WindowMaker

Introduction

So you've been round the labs a few times and seen those computer science nerds who have these weird terminals set up with groovy backgrounds, colour schemes, and numerous other programs running in weird and wacky ways. Then you sit down, log into your very own Unix box, and gaze aimlessly into that MS Windows-like background while wondering if there could possibly be some way to make your terminal look and feel even slightly better than that 3-semester-old piece of gum you found under your seat in the 5B111 ``meat locker'' lecture theatre.

Well I have two words (seamlessly blended together with capitals replacing spaces as the dominate separator to give the impression of a modern, dramatic, and high-tech experience) for you: WindowMaker.

Welcome to the first day of your new life. Let me open your eyes and enlighten you.

WindowMaker is basically a fully customisable solution to all your uni-bum needs. It's the easy way of changing your background, changing the colour scheme of your terminal, adding fancy icons, and adding to the overall appearance of that terminal which you find yourself sitting at 24/7.

Installation

All the relevant WindowMaker files are downloaded and ready to go. All you have to do is two simple steps:

1. Log into your account and bring up a terminal window and make sure you are in your home directory (/home/YourUserName). Now simply type wmaker.inst. Accept all the defaults except one: if you are asked if you wish to alter a file during installation, say ``No''. We will be doing this in step two.

2. The next thing you need to do is alter that file you said you didn't want to alter during installation. It should already be in your home directory and is called .xinitrc (use ls -a to have make sure it's there). Open this file using some text editor you are familiar with. Edit the file so that it looks similar to the following (if you don't have to edit it, don't):

# Window Maker default X session startup script

PATH="\$PATH:/usr/local/bin"

# If you login from xdm, uncomment this to make error messages appear
# in the console window.
#
# tail -f /home/YourUserName/.xsession-errors > /dev/console &

exec wmaker

You now need to make sure you have the .xsession file in your home directory. If you don't have this file you need to create it, save it, and call it .xsession. The only thing in this file should be the following:

exec wmaker

Wow, that was complex wasn't it?

That's it. All you have to do now is log out of your terminal totally and then log back in again. You should find yourself presented with a very plain environment just waiting for you to configure.

Getting Familiar With WindowMaker

The Menus

WindowMaker is not hard to use. That's what makes it good. There are a few things you have to learn though.

The first is the Applications menu. This can be brought up by right-clicking anywhere on the screen. The menu contains all your basic programs, text editors, and image editors. It also contains a number of customisation tools, and the exit button. To get rid of the menu simply left-click anywhere outside of it.

If you click the middle button of your mouse you will bring up the Windows menu. This is a list of all the windows you have running on your desktop. The current active window will be marked by a diamond. Selecting any of these windows in the list will bring that application to the front of screen and make it active. To get rid of the Windows menu simple left-click anywhere outside of it.

Both these menus can be positioned on your desktop on a more permanent basis. Open one of the menus and click on its title-bar (that top bar that has the menu's name on it). You will see that a appears in the `title bar' (this is the close window box - it closes the current window). If you left-click outside of the menu now, it will not disappear. In fact it will remain on the desktop until you click its close-window button.

The Current Window menu can be brought up by right-clicking anywhere in a window's title bar. It is specific to that window and contains such goodies as resize, move, kill and shade. These will be explained in more detail later.

Windows

Changing Size (resize and move)

Every time you open an application a `window' appears in which that application is run. The window contains a `title bar' up the top, and a `resize bar' down the bottom. Thats really all there is to it. To resize the window you use the resize bar:

To change the window's height, click in the middle region of the resize bar and drag it vertically. To change the window's width, click in either end regions of the resize bar and drag it horizontally. To change both height and width at the same time, click in either end regions of the resize bar and drag it diagonally.

To move the window, you drag the title bar to where you want the window to move to.

I'll just add a little something here while talking about windows and moving/resizing. You may encounter a problem with the window's title bar being placed `off-screen' and thus being unable to move the window back into the visible section of the desktop. Many WindowMaker FAQs try to address this but they don't all work due to various version issues. The best way I have found is to do the following:

Select the window from the Windows menu (middle-click) to make the window active. Press the Ctrl and Esc keys together to bring up the Current Window menu. You may not be able to see the menu as it may also be off-screen. However, if you simply press the Down key, it should appear. Using the arrow keys, select ``Resize/Move'' from the menu. This should select the whole window. Use the arrow keys to move the window back into the screen (make sure you can see its title bar). When the window is positioned where you want it, press Enter. Now it's just a matter of moving and resizing to suit your desktop.

Changing Appearance (kill, minimise, maximise, shade)

Windows can also be killed, minimised, maximised, and shaded.

Killing a window is basically closing it and any program running within it.

Minimising a window relegates it to its `appicon' (the icon down the bottom of the screen). To unminimise a window, double click its appicon or select the window in the Windows menu (middle-click).

