOK specification, selects and drags objects.  The middle mouse button, referred to as ADJUST, toggles the selected state of objects.  The right mouse button, referred to as MENU, brings up a pop-up menu appropriate for the object under the pointer.  In all cases, the behavior of the mouse button depends on the object underneath the pointer. 

Window Title Bar and Borders
Clicking the left mouse button selects the window, raises it above other windows, and deselects any other objects.  In click-focus mode, the focus is also transferred to this window.  Pressing the left mouse button and dragging will move windows without raising them or setting the focus.  If this window is selected, it and all other selected windows are moved simultaneously.  Otherwise, just this window is moved, and it is not selected.  If you hold down the Control key while you are moving a window, motion is constrained to be either vertical or horizontal, depending on whether you’ve moved farther in a vertical or horizontal direction.

Double-clicking on the window is the same as selecting the Full Size (or Restore Size) menu item.  See the section on the Window Menu, below.  Clicking the middle button will toggle the selected state of this window.  If other windows or icons are already selected, they remain selected.  The middle button is useful for selecting several windows and icons.  The right button will bring up the window menu.  See the Window Menu section. 

Resize Corners
You can resize a window by pressing the left mouse button over any of the resize corners and dragging it to the new location.  Releasing the mouse button will set the new size of the window.  If you hold down the Control key while you are dragging, the resize operation is contrained to resize vertically or horizontally, depending on whether you’ve moved the mouse farther in the horizontal or vertical direction.

Window Button
The Window Button is the small box with a downward-pointing triangle near the left end of the title bar.  Clicking the left mouse button on the Window Button will close the window into an icon.  This is the same action as the "close" entry in the Window Menu.

Pushpin
OPEN LOOK pop-up windows have a pushpin instead of a window button.  If the pushpin is out of its hole, pressing a command button within the window will cause the window to be taken down ("dismissed") in addition to the command being executed.  If you click on the pushpin, it will move into its hole. In this state, pressing a command button will execute the command without dismissing the window.  Pulling out the pin by clicking on it will dismiss the window without executing any commands.  Some windows come up with the pin already in the hole.

MANIPULATING ICONS

An icon represents a closed window.  You can still do most of the same operations as with an open window.  Moving and selecting icons with the left and middle mouse buttons is exactly the same as for open windows.  A similar version of the Window Menu is available on an icon by pressing the right mouse button.  Double-clicking the left mouse button will open the icon instead of executing the Full Size operation.  Icons cannot be resized. 

SELECTIONS ON THE WORKSPACE

You can select a group of windows and icons by using the left or middle mouse buttons over the Workspace (the area of the screen outside of all windows and icons, commonly known as the "root window").  Pressing either the left or middle mouse button and dragging the mouse will define a rubber-band rectangle.  When you release the mouse button, the set of windows and icons completely enclosed by this rectangle will be operated on.  If you created the rectangle using the left button, the windows and icons within will be selected, and all other objects will be deselected.  If you used the middle button, the objects within will have their selected state toggled, and any other windows and icons already selected will remain selected. 

WORKSPACE MENU

Pressing the right mouse button over the workspace brings up the Workspace Menu.  This menu is customizable, but it typically contains four entries:

Programs
This button has a sub-menu that allows you to invoke applications.  The default Programs sub-menu contains all of the programs in the OpenWindows DeskSet.  However, users typically customize this menu to contain many more programs and to contain nested submenus.  See the section on Menu Customization for further information.

Utilities
This button has a sub-menu that contains several utility functions for the workspace, including Refresh (redisplay all windows on the screen), Lock Screen, and Save Workspace.

Properties...
This item brings up the Workspace Properties window, which allows you to view and customize settings of the OpenWindows environment.

Exit Shuts down all applications and exits the window system.  A confirmation notice is popped up first to give you a chance to cancel the operation. 

WINDOW MENU

The window menu of most windows has the following options:

Close Close the window to an icon.  Any OPEN LOOK pop-up windows are closed into this icon as well.  They will reappear when the icon is opened.  This item is "Open" if you bring up the menu on an icon. 

