fvwm3commands manual page

DebugRandR activates monitor layout debug messages.

FlickeringMoveWorkaround disables ConfigureNotify events that are usually sent to an application while it is moved. If some windows flicker annoyingly while being moved, this option may help you. Note that if this problem occurs it is not an fvwm bug, it is a problem of the application.

MixedVisualWorkaround makes fvwm install the root colormap before it does some operations using the root window visuals. This is only useful when the -visual option is used to start fvwm and then only with some configurations of some servers (e.g. Exceed 6.0 with an 8 bit PseudoColor root and fvwm using a 24 bit TrueColor visual).

The ModalityIsEvil option controls whether Motif applications have the ability to have modal dialogs (dialogs that force you to close them first before you can do anything else). The default is to not allow applications to have modal dialogs. Use this option with care. Once this option is turned on, you have to restart fvwm to turn it off.

RaiseOverNativeWindows makes fvwm try to raise the windows it manages over native windows of the X server’s host system. This is needed for some X servers running under Windows, Windows NT or Mac OS X. Fvwm tries to detect if it is running under such an X server and initializes the flag accordingly.

RaiseOverUnmanaged makes fvwm try to raise the windows it manages over override_redirect windows. This is used to cope with ill-mannered applications that use long-lived windows of this sort, contrary to ICCCM conventions. It is useful with the Unmanaged style option too.

FlickeringQtDialogsWorkaround suppresses flickering of the focused window in some modules when using KDE or QT applications with application modal dialog windows. By default this option is turned on. This option may be visually disturbing for other applications using windows not managed by fvwm. Since these applications are rare it is most likely safe to leave this option at its default.

QtDragnDropWorkaround suppresses the forwarding of unknown ClientEvent messages to windows — usually this is harmless, but Qt has problems handling unrecognised ClientEvent messages. Enabling this option might therefore help for Qt applications using DragnDrop. This option is off by default.

EWMHIconicStateWorkaround is needed by EWMH compliant pagers or taskbars which represent windows which are on a different desktops as iconified. These pagers and taskbars use a version of the EWMH specification before version 1.2 (the current KDE 2 & 3 versions). These pagers and taskbars use the IconicState WM_STATE state to determine if an application is iconified. This state, according to the ICCCM, does not imply that a window is iconified (in the usual sense). Turning on this option forces fvwm to establish an equivalence between the IconicState WM_STATE state and the iconified window. This violates ICCCM compliance but should not cause big problems. By default this option is off.

With the DisplayNewWindowNames enabled, fvwm prints the name, icon name (if available), resource and class of new windows to the console. This can help in finding the correct strings to use in the Style command.

When the ExplainWindowPlacement option is enabled, fvwm prints a message to the console whenever a new window is placed or PlaceAgain, is used. The message explains on which desk, page, screen and position it was placed and why. This option can be used to figure out why a specific window does not appear where you think it should.

The DebugCRMotionMethod option enables some debugging code in the ConfigureRequest handling routines of fvwm. It is not helpful for the user, but if you report a bug to the fvwm team we may ask you to enable this option.

The TransliterateUtf8 option enables transliteration during conversions from utf-8 strings. By default fvwm will not transliterate during conversion, but will fall back to alternate strings provided by the clients if conversion from utf-8 fails due to characters which have no direct correspondence in the target charecter set. Some clients however neglect to set non utf-8 properties correctly in which case this option may help.

The * option refers to all available options.

The Read option controls the PipeRead command.

The DynamicMenu option affects the DynamicPopupAction and MissingSubmenuFunction options of the AddToMenu command. If this option is set to "False", then the busy cursor is not displayed during a dynamic menu command even if this command is a Read or PipeRead command and the Read option is set to "True".

The ModuleSynchronous option affects the ModuleSynchronous command. If this option is set to "False", then the busy cursor is not displayed while fvwm waits for a module started by ModuleSynchronous to complete its startup.

The Wait option affects only the root cursor. During a wait pause the root cursor is replaced by the busy cursor and fvwm is still fully functional (you can escape from the pause, see the EscapeFunc command). If you want to use this option and if you do not use the default root cursor, you must set your root cursor with the CursorStyle command.