Maximising the window forces it to cover the whole desktop (is this all starting to sound a little familiar?). Both kill and minimise have buttons on the title bar, but maximise is to be found by right-clicking the title bar and bringing up the Current Window menu. To unmaximise a window, bring up the Current Window menu and select ``Unmaximise''.

Shading a window is both groovy and functional. It allows you to hide almost all of the window, leaving only its title bar. To shade a window, double click its title bar. To unshade a window, double click its title bar again.

Shading is especially useful when programming. It allows you to have all the programs files neatly stacked underneath each other yet allows you to display only the file you are currently working on. It give quicker and move convenient access to the files than can be achieved by minimising all of them.

The Dock

You will notice that on the side of your screen (the right side by default) there are some icons for various applications such as the terminal window.

You can open the application associated with these icons by simply double clicking them (much like the icons on a windows desktop). Later you will see that you can add any number of icons to the dock to allow easy access to the more common tasks.

The Clip

On the left side of your screen (by default) is the clip. The clip is much like the dock except that it also allows you to change workspaces (if you have more than one), and allows you to play with the icons on your dock.

Changing The Background

The first thing you're going to want to do is change the background to something a little more appealing. This is very easy to do. Simply bring up the Applications menu (right-click) and select Appearance Background (Solid or Gradient or Images)

You can choose from a number of (boring) included backgrounds or you may want to get something with a bit more bite.

Find any .jpg image you want to use as a background. You must save it into the directory:

/home/YourUserName/GNUStep/Library/WindowMaker/Backgrounds/

which will then make it accessible to WindowMaker.

To use the images in the Backgrounds directory as backgrounds, bring up the Applications menu (right-click) and select Appearance Background Images.

You are presented with a listing of all the available images in your Backgrounds directory. Select one to use. Note: The image you select will be tiled if it does not fit onto the screen.

Applications

Applications are the main ingredient of any operating system. They are the reason why you get out of bed in the morning. You should be living and breathing applications (and if you're not, you will be). Your Unix account has a number of useful applications that you can use for a variety of things. If there is something your account doesn't provide, you can often download and run it too.

Opening Applications

To open an application you must first open the Applications menu (right-click). Select `Run' from the list of options. A dialog box appears just itching for you to insert a command. Type in the command used to open the program (I give a list of a few useful ones below). Click`Ok' and wait. Your application should open very shortly.^23.1 If it doesn't run, you probably haven't typed it in correctly.

Useful Applications

Okay, so you know how to open an application but you're still sitting there looking at a blank `Run' dialog box wondering what combination of characters you can enter to actually make something happen? Never fear. Here is a list of the good ones:

Name of Application	Description	Command
Netscape	Internet Browser	netscape
Nedit	A good, friendly text editor	nedit
ASClock	The time and date on your desktop	asclock
Terminal Window	A window into your Unix account	xterm
Adobe Acrobat Reader	Reads Adobe Acrobat files	acroread

These are some of the basic applications that you can run, but are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mass of useful applications you'll find yourself running over and over again. Some of these are covered in other chapters in this book, but you may have to venture outside this guide to find others to suit your needs.

Docking Applications

Docking

When you run an application, an `appicon' (application icon) appears at the bottom of your screen. You can `dock' any appicon to allow easy access to the application.

For example. If you find that you use Netscape Navigator frequently, you can add an icon to the dock that allows you to open Netscape simply by double-clicking it.

To dock an application, drag its appicon to the dock. Once you move it here you will be asked to enter the command used to open the application. Type in the command you use (which would be how you would open the application if you were using the ``Run'' command - eg. netscape).

The appicon is now docked and the application can be run with a double-click.

Editing Docked Application Properties

Once an application has been docked, you are able to further customise how it looks and how it is used. All this can be done by right-clicking the icon and selecting Settings.

In Settings, you can change a number of things.

Firstly, there are two options at the very top. By clicking the first check-box you can configure the application to be run at start-up (this is useful for a clock or for ICQ). The second check-box is also very useful. It protects the application from being accidently removed from the dock and lost forever. I always click this box for every application that I dock (just to be on the safe side, and because I had a few bad experiences in the beginning...).

You can also change the command that is run when the icon is double-clicked. You probably would have entered this when you docked the application, but it can be modified here.

You can also change the command used for files dropped with drag'n'drop. It really doesn't matter what you type here, but it is usually the command used to run the application followed by a d symbol.

The last useful thing you can do is change the image displayed on the icon. Click the current image and a mini icon browser is displayed. On the right you have a list of paths containing icons (some don't actually contain icons but don't worry about them). You can select any one of these paths to display (on the right) a list of icons. Clicking Preview replaces the list of names with a list of images and names making it easier to select the right icon. Select an icon and click `OK'.

Now you're finished. Click `OK' to apply the changes.