FullSize
Expand the window to the full height of the screen.  If this has already done, the button is Normal Size instead of Full Size.  Normal Size restores the window to the size it was before you did the Full Size operation.  If the application has specified a maximum size for the window, this size is used for Full Size instead of the full screen height.

Back Move the window behind all other windows. 

Refresh
Clear and redisplay the window.

Quit Kill the program running in the window and remove the window.  If the application has elected to participate in the WM_DELETE_WINDOW protocol, olwm sends a WM_DELETE_WINDOW ClientMessage instead of killing that window. 

OPEN LOOK pop-up windows (as opposed to base windows) have a smaller window menu.  This menu has the following items:

Dismiss
Handles the dismissal (unmapping) of windows.  This button has a submenu with two items: This Window, which dismisses just this window, and All Pop-ups, which dismisses all pop-up windows owned by this application.

Back Same as above. 

Refresh
Same as above.

Owner?
Raises and flashes the title bar of the base window that "owns" this pop-up window.

MENU CUSTOMIZATION

You can customize olwm’s Workspace Menu with a menu specification language.  When it starts up, olwm will first look for a file named by the OLWMMENU environment variable.  If this variable does not exist, or if the file is not readable, olwm will then look in the file named ".openwin-menu" in your home directory.  If this file is not present or is unreadable, olwm will fall back on the system default menu file.  If, for some reason, the system default menu file cannot be found, olwm will use a minimal, built-in menu.  If olwm encounters a syntax error during the reading of any menu file, a message is printed to the standard error, and the menu file reading is considered to have failed.  Olwm will then attempt to read the next file in the sequence as described above. 

Syntax.MenuSpecification Each line typically specifies one menu button.  There are three fields on each line: a label, the optional keyword "DEFAULT", and a command.  The label is either a single word or a string enclosed in double quotes.  This is the label that appears in the menu button.  If the optional keyboard "DEFAULT" appears next, this menu item becomes the default item for this menu.  The rest of the line (excluding leading whitespace) is considered to be a command.  It is executed by sending it to sh(1).  Any shell metacharacters will be passed through to the shell unchanged. 

A sub-menu is specified using the special keyword "MENU" in place of a command.  A button is added to the current menu, and clicking or pulling right on this button will bring up the sub-menu.  Subsequent lines in the menu file define buttons for the sub-menu, until a line that has the special keyword "END" in the command field is encountered.  The label of the MENU line must match the label on the END line, otherwise an error is signaled.  Sub-menus can be nested arbitrarily, bracketed by MENU and END lines with matching labels. 

To make a sub-menu pinnable, add the special keyword "PIN" after the END keyword on the line that ends the sub-menu definition. 

A sub-menu can be specified in a different file by putting the absolute pathname of the file after the MENU keyword.  In this case, the file so named is assumed to contain lines that specify menu buttons.  The sub-menu file need not have any MENU or END lines (unless it has sub-menus itself).  The current file need not have a matching END line if the sub-menu is read from another file. 

By default, the label in a menu button is used as the title of the submenu.  This can be overridden by specifying a line that has the special keyword TITLE in the command field.  The label from this line will be used as the sub-menu’s title.  This line can appear anywhere in the sub-menu definition.  It does not add an item to the menu. 

The following keywords can be used in the command field of a menu item.  They specify functions that are internal to olwm, that are not invoked by running a shell. 

EXIT Kills all applications and exits the window manager.  This is useful for exiting the entire window system. 

FLIPDRAG
Toggle the state of the DragWindow resource.

FLIPFOCUS
Toggle the state of the SetInput resource.

NOP No operation; don’t do anything. 

POSTSCRIPT
Open up a connection to NeWS using psh(1) and send the rest of the line to it. 

PROPERTIES
Bring up Workspace Properties.

REFRESH
Refresh cause all windows on the screen to be repainted.