ClickTime also specifies the delay between two clicks to be interpreted as a double-click.

then the installed colormap is the one for the window that currently has the keyboard focus.

replaces the Ctrl-Alt-Escape key sequence with Shift-Escape for aborting a Wait pause and ModuleSynchronous command. EscapeFunc used outside the Key command does nothing.

This simulates a click with button 1 in the parent window (depth 2) with a delay of 250 milliseconds between the press and the release. Note: all command names can be abbreviated with their first letter.

Save all GVim sessions with: "Esc:w\n"

Save & exit all GVim sessions with: "Esc:wq\n"

Send A to a specific window:

Note: all command names can be abbreviated with their first letter.

instead.

instead.

instead.

If a directory is given in the form "/some/dir;.ext", this means all images in this directory have the extension ".ext" that should be forced. The original image name (that may contain another extension or no extension at all) is not probed, instead ".ext" is added or replaces the original extension. This is useful, for example, if a user has some image directories with ".xpm" images and other image directories with the same names, but ".png" images.

The path may contain environment variables such as $HOME (or ${HOME}). Further, a '+' in the path is expanded to the previous value of the path, allowing appending or prepending to the path easily.

For example:

where install_prefix is the fvwm installation directory. With such a locale path translations are searched for in

where lang depends on the locale. If no directory is given the default directory path is assumed. If no text domain is given, fvwm is assumed. Without argument the default locale path is restored.

As for the ImagePath command, path may contain environment variables and a '+' to append or prepend the locale path easily.

For example, the fvwm-themes package uses

to add locale catalogs.

The default fvwm catalog contains a few strings used by the fvwm executable itself (Desk and Geometry) and strings used in some default configuration files and FvwmForm configuration. You can take a look at the po/ subdirectory of the fvwm source to get the list of the strings with a possible translation in various languages. At present, very few languages are supported.

The main use of locale catalogs is via the "$[gt.string]" parameter:

gives a menu in the locale languages if translations are available.

Note that the FvwmScript module has a set of special instructions for string translation. It is out of the scope of this discussion to explain how to build locale catalogs. Please refer to the GNU gettext documentation.

An optional integer argument to debug log file, which defaults to $HOME/.fvwm/fvwm3-output.log . Environment variables $FVWM_USERDIR and $FVWM3_LOGFILE can alter this default. For this logfile to be written, either fvwm3 has to be started with -v option or SIGUSR2 signal can be used to toggle opening/closing debug log file.

An optional integer argument verbose defines the level of information which is given. The current valid subjects are:

Colors which prints information about the colors used by fvwm. This useful on screens which can only display 256 (or less) colors at once. If verbose is one or greater the palette used by fvwm is printed. If you have a limited color palette, and you run out of colors, this command might be helpful.

ImageCache which prints information about the images loaded by fvwm. If verbose is one or greater all images in the cache will be listed together with their respective reuse.

Locale which prints information on your locale and the fonts that fvwm used. verbose can be 1 or 2.

nls which prints information on the locale catalogs that fvwm used

style which prints information on fvwm styles. verbose can be 1.

bindings which prints information on all the bindings fvwm has: key and mouse bindings. verbose has no effect with this option.

infostore which prints information on all entries in the infostore, listing the key and its value. verbose has no effect with this option.

Note: A window’s id as it is returned with $[w.id] can be used as the command_id. Example:

The Schedule command also supports the optional keyword Periodic which indicates that the command should be executed every delay_ms. Example:

Use the Deschedule command to stop periodic commands.

instead.

The format of the geometry part is: desk(layer): x-geometry sticky, where desk and layer are the corresponding numbers and sticky is empty or a capital S. The geometry of iconified windows is shown in parentheses. Selecting an item from the window list pop-up menu causes the interpreted function "WindowListFunc" to be run with the window id of that window passed in as $0. The default "WindowListFunc" looks like this:

You can destroy the built-in "WindowListFunc" and create your own if these defaults do not suit you.

The window list menu uses the "WindowList" menu style if it is defined (see MenuStyle command). Otherwise the default menu style is used. To switch back to the default menu style, issue the command

Example:

The conditions can be used to exclude certain windows from the window list. Please refer to the Current command for details. Only windows that match the given conditions are displayed in the window list. The options below work vice versa: windows that would otherwise not be included in the window list can be selected with them. The conditions always override the options.

