amiwm(1)

✨ amiwm ✨, aka the amiwm(1) manual 💖 It's from the General Commands Manual, so very official 🎀 but I'm gonna make it make sense, bestie 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

amiwm is an Amiga Workbench-like X Window Manager 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

amiwm

That's the whole synopsis, no extra flags, just run it 💅

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so amiwm is an X Window manager that tries to make your workstation look like an Amiga® 🌈 main character energy, fr fr

✨ OPTIONS ✨

Okay, so amiwm is configurable with a $HOME/.amiwmrc-file 📝 It can hold some or all of the following options, so pick your faves 💜

• FastQuit: {yes|no} — decides whether amiwm just quits straight away when you pick the Quit menu item, instead of popping up a requester. (on/off or true/false work too, instead of yes/no.) 🚪
• SizeBorder {right|bottom|both|none} — picks which border gets enlarged when a sizegadget is around 📐
• ForceMove {manual|auto|always} — lets you move windows outside the perimeter of the root window 🪟 With manual you hold shift, with auto you drag at least 25% of the window offscreen, and always is exactly what it sounds like 🦋
• IconDir path — the directory where amiwm goes looking for icons 📂
• DefaultIcon name — the filename of the .info file used as the default icon. It's relative to the IconDir 🧸
• IconPalette {system|magicwb|schwartz|“filename"} — picks the palette for icons 🎨 system is the Workbench® default palette, magicwb is the MagicWorkbench standard palette, and schwartz is the 16 color palette used on the "Eric Schwartz Productions CD Archive". You can also give the filename of a PPM file that holds the palette you want.
• ScreenFont “fontname" — the font for windowtitles etc. 🔤
• IconFont “fontname" — the font for icontitles 💬
• {detailpen|blockpen|textpen|shinepen|shadowpen|fillpen|filltextpen|backgroundpen|highlighttextpen|bardetailpen|barblockpen|bartrimpen} “colorname" — tweaks the colour scheme for the window manager 🌸
• CustomIconsOnly {yes|no} — stops apps from showing their own icons when they're iconified 🙅‍♀️ Only the icons you define in amiwmrc for each app get used. This matters because app icons are all over the place, some 32x32, some 128x128 or even bigger.. 😭 With this on, you get to decide which icon each app uses. If you haven't defined any custom icons at all, def_tool.info gets used for every iconified app.
  • Format is: style { class "myClass" icon "myIcon.info" }
  • To find a program's class, run xlsclients -l to list the open apps, then xprop -id <0x0000000> to see a given app's properties.
  • Use either the WM_CLASS or WM_ICON_NAME strings in amiwmrc.
• ShortLabelIcons {yes|no} — chops down the text for iconified programs ✂️ With this on, the text is limited to 8 chars + "..", which is handy if you don't want super long strings 🙈
• TitleBarClock {yes|no} — shows a clock in the titlebar, with the date and time ⏰
• TitleClockFormat [<number>] time string — lets you pick a new format for the Title Bar Clock 🕰️ The time string is formatted with the standard strftime() parameters. The default is "%c". Apparently "%a %b %e %Y %l:%M %p" also works really well. The number is the update interval in seconds.
• ToolItem “name" “command" “hotkey" — adds an item to the Tools menu with the name you give it, which runs the command when selected 🛠️ Pass a single uppercase letter as the third argument and that letter becomes a hotkey for the item 🔑
• ToolItem Separator — drops a separator bar into the Tools menu ➖
• ToolItem “name" { <tool item commands>} — makes a submenu with the given name, stuffed full of ToolItems 📂 Heads up: you can't put a submenu inside another submenu, that's not legal 🚫
• Screen [<number>] “name" — creates a new screen with that name. It goes below all the screens created earlier 🖥️ To move a window to another screen, iconify it and drag the icon over to the other screen. If you give the second argument, the screen gets placed on the corresponding X screen.
• ModulePath “path(:path...)" — sets one or more directories where amiwm looks for module binaries 📦 The default is AMIWM_HOME. Note that module binaries cannot be shared amongst different architectures ⚠️
• Module “name" ["initstring"] — starts a module with the given name. If you give an initstring, it gets sent to the module. There are two modules shipped with amiwm, Background and Keyboard 🎹 They're documented in the file README.modules. If a module is limited to a single screen, like the Background module, the screen that was created last is the one used 🖼️
• InterScreenGap number — the size, in pixels, of the "video DMA off" area that shows up between screens when they're dragged 📏
• AutoRaise {yes|no} — decides whether windows get moved to the front when they're activated 🆙
• Focus {followmouse|sloppy|clicktotype} — sets the policy for how windows get focus 👆
  • followmouse is the default, and means the window under your mouse pointer has focus.
  • sloppy means the window that had focus last keeps it when the pointer isn't over a window.
  • clicktotype is the original AmigaOS policy, where you have to explicitly give a window focus by clicking in it.

✨ TROUBLESHOOTING ✨

Okay bestie, this part is important 🥺 The most likely reason amiwm crashes is if it can't find its default icon, or if that icon isn't accepted as a *.info file.

💀 If this happens, amiwm will dump core. 💀

So make sure either make install runs successfully (then amiwm will know where its icon is), or that .amiwmrc has a correct specification of the icon's location 🫶

✨ FILES ✨

Here's where your config lives 📁

• $HOME/.amiwmrc
• $AMIWM_HOME/system.amiwmrc

✨ COPYRIGHT NOTICES ✨

This program is distributed as freeware 🎁 The copyright remains with the author. See the file LICENSE for more information. Amiga and Workbench are registered trademarks of AMIGA International Inc. 🙏

✨ AUTHOR ✨

Marcus Comstedt, marcus@mc.pp.se 💜 The legend himself 👑

That's the tea, bestie 🍓 This page is dated 19 Jul 2010, and it's the amiwm(1) page, obviously 🧚💅