RESTART
Restart the window manager by issuing an exec(2) on argv. This shouldn’t affect any running applications, nor should it cause the server to shut down.  This option is useful for re-initializing the window manager, for instance, to cause it to re-read its menu specification file. 

SAVE_WORKSPACE
Take a snapshot of the set of currently running applications, and put the command lines so obtained into the file ".openwin-init" in the user’s home directory.

WMEXIT
Exit the window manager without killing any applications.

Here is an example root menu specification. 

"My Custom Menu" TITLE
 Programs MENU
"Command Tool"DEFAULT cmdtool
"Text Editor"textedit
Mailmailtool
"File Manager"filemgr
OtherMENU
"Other Tools"TITLE
"Shell Tool"shelltool
"Icon Editor"iconedit
Clockclock
"Perf Meter"DEFAULT perfmeter
OtherEND
ProgramsEND PIN
 "Repaint Screen"REFRESH
 "Properties ..."PROPERTIES
 ExitEXIT

COLORMAP INSTALLATION

Olwm will handle colormap installation for windows that have colormaps other than the default colormap.  There are two colormap focus modes: "color-follows-mouse" and "color-locked".  They are roughly analogous to the corresponding modes for input focus.  However, colormap focus mode is completely independent of input focus.  The mode in which the system starts up is determined by the ColorFocusLocked resource (see the Resources section below). 

Olwm keeps track of a set of windows that are eligible to have their colormaps installed.  This set includes all top-level windows of clients.  If any clients have specified other windows in a WM_COLORMAP_WINDOWS property, these windows are included in the set as well. 

In color-follows-mouse mode, olwm keeps track of the location of the pointer and always keeps installed the colormap of the eligible window underneath the pointer.  Thus, you can install the colormap of a particular window simply by sliding the pointer into it.  The default colormap will be restored if you move the pointer back out into a window frame or into the workspace.  The WM_COLORMAP_WINDOWS properties are tracked for changes, but only to change the set of eligible windows.  Changes to these properties only cause colormaps to be installed if the eligible window under the pointer has changed as a result of the set of eligible windows changing.  In this mode, no window is considered to have the colormap focus; colormap installation entirely is under control of the user. 

In color-locked mode, colormaps are not installed based on pointer motion.  To enter color-locked mode, press the Color-Lock key over the window whose colormap you wish to install.  When you press this key, the colormap of the eligible window under the pointer is installed into the hardware.  You can move the pointer anywhere on the screen and this colormap will remain installed in the hardware.  If you’re already in color-locked mode, you can press the Color-Lock key over another window to install that window’s colormap. 

Pressing the Color-Lock key will also set the colormap focus.  The colormap focus belongs to the top-level window enclosing the pointer when you press the Color-Lock key.  If the client program changes the contents of the WM_COLORMAP_WINDOWS property on the top-level window with the colormap focus, olwm will respond by installing the colormap of the first window named in this property.  In this way, an application can control the installed colormap by altering the contents of the WM_COLORMAP_WINDOWS property, but only when it has been given the colormap focus. 

Note that, according to the ICCCM, if WM_COLORMAP_WINDOWS does not include the top-level window, it is assumed to occur first in the list.  If you want your program to request colormap installation via changes to WM_COLORMAP_WINDOWS, you must make sure that the top-level window appears somewhere in this property.  Otherwise, olwm will install the colormap of the top-level window instead. 

If you press the Color-Lock key over a window border or title bar, olwm will install the colormap of the first window named in the WM_COLORMAP_WINDOWS property.  If there is no such property, olwm installs the colormap of the top-level window.  In both cases, the top-level window enclosed by the frame will be given the colormap focus.  If you press the Color-Lock key over the workspace, the default colormap will be installed, and any window with the colormap focus will lose it.  At any time, you can revert to color-follows-mouse mode by pressing the Color-Unlock key.  Any window with the colormap focus will lose it. 

RESOURCES

The "class" name for olwm is "OpenWindows", so the string "OpenWindows." (including the period) must precede any of the following names in the left-hand side of the resource specification.  Thus, to change the workspace color, you would put "OpenWindows.WorkspaceColor" on the left-hand side of the resource specification. 