The position arguments are the same as for Menu. The command double-click-action is invoked if the user double-clicks (or hits the key rapidly twice if the menu is bound to a key) when bringing the window list. The double-click-action must be quoted if it consists of more than one word.

The double-click-action is useful to define a default window if you have bound the window list to a key (or button) like this:

Hitting Alt-Tab once it brings up the window list, if you hit it twice the focus is flipped between the current and the last focused window. With the proper SelectOnRelease menu style (see example above) a window is selected as soon as you release the Alt key.

The options passed to WindowList are separated by commas and can be Geometry / NoGeometry / NoGeometryWithInfo, NoDeskNum, NoLayer, NoNumInDeskTitle, NoCurrentDeskTitle, MaxLabelWidth width, TitleForAllDesks, Function funcname, Desk desknum, CurrentDesk, NoIcons / Icons / OnlyIcons, NoNormal / Normal / OnlyNormal, NoSticky / Sticky / OnlySticky, NoStickyAcrossPages / StickyAcrossPages / OnlyStickyAcrossPages, NoStickyAcrossDesks / StickyAcrossDesks / OnlyStickyAcrossDesks, NoOnTop / OnTop / OnlyOnTop, NoOnBottom / OnBottom / OnlyOnBottom, Layer m [n], UseSkipList / OnlySkipList, NoDeskSort, ReverseOrder, CurrentAtEnd, IconifiedAtEnd, UseIconName, Alphabetic / NotAlphabetic, SortByResource, SortByClass, NoHotkeys, SelectOnRelease.

(Note - normal means not iconic, sticky, or on top)

With the SortByResource option windows are alphabetically sorted first by resource class, then by resource name and then by window name (or icon name if UseIconName is specified). ReverseOrder also works in the expected manner.

With the SortByClass option windows are sorted just like with SortByResource, but the resource name is not taken into account, only the resource class.

The SelectOnRelease option works exactly like the MenuStyle option with the same name, but overrides the option given in a menu style. By default, this option is set to the left

key. To switch it off, use SelectOnRelease without a key name.

If you pass in a function via Function funcname, it is called within a window context of the selected window:

If you use the Layer m [n] option, only windows in layers between m and n are displayed. n defaults to m. With the ReverseOrder option the order of the windows in the list is reversed.

With the CurrentAtEnd option the currently focused window (if any) is shown at the bottom of the list. This is mostly intended for simulating the Alt-Tab behavior in another GUI.

IconifiedAtEnd makes iconified windows be moved to the end of the list. This is also from another GUI.

The NoGeometry option causes fvwm to not display the geometries as well as the separators which indicate the different desktops. NoGeometryWithInfo removes the geometries, but keep the desktop information and indicates iconic windows. NoDeskNum causes fvwm to not display the desktop number in the geometry or before the window title with the NoGeometryWithInfo option. NoNumInDeskTitle is only useful if a desktop name is defined with the DesktopName command. It causes fvwm to not display the desktop number before the desktop name. By default, the WindowList menu have a title which indicates the current desk or the selected desktop if the Desk condition is used. The NoCurrentDeskTitle option removes this title. TitleForAllDesks causes fvwm to add a menu title with the desk name and/or number before each group of windows on the same desk. With NoLayer, the layer of the window is not displayed. The options ShowPage, ShowPageX and ShowPageY enable displaying the page of the window rounded multiples of the display size. With ShowScreen, the window’s screen name is displayed.

The MaxLabelWidth option takes the number of characters to print as its argument. No more than that many characters of the window name are visible.

If you wanted to use the WindowList as an icon manager, you could invoke the following:

(Note - the Only options essentially wipe out all other ones…​ but the OnlyListSkip option which just causes WindowList to only consider the windows with WindowListSkip style.)

Hides or switches off the geometry window. If the optional parameters Move or Resize are given, it will only hide the geometry window during the respective operation. The parameter Never will switch the geometry back on again (equivalent to Show).

Shows or switches on the geometry window (equivalent to Hide Never). If the optional parameters Move or Resize are given, it will only show the geometry window during the respective operation. The parameter Never will switch the geometry window off (equivalent to Hide).

Sets colorset of the gometry window to cset. Use the literal option default for cset to use the default colorset.

Configures the position the geometry window appears. x and y are the relative coordinates as a percentage of the screen size. If a leading '-' is provided the coordinates are computed from the left/bottom of the screen respectively. If the coordinates are appended with a 'p', they are interpreted as the number of pixels from the respective screen edge. If no position arguments are given, the geometry window’s position will return to its default state of the upper left corner or the center if emulating MWM.

