AfterStep(1x)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so bestie, meet AfterStep — she's an X11 window manager. that's the whole name section. short, sweet, main character energy. this is the manual page AfterStep(1x), and we're about to read all of it together. 💅

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🎀 STANDARD OPTIONS 🎀

okay so here's the list of command line options that all AfterStep modules and applications support. every single one of them. no skipping, i promised. 🌸

• -v, --version — shows you the version info, then dips. ✨
• -c, --config — shows you the Config information, then stops. 🎀
• -h, --help — spills the usage information and then stops. 🦋
• --debug — Debugging: she runs in Synchronous mode.
• -s, --single — Run on single screen only. one screen, one vibe. 💅
• -r, --restart — runs like she was restarted. same as a regular startup, except it runs RestartFunction instead of InitFunction. glow-up without the full reboot. 🔥
• -d, --displayval — tell her which X display to connect to. this overrides the $DISPLAY environment variable. she's not asking, she's telling.
• -f, --config-fileval — read all the config from the file you asked for. use this if you wanna use .steprc instead of the standard config files. 📁
• -p, --user-dirval — read all the config from the dir you asked for. use it to override the config location that was requested at compile time.
• -g, --global-dirval — use the dir you asked for as a shared config dir. use it to override the shared config location that was requested at compile time.
• -V, --verbosity-levelval — change how chatty AfterStep's output is. 0 disables any output; 1 allows only error messages; 5 gives you both errors and warnings (and that's the default). 🗣️
• --windowval — Internal Use: Window in which action occurred. Interface part which has triggered our startup.
• --contextval — Internal Use: Context in which action occurred. Interface part which has triggered our startup.
• --lookval — read the look config from the file you asked for. use it if you want a different look instead of whatever got selected from the menu. 👀
• --feelval — read the feel config from the file you asked for. use it if you want a different feel instead of whatever got selected from the menu. 💜
• --themeval — read the theme config from the file you asked for. use it if you want a different theme instead of whatever got selected from the menu. 🌈
• -l, --logval — save all output into the file instead of printing it to the console. 🍓
• -L, --localeval — set the language locale. this one gets used while displaying text.
• --mynameval — overrides the module name. she'll use it while parsing config files and while reporting back to AfterStep.
• --geometryval — overrides the module's geometry. 📐
• --gravityval — overrides the module's gravity. 🪐

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🌈 the new architectural changes 🌈

okay so AfterStep has been almost entirely rewritten in this new incarnation, and here is the short list of new architectural changes, fr fr:

• 1.1. A brand new high performance and high quality image handling engine got developed to fulfill all the GUI needs. it does different image transformations — scaling, tiling, cropping, blurring, blending of an arbitrary number of layers, in-memory image compression — plus support for 12 different file formats, including its very own parser/writer of XPM files, which is capable of achieving much better performance than the default libXpm. the supported image formats are:

XPM, PNG, JPEG, XCF(GIMP image format), PPM, PNM, BMP, ICO, CUR, GIF, TIFF, and XML scripts.

and those XML scripts? they let a user create a script of transformations to be performed on the image at the time when it gets loaded. libAfterImage also provides support for TTF fonts (using libfreetype) and smoothed standard X raster fonts. ✨

• 1.2. Window hints handling has been rewritten and reorganized, and most of the Extended WM specs has been incorporated as well, plus better support for Motif, ICCCM and old GNOME hints has been implemented. 👑
• 1.3. All the GUI rendering code has been aggregated into libAfterStep, and now all the GUI elements are rendered using a consistent approach in every module and every part of the AfterStep proper. from now on, the interface is built from so called TBars. a TBar is a rectangular area that may be focused (hilited) or unfocused, and pressed or unpressed. each TBar has the following structure:
  • the background of the TBar, which is defined by MyStyle and the state of the bar — there are two MyStyles assigned to each TBar, one for the focused and one for the unfocused state.
  • tiles of the TBar. Tiles are smaller features that get arranged inside the bar according to its size, alignment, position and order. Tiles could be static icons (which cannot be pressed); blocks of buttons — each having two shapes, pressed and normal; Text labels; Empty space tiles.
  • there could be up to 256 tiles, each residing on one of the cells in a 16x16 grid. several tiles could reside in a single cell, in which case they get superimposed on top of each other.
  • bevel of the TBar. when a TBar is rendered, all of its tiles are superimposed on top of its background, and the resulting image will have a 3D bevel drawn on it, using colors from the same MyStyle as used for the background. the bevel could be switched off partially or entirely. respective configuration options has been added where appropriate. when a TBar is pressed — its bevel is inverted.
  • when a TBar is rendered, all of its elements gets superimposed on top of each other using one of 13 blending methods supported by libAfterImage, with the default being simple alphablending. see MyFrame configuration for more details. this is referred to as the "Composition Method". 💅
• 1.4. because AfterStep is using compression to store images in memory, there's no need to have a separate root background handler anymore — so asetroot has been discontinued, and afterstep proper now does all the root background loading. you could simply copy-and-paste your asteroot config into your look file. bonus: this has the added advantage of simplifying theme support for root backgrounds. 🖼️
• 1.5. significant work has been done to create libAfterConf, which provides easy means for reading configuration options, and facilitates implementation of any configuration tool. 🛠️
• 1.6. some work has been done to improve support for themes. AfterStep proper and modules now load configuration files in this order:

#1 — base config; #2 — look, feel, menu, database, autoexec and module specific config; #3 — theme file; #4 — theme override file;

the theme override file is needed so that a user may have a list of critical options that he/she does not want to be changed by any theme. what is missing here is a comprehensive theme building tool. 😭

• 1.7. AfterStep now makes extensive use of X shaped extensions (where available). everything could be shaped now — titlebars, Pager, Wharf, etc. to make some element shaped, a MyStyle with BackPixmap type 125 or 126 should be used. 🦋
• 1.8. Menus are now treated the same as regular windows. they could be configured in the database file using the preset Style "ASMenu" to have different titlebar buttons, frame decorations, stickiness, etc. MenuPinOn has been changed to be just another titlebar button, with the PinMenu function assigned to it. 📌
• 1.9. AfterStep no longer uses a fixed scheme of 5 titlebar buttons on each side, and the order of buttons could be configured in the look. there is still a limitation to have no more than 10 buttons total. 🔟

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this manual came to you from the 3rd Berkeley Distribution, and it's for AfterStep v.2.2.12. now go forth and rice your desktop. 💖✨