Hackedbox(1)

NAME 💖

Hackedbox(1) — okay bestie, this is the manual page for Hackedbox, the window manager. That’s the name, that’s the whole vibe. 💅

SYNOPSIS ✨

The quick-start tea, exactly like this:

Hackedbox -help | -version
Hackedbox [ -rc rcfile ] [ -display display ]

DESCRIPTION 🦋

Hackedbox is a stripped down version of Blackbox - The X11 Window Manager (http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/). The toolbar and Slit have been removed, periodt. The goal of Hackedbox is to be a small 'feature-set' window manager, with no bloat. There are no plans to add any functionality, only bugfixes and speed enhancements whenever possible. That’s the assignment. 🎀

Hackedbox provides configurable window decorations and a root menu to launch applications. There is also a workspace menu to add or remove workspaces. Lowkey essential, fr fr.

Hackedbox features a special kind of icon handling: when you minimize a window, no icon appears; instead, you can view all minimized applications in the Icons submenu of the workspace menu. Your desktop will never get cluttered with icons. Iconic behavior, honestly. 🦋

As an alternative to icons, shaded windows are provided: a double click on the titlebar of a window will shade it (i.e. the window will disappear; only the titlebar stays visible). By using style files, you can determine at a great level how your desktop looks. Main character desktop energy. ✨

OPTIONS 🎀

Hackedbox supports the following command line options:

• -help — Display command line options and compiled-in features, then exit. Like a little “what can u do” moment.
• -version — Display version info and exit.
• -rc rcfile — Use another rcfile than the default ~/.hackedboxrc.
• -display display — Start Hackedbox on the specified display. Programs started by Hackedbox will have the DISPLAY environment variable set to this value, too. Slay.

RUNNING HACKEDBOX 🌸

This program is usually started by the user’s startup script, most times called ~/.xinitrc. To run hackedbox, modify the script by adding:

exec hackedbox

as the last executed command of the script. When Hackedbox terminates, the X session will terminate too. No cap.

When started, Hackedbox will try to find a default menu file in ~/.hackedbox/menu. You can provide a system-wide menu for your users here.

On exit or restart, Hackedbox will save user defaults in the file ~/.hackedbox/rc in the user’s home directory. Some resources in this file can be edited by hand. Cute and customizable. 🫶

USING HACKEDBOX 💅

Hackedbox does no keyboard handling by itself; instead, it relies on an external program epist(1) for this. So this section is literally all about mouse commands, bestie.

Root window (background): 🫶

A right click (button 3) will pop up the root menu. With this, you can launch your applications. You can also customize this menu for your needs. See above for its location. A middle click (button 2) will pop up the workspace menu. You can add or remove a workspace, view applications running on all workspace, inspect your iconified applications, and jump directly to any workspace or application. So many little shortcuts, obsessed. 🌈

Left clicking (button 1) on an application in the Workspaces menu will bring you to that workspace and raise/focus that application; middle clicking (button 2) will warp the application to the current workspace. Teleportation but make it window management. ✨

Window Titlebar and Borders: 🎀

A left click on any part of the window’s border will raise it. Dragging then moves the window. Dragging the resize grips at the bottom left and bottom right corners resizes the window. Middle clicking will immediately lower the window. Right clicking on the border or titlebar pops up the window menu, containing these commands:

• Send To... — Send window to another workspace. When you select the workspace with the middle button, Hackedbox will send you, along with the application, to the selected workspace.
• Shade — Shade window (display titlebar only).
• Iconify — Iconify window. The icon can be found in the Icons submenu of the workspace menu. It will NOT appear on screen otherwise.
• Maximize — (Un)Maximize window. When you click the middle button on this item, the window will maximize only vertically.
• Raise — Raise window.
• Lower — Lower window.
• Stick — (Un)Stick window. A stuck window will always be displayed in the current workspace.
• Kill Client — Kill (-SIGKILL) owner of window. Only use this if the client refuses to close.
• Close — Close the application cleanly.