Configure which screen the geometry window is shown on. By default the geometry window is shown on the current screen. If a valid RANDRNAME is provided, the geometry window will always be shown on that screen. Use current as the RANDRNAME to return the default.

Examples:

As a special case, default puts the window in its default layer, i.e. the layer it was initially in. The same happens if no or invalid arguments are specified.

Move without options starts an interactive move. The window may snap to other windows and screen boundaries, configurable with the SnapAttraction style. Moving a window to the edge of the screen can be used to drag the window to other pages. (See EdgeScroll, and the EdgeMoveDelay style for more information.)

Holding down Alt disables snapping and allows one to switch pages without any delay. Interactive movement can be aborted with the Escape key or any mouse button not set to place the window. By default mouse button 2 is set to cancel the move operation. To change this you may use the Mouse command with special context 'P' for Placement.

The window condition PlacedByButton can be used to check if a specific button was pressed to place the window (see Current command).

If the single argument pointer is given, the top left corner of the window is moved to the pointer position before starting an interactive move; this is mainly intended for internal use by modules like FvwmPager.

To move a window in a given direction until it hits another window, icon, or screen boundary use:

The direction can be North/N/Up/U, East/E/Right/R, South/S/Down/D, or West/W/Left/L. The window will move in the given direction until it hits another window or the EwmhBaseStruts/screen boundary. When a window is at the EwmhBaseStruts/screen boundary, it will move to the next monitor in the given direction, if it exists. If a window is outside of the current working area (partly off screen), it will move to the edge of the working area. Windows will honor the EWMH working area and stop at the EwmhBaseStruts unless the literal option ewmhiwa is given. If multiple direction(s) are given, the window will move the directions in the order of the sequence stated.

The literal option Warp will warp the mouse pointer to the window. If the literal option snap followed by a snap type of windows, icons, or same is given, then the window will only stop if it hits another window, icon, or the same type. If the literal option layers followed by a min layer and max layer is given, then only windows on the layers between min and max layers will stop the window. For example:

Move can be used to moved a window to a specified position:

This will move the window to the x and y position (see below). By default, the EWMH working area is honoured. If he trailing option ewmhiwa is given, then the window position will ignore the working area (such as ignoring any values set via EwmhBaseStruts). If the option Warp is given then the pointer is warped to the window.

If the literal option screen followed by a RandR screen name S is specified, the coordinates are interpreted as relative to the given screen. The width and height of the screen are used for the calculations instead of the display dimensions. The screen is interpreted as in the MoveToScreen command.

If the literal option desk followed by a desk number N is specified, place the window on the specified desk after it has been moved. This can serve two purposes, first you can move a window’s position and desk in a single command. Second when a window is moved between monitors, its desk is updated to be the same as the new monitor. This option can override that behavior by specifying which desk the window should end up on.

The positional arguments x and y can specify an absolute or relative position from either the left/top or right/bottom of the screen. By default, the numeric value given is interpreted as a percentage of the screen width/height, but a trailing 'p' changes the interpretation to mean pixels, while a trailing 'w' means percent of the window width/height. To move the window relative to its current position, add the 'w' (for "window") prefix before the x and/or y value. To move the window to a position relative to the current location of the pointer, add the 'm' (for "mouse") prefix. To move the window relative to the virtual screen coordinates, add the 'v' (for "virtual screen") prefix. This is mostly for internal use with FvwmPager, but can be used to give exact coordinates on the virtual screen and is best used with the 'p' suffix. To leave either coordinate unchanged, "keep" can be specified in place of x or y.

For advanced uses, the arguments x and y can be used multiple times, but without the prefix 'm' or 'w'. (See complex examples below).

Simple Examples:

More complex examples (these can be bound as actions to keystrokes, etc.; only the command is shown, though):

See also the AnimatedMove command.

Previous versions of fvwm hardwired pixels to 3, which is now the default value. If pixels is negative or omitted the default value (which might be increased when 16000x9000 pixel displays become affordable) is restored.

Windows are usually not moved beyond desk boundaries.