Some resources specify key bindings.  A key specification is a whitespace-separated list of words, each of which is a KeySym name.  Every word except that last must specify a modifier key.  All KeySym names are case-sensitive.  For example, to bind the Color-Lock key to control-shift-F1, you would use the following resource specification:

 OpenWindows.ColorLockKey: Control Shift F1
 

You can specify that all modifier combinations are to be grabbed by using the special keyword "Any" instead of a modifier. 

Boolean values can be specified with the words "true", "false", "on", "off", "yes", "no", "1", "0", "t", and "nil". 

AutoRaise (boolean)
Raise windows automatically when they receive the focus.  This is useful in click-to-type if you always like to type into the topmost window.  This is less useful in follow-mouse, because there may be many gratuitous stacking changes, but some people like it. Default value: false. 

Beep (enumeration)
Specifies the circumstances under which olwm should beep.  Permissible values are the strings "always", "never", and "notices".  The string "never" means that olwm should never beep, "notices" means that olwm should beep only when a notice appears, and "always" means that olwm will beep whenever it is appropriate.  Default value: always. 

ButtonFont (font name)
Font to be used within menu and notice buttons. Default value: Lucida-Sans. 

ClickMoveThreshold (integer)
This value is used when bringing up a menu.  If the mouse moves more than this amount while the menu button is down, the menu is considered to be in press-drag-release mode.  Otherwise, the menu is in click-move-click mode. Default value: 5. 

ColorFocusLocked (boolean)
Specifies the initial state of the colormap focus policy.  If true, the default colormap is locked into the hardware.  If false, the colormap of the window under the mouse is kept installed. Default value: false. 

ColorLockKey (key specification)
Specifies the key that is used to lock the colormap focus.  See the section on Colormap Installation for more details. Default: control-L2. 

ColorUnlockKey (key specification)
Specifies the key that is used to unlock the colormap focus.  See the section on Colormap Installation for more details. Default: control-L4. 

ConfirmKey (key specification)
Specifies the key that is used to select the default button from notices. Default: Return. 

CursorFont (font name)
Specifies the font to be used for cursors.  It is probably not useful to change this unless you have an alternate cursor font with the same encoding as the OPEN LOOK cursor font. Default: -sun-open look cursor-∗-∗-∗-∗-∗-120-∗-∗-∗-∗-∗-∗. 

DefaultTitle (string)
Specifies the string to be used in the title bar of windows that have not provided a string in the WM_NAME property. Default value: No Name. 

DragRightDistance (integer)
The number of pixels you must drag the mouse to the right in a menu item to bring up a submenu.  The submenu always comes up when you move over the menu mark (the right-pointing triangle), regardless of the drag-right distance. Default value: 100. 

DragWindow (boolean)
If true, drags the entire image of the window when you move it.  Otherwise, just drags the window outline. Default value: false. 

EdgeMoveThreshold (integer)
Specifies the amount of "hysteresis" provided when moving windows past the edge of the screen.  When you move a window or an icon, it will pause when it touches the edge of the screen.  This is to allow you to easily position windows right up against the edge of the screen.  If you move farther, the window or icon will continue to move past the edge.  You can prevent windows from ever lapping off the screen by setting an extremely large value (say, 10000) for this resource, and you can disable this feature entirely by specifying a value of zero. Default value: 10. 

FlashFrequency (integer)
Amount of time, in microseconds, for which the title bar is flashed after the "Owner?" menu item is activated. Default value: 100000. 

FocusLenience (boolean)
If this is set to true, olwm will not enforce the ICCCM requirement that windows must have the input hint set in order to receive the input focus.  This option is useful if you run clients that aren’t ICCCM-compliant, like many X11R3-based clients.  Default value: false. 

FrontKey (key specification)
Specifies the key to be used for raising windows to the front and pushing them to the back.  If you press this key while the pointer is over a window that is occluded by another window, the window under the pointer is raised to the front.  Otherwise, it is pushed to the back. Default value: L5. 