When you double click on the titlebar of a window, it will shade, so that only the titlebar stays visible. Another double click will redisplay the window contents. Little peekaboo moment, but useful. 🧚

Window Buttons: 🌸

The button at the left upper corner of a window is the Minimize button. Clicking with any button causes the window to be iconified. The rightmost button (with the X) closes the application. The other button on the right (if present) maximizes the window in three ways: Button 1 causes full screen maximization, button 2 maximizes the window only vertically, and button 3 only horizontally. Three moods, one button. 💅

Any menu: 🌈

Clicking button 3 in a menu will popdown the menu. Clicking button 1 on the titlebar of any (sub)menu and then dragging it somewhere else will cause the menu to stay visible, and not disappear when you click on a menu item. Sticky menu behavior, iykyk.

Miscellaneous: ⭐

When you want to drag a window, but cannot see either the bottom handle or its titlebar, you can press Alt + button 1 anywhere in the window and then drag it around. You can also use Alt + button 1 to raise a partially visible window. Finally, Alt + button 2 lowers a window, and Alt + button 3 resizes the window. Sneaky little mouse combos, no cap. 🫶

🎀 MENU FILE 🎀

A default menu file is installed in ~/.hackedbox/menu. Of course, this system-wide menu can be customized for all users at once. But it is also possible to create a personal menu 💖. It is a convention to create a directory ~/.hackedbox/ in your home directory, and to create a menu file, e.g. menu in this directory, or copy the system-wide menu file to this location. Next, we have to tell Hackedbox to load our menu file instead of the default. This is accomplished by adding (or changing) a resource value in the ~/.hackedbox/rc file, e.g.:

session.menuFile:       ~/.hackedbox/menu

For this change to take effect, Hackedbox has to be restarted. Be sure that your menu is usable, then choose Restart from the default Hackedbox root menu. Slay, now it's your menu 💅.

🧚 Menu syntax 🧚

The menu syntax is very simple and very effective. There are up to three fields in a menu line. They are of the form:

[tag] (label or filename) {command or filename}

The supported tags are as follows:

• [begin] (label for root menu) — This tells Hackedbox to start parsing the menu file. This tag is required for Hackedbox to parse your menu file. If it cannot find it, the system default menu is used instead.
• [end] — This tells Hackedbox that it is at the end of a menu. This can either be a submenu or the main root menu. There must be at least one of these tags in your menu to correspond to the required [begin] tag.
• [exec] (label for command) {shell command} — Inserts a command item into the menu. When you select the menu item from the menu, Hackedbox runs shell command.
• [exit] (label for exit) — Inserts an item that shuts down and exits Hackedbox. Any running programs are not closed.
• [include] (filename) — Parses the file specified by filename and includes it with the current menu. The filename can be the full path to a file, or it can begin with ~/, which will be expanded into your home directory (e.g. [include] (~/hackedbox/stylesmenu) will include /home/bhughes/hackedbox/stylesmenu in my menu).
• [nop] (label - optional) — Insert a non-operational item into the current menu. This can be used to help format the menu into blocks or sections if so desired. [nop] does accept a label, but it is not required, and a blank item will be used if none is supplied.
• [style] (label) {filename} — This tells Hackedbox to insert an item that, when selected, reads the style file named filename and applies the new textures, colors, and fonts to the current running session.
• [stylesdir] (directory name) — Reads all filenames (directories are ignored) from the specified directory and creates menu items in the current menu for every filename. Hackedbox assumes that each file is a valid style file. When selected by the user, Hackedbox applies the selected style file to the current session. The labels that are created in the menu are the filenames of the style files.
• [stylesmenu] (label) {directory name} — Creates a submenu entry with label (that is also the title of the new submenu), and inserts in that submenu all filenames in the specified directory, in the same way as the [stylesdir] command does.

Both [stylesdir] and [stylesmenu] commands make it possible to install style files without editing your menu file. Obsessed with the convenience, honestly 🫶.