Possible options are wrapx and wrapy to wrap around the x or y coordinate when the window is moved beyond the border of the desktop. For example, with wrapx, when the window moves past the right edge of the desktop, it reappears on the left edge. The options nodesklimitx and nodesklimity allow moving windows beyond the desk boundaries in x and y direction (disabling the wrapx and wrapy options).

Examples:

all windows are moved using the traditional rubber-band outline. With

or if a negative percentage is given all windows are moved as solid windows. The default is

which allows small windows to be moved in an opaque manner but large windows are moved as rubber-bands. If percentage is omitted or invalid the default value is set. To resize windows in an opaque manner you can use the ResizeOpaque style. See the Style command.

where ontop is the highest layer used in your setup.

Resize without options starts an interactive resize.

If the EdgeResizeDelay style is set or the Alt key is held down, the window can be resized across the edge of the screen.

The operation can be aborted with the Escape key or by pressing any mouse button (except button 1 which confirms it).

If the optional arguments width and height are provided, then the window is resized so that its dimensions are width by height. The units of width and height are percent-of-screen, unless a letter 'p' is appended to one or both coordinates, in which case the location is specified in pixels. With a 'c' suffix the unit defined by the client application (hence the c) is used. With the suffix 'wa' the value is a percentage of the width or height size of the EWMH working area, and with the suffix 'da' it is a percentage of the width or height of the EWMH dynamic working area. So you can say

to make a terminal window just big enough for 80x24 characters.

If the width or height is prefixed with the letter 'w' the size is not taken as an absolute value but added to the current size of the window. Example:

Both, width and height can be negative. In this case the new size is the screen size minus the given value. If either value is "keep", the corresponding dimension of the window is left untouched. The new size is the size of the client window, thus

may make the window bigger than the screen. To base the new size on the size of the whole fvwm window, add the frame option after the command. The options fixeddirection, direction and warptoborder are only used in interactive move operations. With fixeddirection the same border is moved even if the pointer moves past the opposite border. The direction option must be followed by a direction name such as "NorthWest", "South" or "East" (you get the idea). Resizing is started immediately, even if the pointer is not on a border. If the special option automatic is given as a direction argument, then the direction to resize is calculated based on the position of the pointer in the window. If the pointer is in the middle of the window, then no direction is calculated. The warptoborder option can be used to warp the pointer to the direction indicated. As with the automatic option for direction, the border to warp to is calculated based on the pointer’s proximity to a given border. Also, if resizing is started by clicking on the window border, the pointer is warped to the outer edge of the border.

Examples:

Note: Fvwm may not be able to parse the command properly if the option bottomright of the Resize command is used.

Sets the delay between frames to 10 milliseconds, and sets the positions of the 16 frames of the animation motion. Negative values are allowed, and in particular can be used to make the motion appear more cartoonish, by briefly moving slightly in the opposite direction of the main motion. The above settings are the default.

This command has been removed and must be replaced by MoveToDesk, the arguments for which are the same as for the GotoDesk command.

You cannot simply change the name of the command: the syntax has changed. If you used:

to move a window to desk n, you have to change it to:

means to move down and right by one full page.

means to move right half a page and down a quarter of a page. Alternatively, the distance can be specified in pixels by appending a 'p' to the horizontal and/or vertical specification. For example

means move ten pixels up and ten pixels left. The CursorMove function should not be called from pop-up menus.

When the NoWarp argument is given, Focus cannot transfer the keyboard focus to windows on other desks.

To raise and/or warp a pointer to a window together with Focus or FlipFocus, use a function, like:

There are a number of Style options which influence the appearance and behavior of icons (e.g. StickyIcon, NoIcon).

For backward compatibility, the optional argument may also be a positive number instead of "True", or a negative number instead of "False". Note that this syntax is obsolete, and will be removed in the future.

With just the parameter "forget" a maximized window reverts back into normal state but keeps its current maximized size. This can be useful in conjunction with the commands ResizeMaximize and ResizeMoveMaximize. If the window is not maximized, nothing happens.

