[news] TWM -- Revised Edition

[Eeri Kask]

"Tom LaStrange" <tom at lastrange.com> wrote:
> Wow. It's alive!

Sure alive, and still one among the fastest and most flexible
X11-window managers.  Its focus forwarding by the icon manager, and the
functionality to decouple keyboard from mouse to attach these to
unrelated applications are unique and very valuable features in some of
todays non-common, i.e. non-office-desktop environments.

If looking left and right, it appears many window managers differ
largely only in how they paint window edges, and one asks how this
aspect is the window managers business at all (besides doing window
placement-, iconregion-, colormap-, and maybe focus management -- all
non-pixelcolouring activities).  Window decorations managers running in
the background (e.g. xcompmgr) can do it well as well, and/or the widget
providing the top-level window ... e.g. put a handful of strawberries
ontop of the upper edge or something, whatever pleases the user. :-)

Though, TWM needs some behavioural updates to cope with ... e.g.
situations like some people entering the office and suddenly grab your
keyboard in the middle of your typing, or disconnect it altogether as
they leave; e.g. it is not uncommon applications consider executing

    XSetInputFocus (dpy, None, RevertToNone, CurrentTime);

right in front of  "exit(0);"  a good idea even if they don't own the
focus... and all like that.

Greetings,

    Eeri Kask