• [submenu] (label) {title for menu - optional} — This tells Hackedbox to create and parse a new menu. This menu is inserted as a submenu into the parent menu. These menus are parsed recursively, so there is no limit to the number of levels or nested submenus you can have. The title for the new menu is optional; if none is supplied, the new menu's title is the same as the item label. An [end] tag is required to end the submenu.
• [reconfig] (label) — When selected, this item rereads the current style and menu files and applies any changes. This is useful for creating a new style or theme, as you don't have to constantly restart Hackedbox every time you save your style. However, Hackedbox automagically rereads the menu whenever it changes ✨.
• [restart] (label) {shell command - optional} — This tells Hackedbox to restart. If shell command is supplied, it shuts down and runs the command (which is commonly the name of another window manager). If the command is omitted, Hackedbox restarts itself.
• [config] (label) — Inserts a Hackedbox generated submenu item containing numerous configuration options concerning window placement, focus style, window moving style, etc.
• [workspaces] (label) — This tells Hackedbox to insert a link to the workspaces menu directly into your menu. This is handy for those users who can't access the workspace menu directly (e.g. if you don't have a 3 button mouse).

Any line that starts with a # is considered a comment and ignored by Hackedbox. Also, in the labels/commands/filenames fields, you can escape any character like so:

[exec] (\(my cool\) \{XTERM\}) {xterm -T \"cool XTERM\"}

Using \\ inserts a literal back-slash into the label/command/filename field.

🌈 Menu example 🌈

Now let's put together some things. Here is a short example of a menu file:

# Hackedbox menu file
[begin] (Hackedbox @version@)
  [exec] (rxvt) {rxvt -ls}
  [exec] (Mozilla) {mozilla}
  [exec] (The GIMP) {gimp}
  [submenu] (Window Manager)
    [exec] (Edit Menus) {nedit .hackedbox/Menu}
    [submenu] (Style) {Which Style?}
      [stylesdir] (~/.hackedbox/styles)
      [stylesmenu] (Hackedbox Styles) {@pkgdatadir@/styles}
    [end]
    [config] (Config Options)
    [reconfig] (Reconfigure)
    [restart] (Restart)
  [end]
  [exit] (Log Out)
[end]
# end of menu file

🎨 STYLES 🎨

okay so bestie, this is the part where Hackedbox lets you go absolutely feral with aesthetics 💅 Hackedbox enables you to use specialized files that contain X(1) resources to specify colors, textures, and fonts — and therefore the whole entire look of your window, plus the borders and the menus. it's giving interior design but for pixels.

The default installation of Hackedbox provides some of these style files. Usually they live in @pkgdatadir@/styles. You can study or edit these files to grasp how the Hackedbox style mechanism works — genuinely the best way to learn, no cap. And you can use the [style], [stylesdir] and [stylesmenu] menu commands in your menu file to select and switch between styles on the fly. iconic behavior honestly.

You can also create a directory in your home directory (usually named ~/.hackedbox/styles) and put your own style files there. Of course, you may choose any name for this directory, but many downloadable themes will rely on the name styles (following the bb.themes.org naming scheme). so like… name it styles unless you enjoy chaos 🙈

To understand how the style mechanism works, you should have a little knowledge of how X resources work.

X resources consist of a key and a value. The key is constructed of several smaller keys (sometimes referred to as children), delimited by a period (.). Keys may also contain a star (*) to serve as a wildcard, which means that one line of typed text will match several keys. This is useful for styles that are based on one or two colors. lowkey genius.

Hackedbox allows you to configure its four main components: the menus, and the window decorations.

The little window that shows the x-y position while dragging windows borrows its style from the window's titlebar. cute, right? it's reusing the fit ✨

Here are some quick examples:

toolbar.clock.color:     green

This sets the color resource of the toolbar clock to green. Another example:

menu*color:    rgb:3/4/5

This sets the color resource of the menu and all of its children to rgb:3/4/5. (For a description of color names, see X(1).) So this one also applies to menu.title.color and menu.frame.color. And with

*font:    -b&h-lucida-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-*

you set the font resource for all keys to this font name all at once. (For information about the fonts installed on your system, you can use a program like xfontsel(1), gtkfontsel, or xlsfonts(1).) 🫶

Now what makes Hackedbox just so spectacular is its ability to render textures on the fly. Texture descriptions are specified in a similar way to the colors shown above, e.g.:

toolbar.clock:         Raised Gradient Diagonal Bevel1
toolbar.clock.color:   rgb:8/6/4
toolbar.clock.colorTo: rgb:4/3/2