With the optional arguments horizontal and vertical, which are expressed as percentage of a full screen, the user can control the new size of the window. An optional suffix 'p' can be used to indicate pixels instead of percents of the screen size. If horizontal is greater than 0 then the horizontal dimension of the window is set to horizontal*screen_width/100. If the value is smaller than 0 the size is subtracted from the screen width, i.e. -25 is the same as 75. If horizontal is "grow", it is maximized to current available space until finding any obstacle. The vertical resizing is similar. If both horizontal and vertical values are "grow", it expands vertically first, then horizontally to find space. Instead of the horizontal "grow" argument, "growleft" or "growright" can be used respectively "growup" and "growdown". The optional flags argument is a space separated list containing the following key words: fullscreen, ewmhiwa, growonwindowlayer, growonlayers and screen. fullscreen causes the window to become fullscreened if the appropriate EWMH hint is set. ewmhiwa causes fvwm to ignore the EWMH working area. growonwindowlayer causes the various grow methods to ignore windows with a layer other than the current layer of the window which is maximized. The growonlayers option must have two integer arguments. The first one is the minimum layer and the second one the maximum layer to use. Windows that are outside of this range of layers are ignored by the grow methods. A negative value as the first or second argument means to assume no minimum or maximum layer. screen must have an argument which specifies the screen on which to operate.

Here are some examples. The following adds a title-bar button to switch a window to the full vertical size of the screen:

The following causes windows to be stretched to the full width:

This makes a window that is half the screen size in each direction:

To expand a window horizontally until any other window is found:

To expand a window until any other window on the same or a higher layer is hit.

To expand a window but leave the lower 60 pixels of the screen unoccupied:

Values larger than 100 can be used with caution.

Note: When a window that has been shaded with a direction argument changes the direction of the window title (see TitleAtTop Style option), the shading direction does not change. This may look very strange. Windows that were shaded without a direction argument stay shaded in the direction of the title bar.

For backward compatibility, the optional argument may also be 1 to signify "on", and 2 to signify "off". Note that this syntax is obsolete, and will be removed in the future.

Modifiers has the same syntax as in the Mouse or Key bindings, with the addition of 'L' meaning the caps lock key. The default is "L". Modifiers can be omitted, meaning no modifiers are ignored. This command comes in handy if the num-lock and scroll-lock keys interfere with your shortcuts. With XFree86 '2' usually is the num-lock modifier and '5' refers to the scroll-lock key. To turn all these pesky modifiers off you can use this command:

If the Modifiers argument is the string "default", fvwm reverts back to the default value "L".

Important This command creates a lot of extra network traffic, depending on your CPU, network connection, the number of Key or Mouse commands in your configuration file and the number of modifiers you want to ignore. If you do not have a lightning fast machine or very few bindings you should not ignore more than two modifiers. I.e. do not ignore

if you have no problem with it. In the FAQ you can find a better solution of this problem.

Function is executed when the mouse pointer enters the invisible pan frames that surround the visible screen. The binding works only if EdgeThickness is set to a value greater than 0. If a function is bound to an edge, scrolling specified by EdgeScroll is disabled for this edge. It is possible to bind a function only to some edges and use the other edges for scrolling. This command is intended to raise or lower certain windows when the mouse pointer enters an edge. FvwmAuto can be used get a delay when raising or lowering windows. The following example raises FvwmButtons if the mouse pointer enters the top edge of the screen.

Normally, the invisible pan frames are only on the screen edges that border virtual pages. If a screen edge has a command bound to it, the pan frame is always created on that edge.

Function is executed when the mouse pointer leaves the invisible pan frames that surround the visible screen. The binding works only if EdgeThickness is set to a value greater than 0. If a function is bound to an edge, scrolling specified by EdgeScroll is disabled for this edge. It is possible to bind a function only to some edges and use the other edges for scrolling. This command is intended to raise or lower certain windows when the mouse pointer leaves an edge. FvwmAuto can be used get a delay when raising or lowering windows. See example for EdgeCommand

Normally, the invisible pan frames are only on the screen edges that border virtual pages. If a screen edge has a command bound to it, the pan frame is always created on that edge.

key held are guaranteed to work. The Context and Modifiers fields are defined as in the Mouse binding. However, when you press a key the context window is the window that has the keyboard focus. That is not necessarily the same as the window the pointer is over (with SloppyFocus or ClickToFocus). Note that key bindings with the 'R' (root window) context do not work properly with SloppyFocus and ClickToFocus. If you encounter problems, use the PointerKey command instead. If you want to bind keys to a window with SloppyFocus or ClickToFocus that are supposed to work when the pointer is not over the window, fvwm assumes the pointer is over the client window (i.e. you have to use the 'W' context).

