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Jim's Window Maker Patches

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News
Current Patches
What Do I Do with These?
Patch Descriptions
Obsolete Patches
- Disable Defaults Polling
- Definable Mouse Cursors

There's more stuff related to Window Maker nearby.

News

2001-Aug-13 New patches for WindowMaker-0.65.1. Includes clip-caption and menu-mapping patches, as well as new improvement for workspace numbering with wmsetbg.
2001-Jan-13 New patches for WindowMaker-0.63.1. Includes clip-caption, menu-mapping, and no-polling patches.
2000-Apr-12 New clip-caption, menu-mapping, and no-polling patches for WindowMaker-0.62.1. The definable-cursor patch is included in Window Maker as of version 0.62.0.

Current Patches

WindowMaker-0.65.1-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.65.1-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.65.1-wmsetbg-workspace-number.patch

What Do I Do with These?

If you're not sure what a patch is, or if you know what patches are but aren't sure how to apply them, have a look at this brief explanation of patches and how to use them.

The position of the workspace name and workspace number on the Clip as it comes by default is aesthetically displeasing [2 kB, JPEG, 64x64]. Additionally, the 'balloon' that pops up to display the entire workspace name is inconsistent with the rest of Window Maker ... why not use the same balloons that are used for appicons, miniwindows, and incomplete window titles?

This patch does the following:

Makes the arrangement of the captions on the Clip more aesthetically pleasing [2 kB, JPEG, 64x64] by putting the workspace number in the lower-right corner and the workspace name in the upper-left.
If the workspace name is too long, and if multi-byte characters are not being used, instead of being truncated, the caption is shortened using an ellipsis [2 kB, JPEG, 64x64], just like window and miniwindow titles that are too long.
Replaces the inconsistent Clip balloon with a balloon just like appicon/miniwindow/window-title balloons. This balloon follows the setting of the AppIconBalloons key in ~/GNUstep/Defaults/WindowMaker.

Beginning with WindowMaker-0.61.1-clip-captions.patch, the 'new' (i.e., patched) behavior depends on the symbol PRETTY_CLIP_CAPTIONS to be #define'd in src/wconfig.h.in. Thanks to Bryan Chan.

WindowMaker-0.65.1-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.64.0-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.63.1-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.62.1-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.61.1-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.53.0-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.52.0-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.51.2-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.51.1-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.51.0-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.50.1-clip-captions.patch
WindowMaker-0.50.0-clip-captions.patch

Better Menu Mapping

The position at which menus pop up relative to the mouse cursor is somewhat inconsistent throughout Window Maker. For instance, the Applications and Windows menus pop up centered horizontally around the cursor, while the Clip menu (brought up with [RightButtonDown] on the Clip tile) pops up with the lefthand corner of the menu at the cursor. The Dock tile menu, on the other hand ([RightButtonDown] on a Dock tile) pops up at the right or left edge of the screen, depending on which side the Dock is on.

This patch does the following:

Makes the horizontal positioning of all the menus consistent throughout Window Maker; by default, they are horizontally centered around the cursor. The position relative to the cursor can be configured by changing the definition of DEF_MENU_RELPOS in wconfig.h.in (the value is in tenths of a percent of the width of the menu; read the comments around wMenuCalculatePosition() in the patch for more info). This allows folks to easily experiment with the positioning of menus relative to the cursor (for example, popping them up with the right-hand corner at the mouse cursor).
Makes all menus pop up so that they are always on the screen horizontally, unless they are larger than the screen, in which case the left edge of the menu is always on the screen. Vertical positioning follows the setting of the ScrollableMenus key in ~/GNUstep/Defaults/WindowMaker. In particular, this makes the Clip menus easier to use no matter where on the screen the Clip is positioned.
Concentrates the code for calculating menu positions in one spot, significantly cleaning up the code, which has several ad-hoc calculations in different spots.

WindowMaker-0.65.1-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.64.0-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.63.1-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.62.1-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.61.1-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.53.0-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.52.0-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.51.2-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.51.1-map-menu.patch
WindowMaker-0.51.0-map-menu.patch

Improved Workspace Numbering with wmsetbg

Window Maker's wmsetbg helper utility is a convenient way to set workspace backgrounds ("wallpaper"). It's even pretty smart about setting different backgrounds for different workspaces (so you can tell at a glance---on a fast machine---which workspace you're on).

Unfortunately, wmsetbg suffers from a common user-interaction problem peculiar to programs written in C and its relatives: the programs (actually, the compilers) usually begin counting with the number zero, but human beings begin counting with the number one. If you use wmsetbg with the -w option to set the background for a specific workspace, wmsetbg thinks the first workspace is Workspace 0 (zero), when human beings---and even Window Maker, to Alfredo's and Dan's credit---call the first workspace Workspace 1 (one).

This patch puts wmsetbg back into its rightful place as a helper program and makes it count like humans are used to counting, instead of forcing humans to count like a C compiler.

It also fixes a related problem i've encountered: When no workspace-specific backgrounds are set, the first time i set one, wmsetbg acts like it counts beginning with 1 (one), but the next time i set a workspace-specific background---even the same one---wmsetbg acts like it counts from 0 (zero) again. This may ultimately be a bug in libPropList, but the way this patch rearranges the calls to PLInsertArrayElement() and PLRemoveArrayElement() makes things work consistently.

WindowMaker-0.65.1-wmsetbg-workspace-number.patch
WindowMaker-0.64.0-wmsetbg-workspace-number.patch

Obsolete Patches

Disable Defaults Polling

NOTE: This patch is integrated into Window Maker as of version 0.64.0. If you have that version or later, you don't need the no-polling patch.

In its default configuration, Window Maker polls for changes in its defaults (~/GNUstep/Defaults/*) every 3 seconds or so. This enables Window Maker to automagically detect and react to configuration changes as they occur.

Unfortunately, for mobile computing environments, this can make it somewhat difficult to let disks spin down in order to conserve power. You can run Window Maker with the --static command-line option to disable the polling, but this also disables writing changes to window attributes, the Dock and Clip state, etc.

This patch enables a --no-polling command-line option (as long as the symbol ENABLE_NO_POLLING is #define'd in src/wconfig.h.in) which disables the three-second polling.

Window Maker will still react to configuration changes made with setstyle and WPrefs. In addition, this patch enables Window Maker to reread its configuration when it receives a USR2 signal (killall -USR2 wmaker will do this on some systems).

WindowMaker-0.63.1-no-polling.patch
WindowMaker-0.62.1-no-polling.patch
WindowMaker-0.61.1-no-polling.patch

Definable Mouse Cursors

NOTE: This patch is integrated into Window Maker as of version 0.62.0. If you have that version or later, you don't need to apply the definable-cursor patch.

Window Maker uses its own idea of what mouse cursors are good to use and nifty to look at. This patch allows user-definable cursors. In particular, the patch allows windows to inherit the root-window cursor instead of setting a specific cursor for each window; this means that xsetroot -cursor and xsetroot -cursor_name will now work as expected (though with this patch it's not necessary to use xsetroot to customize your cursor).

More information is available in a separate README.

There are a few cursor bitmaps available nearby that work nicely with this patch.