Don't worry; we will explain right now! A texture description consists of up to five fields, which are as follows:

• Flat / Raised / Sunken — gives the component either a flat, raised, or sunken appearance.
• Gradient / Solid — tells Hackedbox to draw either a solid color or a texture with gradient.
• Horizontal / Vertical / Diagonal / Crossdiagonal / Pipecross / Elliptic / Rectangle / Pyramid — Select one of these texture types. They only work when Gradient is also specified! ⚠️
• Interlaced — tells Hackedbox to interlace the texture (darken every other line). This option is most commonly used with gradiented textures, but, from Hackedbox version 0.60.3 on, it also works in solid textures.
• Bevel1 / Bevel2 — tells Hackedbox which type of bevel to use. Bevel1 is the default bevel. The shading is placed on the edge of the image. Bevel2 is an alternative. The shading is placed one pixel in from the edge of the image.

Instead of a texture description, the option ParentRelative is also available, which makes the component appear as a part of its parent — i.e. totally transparent. ghost mode 👻

All gradient textures are composed of two color values: the color and colorTo resources. color represents the initial color, colorTo represents the final color of the gradient. When Interlaced is used in Solid mode, the colorTo resource is used to specify the interlacing color.

Well, here is the complete component list; also, all components together with which kind of value they can contain. Comments are preceded with an exclamation sign (!), which is also used for comments in Hackedbox style c.q. X resource files. 📝

! The menu titlebar.
menu.title:                     Texture
menu.title.color:               Color
menu.title.colorTo:             Color
menu.title.textColor:           Color
menu.title.font:                Font
menu.title.justify:             center, left, or right

! The menu frame.
menu.frame:                     Texture
menu.frame.color:               Color
menu.frame.colorTo:             Color
menu.frame.textColor:           Color
menu.frame.disableColor:        Color
menu.frame.font:                Font
menu.frame.justify:             center, left, or right

! Bullets for submenu items.
menu.bullet:                    empty, triangle, square, or diamond
menu.bullet.position:           right or left

! The highlighted menu item.
menu.hilite:                    Texture (e.g. Raised)
menu.hilite.color:              Color
menu.hilite.colorTo:            Color
menu.hilite.textColor:          Color

! A focused window.
window.title.focus:             Texture
window.title.focus.color:       Color
window.title.focus.colorTo:     Color

! An unfocused window.
window.title.unfocus:           Texture
window.title.unfocus.color:     Color
window.title.unfocus.colorTo:   Color

! Window label.
window.label.focus:             Texture or ParentRelative
window.label.focus.color:       Color
window.label.focus.colorTo:     Color
window.label.focus.textColor:   Color

window.label.unfocus:           Texture or ParentRelative
window.label.unfocus.color:     Color
window.label.unfocus.colorTo:   Color
window.label.unfocus.textColor: Color

! Handlebar.
window.handle.focus:            Texture
window.handle.focus.color:      Color
window.handle.focus.colorTo:    Color

window.handle.unfocus:          Texture
window.handle.unfocus.color:    Color
window.handle.unfocus.colorTo:  Color

! Resize grips.
window.grip.focus:              Texture
window.grip.focus.color:        Color
window.grip.focus.colorTo:      Color

window.grip.unfocus:            Texture
window.grip.unfocus.color:      Color
window.grip.unfocus.colorTo:    Color

! Window buttons.
window.button.focus:            Texture or ParentRelative
window.button.focus.color:      Color
window.button.focus.colorTo:    Color
window.button.focus.picColor:   Color

window.button.unfocus:          Texture or ParentRelative
window.button.unfocus.color:    Color
window.button.unfocus.colorTo:  Color
window.button.unfocus.picColor: Color

window.button.pressed:          Texture (e.g. Sunken)
window.button.pressed.color:    Color
window.button.pressed.colorTo:  Color

! Frame around window.
window.frame.focusColor:        Color
window.frame.unfocusColor:      Color

! Font and justification for window labels.
window.font:                    Font
window.justify:                 center, left, or right

! Miscellaneous resources.

