Frames

Parts of a Window Frame

Three aspects of the general appearance of window frames are under your control.

Additionally, you can control what parts of the frame are displayed.

Figure 7-1 Frame Elements

Customizing the Window Frames

You can specify what frame components you want to appear on windows:

You can still access the functionality of any decoration you remove by binding its functions to mouse buttons or to key presses, as explained in “Mouse Button Bindings” later in this chapter.

You specify the clientDecoration and transientDecoration resources as a list of the frame elements. If the first element in the list is preceded by a plus (+) sign or has no sign preceding it, the window manager starts with no frame and assumes that the list contains those elements you want added. If the list begins with a minus (-) sign, the window manager starts with a complete frame and assumes that the list contains elements you want removed from the frame.

For example, you may want a border with only a title bar and window menu button around a particular hpterm window started as hpterm -name hp850.

   Mwm*hp850*clientDecoration: +menu

Or you could remove the title bar from all transient windows by adding the following line in your personal resources specification:

   Mwm*transientDecoration:    -title

Coloring Window Frame Elements

You can use any of the standard X11 colors listed in the rgb.txt file in /usr/lib/X11. to color frame elements. In addition, you can create your own colors using hexadecimal values (see "Color Resources" in chapter 5).

The following table lists the individual elements of inactive and active window frames, and the resources that control their color, for mwm.

The default settings provide a 3-D visual effect without you having to specify the exact colors for every frame element.

For example, the following lines in the .Xdefaults file in your home directory give the window manager frame a maroon foreground and a gray background. The background color is used to generate colors for the top and bottom shadow elements so that a 3-D effect is achieved.

   Mwm*foreground:     Maroon

   Mwm*background:     Gray

Tiling Window Frames With Pixmaps

A pixmap can be used to create shades of colors. Each pixmap is composed of tiles. A tile is a rectangle that provides a surface pattern or a visual texture by "mixing" the foreground and background colors into a color pattern.

The following table lists the acceptable values for pixmap resources:

The following figure illustrates the valid tile values:

Figure 7-2 Valid Tile Values

Matting Clients

A matte is a 3-D border just inside the window between client area and window frame.

The following table lists matte elements and the resources that control their color.

The values to use for tiling mattes are shown in “Tiling Window Frames With Pixmaps”.

For example, you could place a different matte around all instances of hpterm and xterm windows by including the following lines in your personal resources specifications:

   Mwm*HPterm*matteWidth:        10

   Mwm*HPterm*matteBackground:   SkyBlue

   Mwm*XTerm*matteWidth:         10

   Mwm*XTerm*matteBackground:    Tan

Frame Resources For Monochrome Displays

If mwm determines that the monitor is monochrome, and no color resources are specified for frame elements, mwm uses defaults appropriate for monochrome displays. Mwm*background and Mwm*activeBackground are set to White. The following table lists the frame elements, resources, and defaults for monochrome monitors.

The sys.Xdefaults file contains a set of entries that provides a more attractive window shading for monochrome displays. These entries start with mwm_bw, and require that you start mwm with the name mwm_bw. To do this, edit the following line in .x11start:

   mwm & #Starts the mwm window manager

to read:

   mwm -name mwm_bw & #Starts the mwm window manager

You must restart X11 in order for this change to take effect.

When you start the window manager with a new name, it will no longer see resources of the form mwm*resource. It will see the class resources Mwm*resource.