GlyphFont (font name)
Glyph font used for drawing OPEN LOOK graphics.  Changing this font is mainly useful for changing its size.  Specifying a different font, such as a text font, will result in undesirable behavior. Default: -sun-open look glyph-∗-∗-∗-∗-∗-120-∗-∗-∗-∗-∗-∗. 

IconFont (font name)
Font used for icon names. Default: Lucida-Sans. 

IconLocation (enumeration)
One of the words "top-lr", "top-rl", "bottom-lr", "bottom-rl", "left-tb", "left-bt", "right-tb", or "right-bt".  These specify that icons should be arranged along a particular edge of the screen, ordered from left to right or top to bottom as appropriate.  The words "top", "bottom", "left", and "right" are synonyms for "top-lr", "bottom-lr", "left-tb", and "right-tb", respectively. Default value: top. 

MinimalDecor (list of strings)
Specifies a list of windows that are to be decorated minimally.  Decoration on such windows includes only a thin border and resize corners, with no title bar or window button.  The value should be a whitespace-separated list of strings.  Each string should specify an applications class or instance name, as passed in the WM_CLASS property.  Most applications set this property based on the name of the executable (i.e. argv[0]).  Many applications will allow you to override the value of this property if they are given the −name option on the command line.  Default value: (null). 

MoveThreshold (integer)
This is the number of pixels the mouse may move while a mouse button is down and still have the action be considered a click.  If the mouse moves more than this number of pixels while the button is down, it is considered to be a press-drag-release gesture instead of a click. Default value: 5. 

MultiClickTimeout (integer)
The time, in tenths of a second, that differentiates a double-click from two single clicks. Default value: 5. 

OpenKey (key specification)
Specifies the key that is to be used to open and close windows.  When this key is pressed, the window or icon under the pointer is closed or opened. Default value: Any L7. 

PPositionCompat (boolean)
Turns on backward compatibility for older applications that have a habit of always setting the PPosition flag in the WM_NORMAL_HINTS property, even when they haven’t set a position.  This most often occurs with X11R3-based clients.  Without backward compatibility, these windows will always appear in the upper-left corner of the screen.  With backward compatibility, these windows will be positioned according to the default OPEN LOOK window placement policy, along the diagonal of the screen.  This option will not affect windows that have a geometry specified on the command line. Default value: false. 

PopupJumpCursor (boolean)
Specifies whether to warp the cursor to popup windows. Default value: true. 

RefreshRecursively (boolean)
Determines how the Refresh menu items on the window and workspace menus operate.  If the value is true, olwm will walk the window hierarchy and send exposure events to every window.  This is useful for refreshing windows that have backing store.  If the value is false, olwm will map a window and then unmap it, causing all windows underneath that do not have backing store get get exposures.  When this feature is on, the Refresh operation generates a large amount of client-server traffic.  It may be useful to turn this feature off if the connection transport has low bandwidth or long latency.  Default value: true. 

RubberBandThickness (integer)
Specifies the thickness of the "rubber-band" line that is drawn when a window is resized, when a group of windows is selected by dragging a rectangle on the root, and when a window is moved and DragWindow is false.

SaveWorkspaceTimeout (integer)
Number of seconds to wait while the Save Workspace operation is in progress. If all applications haven’t responded with this amount of time, the operation is considered to have failed. Default value: 10. 

SetInput (enumeration)
This controls the input focus mode.  If the value is "select", it means click-to-focus.  If the value is "followmouse", it means focus-follows-mouse. Default value: select. 

SnapToGrid (boolean)
Determines whether icons will snap to a grid when they are moved. Default value: false. 

TextFont (font name)
Font used in the text of notices. Defaault: Lucida-Sans. 

TitleFont (font name)
Font used in title bars above the windows. Default: Lucida-Sans Bold. 

Use3D (boolean)
Specifies whether to use 3D OPEN LOOK when possible.  If false, 3D look is never used.  If true, 3D is used unless the display hardware cannot support it. Default value: true. 