! A border can be drawn around all components.
borderWidth:                    a number of pixels, e.g. 1
borderColor:                    Color

bevelWidth:                     a number of pixels > 0
handleWidth:                    a number of pixels > 0

! Width of the window frame (from version 0.61 on).
! When not specified, frameWidth defaults to the value of bevelWidth.
frameWidth:                     a number of pixels >= 0

! This command is executed whenever this style is selected.
! Typically it sets the root window to a nice picture.
rootCommand:                    Shell command, e.g. hsetroot -mod 4 4 -fg rgb:5/6/6 -bg grey20

! Some of the bbtools read these old 0.51 resources.
menuFont:                       Font
titleFont:                      Font

Now, this seems a long list, but, remember, when you create your own style, you can easily set lots of keys with a single command, e.g.

*color:             slategrey
*colorTo:           darkslategrey
*unfocus.color:     darkslategrey
*unfocus.colorTo:   black
*textColor:         white
*unfocus.textColor: lightgrey
*font:              lucidasans-10

This sets already nice defaults for many components. slay, honestly 💅

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📁 RESOURCE FILE 📁

Usually the ~/.hackedbox/rc resource file is created and maintained by hackedbox itself. All options from the [config] menu (from 0.60.x on), the last selected style file, your workspace names and so on are saved automatically in this file. it basically journals your whole setup for you, no notes app needed 🎀

However, there are some resources in it you might want to edit yourself:

• session.menuFile — This tells Hackedbox where to look for its menu file.
• session.autoRaiseDelay — This adjusts the delay (in ms) before focused windows will raise when using the Auto Raise option. Default value is: 250.
• session.doubleClickInterval — This adjusts the delay (in ms) between mouse clicks for Hackedbox to consider a double click. Default value is: 250.
• session.screen0.edgeSnapThreshold — When moving a window across your screen, Hackedbox is able to have it snap to the edges of the screen for easy placement. This variable tells Hackedbox the distance (in pixels) at which the window will jump to the edge. Default value is: 0.
• session.cacheMax — This tells Hackedbox how much memory (in Kb) it may use to store cached pixmaps on the X server. If your machine runs short of memory, you may lower this value. Default value is: 200.
• session.cacheLife — This tells Hackedbox how long (in minutes) unused pixmaps may stay in the X server's memory. Default value is: 5.
• session.colorsPerChannel — This tells Hackedbox how many colors to take from the X server on pseudocolor displays. A channel would be red, green, or blue. Hackedbox will allocate this variable ^ 3 colors and make them always available. This value must be between 2 and 6. When you run Hackedbox on an 8-bit display, you must set this resource to 4. Default value is: 4.

heads up bestie: session.colorsPerChannel has to stay between 2 and 6, and on an 8-bit display it's gotta be 4. don't fight the rules, they're there for a reason 😭

When running Hackedbox in a multiple desktop environment, the screen0 key can also be screen1, 2 etc. for any appropriate desktop. periodt.

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🌍 ENVIRONMENT 🌍

• HOME — Hackedbox uses $HOME to find its .hackedbox/rc file, and to resolve style file and directory names. it's literally where your whole personality lives 🏠
• DISPLAY — When no other display was given on the command line, Hackedbox will start on the display specified by this variable. if you don't tell it where to go, it reads the room (and this var) 🌈

👑 AUTHOR and CREDITS 👑

Okay so bestie, credit where credit is due 💅 — all of the code is now maintained by Larry Owen (larry@scrudgeware.org). That's the person keeping the whole thing alive, so say thank you fr fr 🫶.

And if you wanna peek at the official Hackedbox website (yes, it's giving main character energy), it lives right here:

http://scrudgeware.org/projects/Hackedbox

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

Go touch these too, iykyk:

• epist(1)

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That's the whole page, bestie — you made it to the end and honestly? Iconic 💖. If you forgot anything, scroll up and reread it, no cap.

And the cute lil' sign-off at the bottom of the page says the maintainer is Larry Owen, the version is 0.8.5, and the page is Hackedbox(1) — so yeah, that's the receipt 🧾✨ slay, go hack something 🦋💜