wmx is another window manager for X. It is based on wm2 and provides a similarly unusual style of window decoration; but in place of wm2's minimal functionality it offers many of the features of more conventional managers, often in the most simplistic implementations imaginable.
Documentation can be found in the man page - you can read it with man:
# when wmx is installed:
$ man wmx
# GNU
$ man ./wmx.1
# BSD
$ mandoc wmx.1 | less
wmx should build on any Unix machine with X11. In particular, it uses Xpm, Xkb, Freetype, and strl* functions.
You might want to change the settings for wmx to suit your desires, and edit the Makefile as needed for your platform. By default, it should work out of the box on most OSes, but should be tweaked if you're not running a typical Linux system. After that, you should be able to simply run make.
As of May 2014, wmx supports the ability to be controlled remotely. A wmxc
program is included to make it easier for scripts and other usage.
Some versions of xterm and rxvt run badly with wmx. If you use xterm and find that it refreshes the window excessively slowly, you might like to try experimenting with a different terminal emulation program. I think it might help to ensure that the scrollbar is on the right-hand side of the rxvt window and is thick enough that wmx's resize handle doesn't obscure any of the text area.
As of this release, wmx now includes a significant amount of support for the NETWM extended window manager hints, enough to make it usable as the primary window manager with a GNOME or KDE desktop. This support is incomplete; fixes and improvements will be welcomed (more than bug reports will).
wmx was written by Chris Cannam, recycling a lot of code and structure from "9wm" by David Hogan.
The sideways tabs on the window frames were Andy Green's idea.
Alan Richardson's "xvertext" font-rotation routines are used for the window tabs.
Kazushi (Jam) Marukawa provided internationalisation code, which I think is currently only tested for Japanese; see README.contrib for his notes and copyright notice.
Jeremy Fitzhardinge provided the original application-menu code.
The dynamic configuration code is mostly due to Stefan `Sec' Zehl.
Multiheaded X support is due to Sven Oliver `SvOlli' Moll.
NETWM support for use with desktop environments was based on a substantial patch from James Montgomery sent to the wmx mailing list in November 2000. A mere seven years later, I got around to integrating and updating the patch, and only eight years and two months after the original patch, here it is in a release. Sorry about that.
Earlier Gnome support was mostly due to Henri Naccache, as is the support for shaped clients.
This release contains code and bug fixes provided by Eric Marsden, Lasse Rasinen, Bill Spitzak, Jacques Garrigue, Stefan `Sec' Zehl, Sven Oliver Moll, Richard Sharman, Martin Andrews, Glyn Faulkner, Zvezdan Petkovic, Damion Yates, Teemu Voipio, Ben Stern and, well, probably several other people.
This wmx fork is currently maintained by Calvin Buckley.
If you want to hack the code into something else for your own amusement, please go ahead. Feel free to modify and redistribute, as long as you retain the original copyrights as appropriate.
There is a mailing list for discussion of wm2 and wmx, hosted by majordomo at 42.org. To subscribe, send email to majordomo@42.org with "subscribe wmx" in the body of the mail. The list is archived on the web at http://ml.42.org/wmx/.
The original wmx website can be found at Chris Cannam's website.
Calvin Buckley calvin@openmailbox.org, May 2014