Use3DFrames (boolean)
Specifies whether to use a 3D look for the frame borders.  If true, the frames will be given a 3D look; otherwise, they have the same thick border as in 2D look.  Some people prefer the look of 3D frames, but it is more difficult to distinguish selected from unselected windows with this option turned on. Default value: false. 

WindowColor (color specification)
Specify the color of windows.  This is the "BG1" color for 3D OPEN LOOK. The value may be either a color name or an RGB specification, which must be preceded by a ‘#’. Default value: #ccc. 

This specifies a 20% gray value. 

WorkspaceColor (color specification)
Specify the color for the workspace (root window).  This may be a color name, an RGB specification (preceded by a ‘#’), an absolute pathname specifying an X bitmap file, or a null value.  If any non-null value is specified, olwm will set the root window to that color or pattern on startup and restore the system default on shutdown.  If a null value is specified, olwm will not change the root background at all.  This is useful if you prefer to use programs that set the root background, such as xsetroot(1).  Default value: #40a0c0. 

ENVIRONMENT

OLWMMENU
Specifies a file to use for the Workspace Menu.

FILES

$HOME/.openwin-menu
Contains the user-customized Workspace Menu specification.

$OPENWINHOME/lib/openwin-menu
Contains the default Workspace Menu specification.

$HOME/.openwin-init
Stores the command lines obtained during the Save Workspace operation.

TRADEMARKS

OPEN LOOK is a trademark of AT&T. 
The X Window system is a trademark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
OpenWindows is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

REFERENCES

Rosenthal, David S.H.  ConventionsInter-ClientCommunication Copyright 1989 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  This document is commonly known as the ICCCM.  It is an X Consortium Standard that specifies conventions to which all X11 clients must adhere.

OPEN LOOK Graphical User Interface Functional Specification.  Copyright 1989 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.  Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.  ISBN 0-201-52365-5. 

BUGS

The resource names do not follow any classing structure.  All of the resource class names are "OpenWindows," even though many of them do not apply to the rest of the OpenWindows product. 

It isn’t possible use olwm effectively without a three-button mouse, unless the server has provisions for simulating a three-button mouse with mouse with fewer buttons.  It is, however, possible to rearrange the mouse button mapping; see xmodmap(1). 

The Exit menu item on the Workspace Menu doesn’t really shut down the server.  It kills off all clients being managed by the window manager, and then it exits the window manager itself.  This works properly if some outside agent, such as xinit(1), is waiting for the window manager or a client to exit.  The outside agent will take care of shutting down the server or reinitializing it.  If you’ve started up the server a different way, this option may not work.  Instead, the server will be left running with no clients and no window manager running, and you will have to login from elsewhere to kill the server.  Previous versions of OpenWindows (1.0 and 1.0.1) had this problem.  A possible workaround is to add the following entry to the root menu:

ExitPOSTSCRIPT shutdownserver

Of course, this works only with an X11/NeWS server. 

There is no direct way to cause olwm to re-read its menu file.  You can get around this by adding a menu item that invokes the RESTART function.  This causes olwm to re-execute itself, in the process re-reading the menu specification, among other things.  This is somewhat slow, as all windows are parented back to the root and then reparented by the new instance of the window manager.  However, it is faster than restarting the entire system. 

Olwm is fairly simplistic about how it manages its keyboard bindings.  For example, if you bind a function to control-F2, olwm will grab F2 with only the Control modifier.  This means that if Caps Lock is in effect, control-F2 will not activate olwm’s passive grab, and thus this function will not work.  You can work around this problem by specifying that olwm should grab any modifier combination, but that will conflict with other grabs on that key.  For example, you can’t bind one function to "Any F2" another function to "Control F2".  You also can’t find a single function to more than one key. 

{:heading=>"OLWM\|(\|1\|)\0\0\(em\0\0\∗(]D"}  —  Last change: 25 May 1990  —  Last change: 25 May 1990