The WindowMaker Preferences Application

This application can be used to do a great deal of customisation of your WindowMaker desktop. There are just soooooo many options to choose from that it's just not worth going through all of them. However, having basically said ``stuff you - do it yourself'', I will go through a few useful things that I tend to use. So here goes nothing.

You can open the preferences program by double clicking its icon on the dock. It is already there by default and should still be there unless you ``accidently'' removed it. If it is there, and you haven't changed its icon, it will be that green icon with the GNU logo on it. If you have removed it <sup>23.2</sup> you can run it with the command /usr/local/GNUstep/Apps/WPrefs.app/WPrefs. When you open the preferences application you'll see a whole bunch of icons up the top that you can click on. Each one of these gives you more options to choose from. Take a look through them all, but don't stuff anything up. However, if you do something terrible and you do stuff up your entire WindowMaker desktop, please read the section entitled ``What To Do If You Stuff Up Everything''.

Changing The Colours Of Everything

You will soon find that almost any colour you see in WindowMaker can be changed. The window bars, the icon backgrounds, the windows resize bar (down the bottom), the menu backgrounds, everything.

Click on the second-last icon you see up the top of the preferences program. It looks like a titlebar with half of it transparent. It sits between the mouse icon and the graduation hat icon.

Up pop a few mini-windows. The one on the left lets you choose which section of WindowMaker you will change. The one on the right lets you choose between the background and the text (those tabs up the top - texture and colour). It also lets you configure the Applications menu a little bit (the options tab).

It's fairly hard to described how to do everything, so I'll just explain how to change the colour of the background and the text in the active window's titlebar.

1. Click on `Focused Window' on the left. Make sure the `Texture' tab is selected on the right. `Focused' will already be highlighted on the right indicating we are changing the background of the focused window's titlebar.
2. Click on `Edit' (that colourful icon near the middle).
3. When the window comes up with lots of options, select an option from the pull-down menu. If you have a JPG image saved somewhere in your account, you can make that image the background. If you don't, you can have just a solid colour or a gradient (two colours) for the background. We'll just use a solid colour, so select `Solid Color' from the menu.
4. Click on that box with `Default Color' written on top of it. This brings up another menu.
5. As you should be able to see, there are not a lot of colours to pick from here. So go ahead and click the fourth icon near the top of this window. It looks like a list with some colours next to the text.
6. From the window that comes up, select a colour you would like as the background for the window's titlebar. As you can see, most of these colours don't exist (if you are in the big Unix lab that is). Some will exist no matter where you log in from, so pick one of those.
7. Once you have selected a colour, it appears in the `Default Colour' section of the previous window. Go ahead and close the colour choosing window, then click `OK'. Now click `Save'.

That's it, the colour is changed. The same process applies for changing the colour of the text, as well as choosing gradient colours (but you have to choose at least two). To use a texture, new options will appear that let you get the texture and change the colour of it. You'll see it all as you go along. Just remember, if you don't click `Save', it won't change anything.

Note: if you find it hard to change the background colour of the icons in the dock (due to the preferences program killing itself) you will need to go to another Unix lab (such as 442) where the colours are better (don't ask).

What To Do If You Stuff Up Everything

The way I see it, you have a number of options. I have designed a troubleshooter similar to a Windows version. It should be easy to use for all you Bill Gates wannabes.

1. Pray - put your hands together, say a prayer, close your eyes... then open them. Things should be back to normal.

   If everything worked fine, thank you for using this troubleshooter. If things are not back to normal, proceed to Step 2.

2. Get angry, really angry. Hit the computer a few times (it helps the computer understand that it is not in charge of its own decisions). See how far you can throw the mouse and the keyboard - but don't destroy the monitor (those things cost money). These acts of violence should shock the computer into fixing itself.

   If everything worked fine, thank you for using this troubleshooter. If things are not back to normal, proceed to Step 3. If you hurt your back and now require medical attention, consult your nearest GP.

3. Have a good cry. Computers have feelings too. When it sees you crying like a big girl it will respond by fixing things for you. Pretending you are going to end it all right then and there seems to make the computer respond faster.

   If everything worked fine, thank you for using this troubleshooter. If things are not back to normal, proceed to Step 4. If you forgot to pretend and are now dead, you are a fool.

4. There is a magic button on the computer which turns things it on and off. Locate this button and repeatedly turn the machine on and off to try and shake it out of its angry mood. After a few presses, let the machine reboot. Things should magically appear normal again.

   If everything worked fine, thank you for using this troubleshooter. If things are not back to normal, proceed to Step 5.

5. This troubleshooter was unable to determine the solution to your problem. Please consult the Web for further advice.

What Really To Do If You Stuff Up Everything

A Final Word

You should now have WindowMaker installed and somewhat configured to your liking. Now you can go add lots of applications to your Dock and Clip, such as word processors, Web browsers, and really fun games!^23.3

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