The special context 'M' for menus can be used to (re)define the menu controls. It be used alone or together with 'T', 'S', 'I', '[', ']', '-' and '_'. See the Menu Bindings section for details.

The following example binds the built-in window list to pop up when

is hit, no matter where the mouse pointer is:

Binding a key to a title-bar button causes that button to appear. Please refer to the Mouse command for details.

Context describes where the binding applies. Valid contexts are 'R' for the root window, 'W' for an application window, 'D' for a desktop application (as kdesktop or Nautilus desktop), 'T' for a window title-bar, 'S' for a window side, top, or bottom bar, '[', ']', '-' and '_' for the left, right, top or bottom side only, 'F' for a window frame (the corners), '<', '^', '>' and 'v' for the top left, top right, bottom right or bottom left corner, 'I' for an icon window, or '0' through '9' for title-bar buttons, or any combination of these letters. 'A' is for any context. For instance, a context of "FST" applies when the mouse is anywhere in a window’s border except the title-bar buttons. Only 'S' and 'W' are valid for an undecorated window.

The special context 'M' for menus can be used to (re)define the menu controls. It can be used alone or together with 'T', 'S', 'I', '[', ']', '-' and '_'. See the Menu Bindings section for details.

The special context 'P' controls what buttons that can be used to place a window. When using this context no modifiers are allowed (Modifiers must be N), no window is allowed, and the Function must be one of PlaceWindow, PlaceWindowDrag, PlaceWindowInteractive, CancelPlacement, CancelPlacementDrag, CancelPlacementInteractive or -.

PlaceWindow makes Button usable for window placement, both for interactive and drag move. CancelPlacement does the inverse. That is makes Button to cancel move for both interactive and drag move. It may however not override how new windows are resized after being placed. This is controlled by the Emulate command. Also a window being dragged can always be placed by releasing the button hold while dragging, regardless of if it is set to PlaceWindow or not.

PlaceWindowDrag and PlaceWindowInteractive/CancelPlacementDrag and CancelPlacementInteractive work as PlaceWindow/CancelPlacement with the exception that they only affect either windows dragged / placed interactively.

- is equivalent to CancelPlacement.

The following example makes all buttons but button 3 usable for interactive placement and makes drag moves started by other buttons than one cancel if button 1 is pressed before finishing the move:

By default, the binding applies to all windows. You can specify that a binding only applies to specific windows by specifying the window name in brackets. The window name is a wildcard pattern specifying the class, resource or name of the window you want the binding to apply to.

The following example shows how the same key-binding can be used to perform different functions depending on the window that is focused:

A '--' action indicates that the event should be propagated to the specified window to handle. This is only a valid action for window-specific bindings.

This example shows how to display the WindowList when Button 3 is pressed on an rxvt window:

Note that Fvwm actually intercepts all events for a window-specific binding and (if the focused window doesn’t match any of the bindings) sends a synthetic copy of the event to the window. This should be transparent to most applications, however (for security reasons) some programs ignore these synthetic events by default - xterm is one of them. To enable handling of these events, add the following line to your ~/.Xdefaults file:

Modifiers is any combination of 'N' for no modifiers, 'C' for control, 'S' for shift, 'M' for Meta, 'L' for Caps-Lock or 'A' for any modifier. For example, a modifier of "SM" applies when both the

and

keys are down. X11 modifiers mod1 through mod5 are represented as the digits '1' through '5'. The modifier 'L' is ignored by default. To turn it on, use the IgnoreModifiers command.

Function is one of fvwm’s commands.

The title-bar buttons are numbered with odd numbered buttons on the left side of the title-bar and even numbers on the right. Smaller-numbered buttons are displayed toward the outside of the window while larger-numbered buttons appear toward the middle of the window (0 is short for 10). In summary, the buttons are numbered:

The highest odd numbered button which has an action bound to it determines the number of buttons drawn on the left side of the title bar. The highest even number determines the number of right side buttons which are drawn. Actions can be bound to either mouse buttons or keyboard keys.

Example:

With per-monitor , each RandR monitor has a separate copy of desktops, and hence function independently of one another when switching desks/pages.

When shared is set, the desktops are shared amongst all monitors. So for example, with the following number of desktops defined with two monitors ([] is monitor1, and <> is monitor2):

Moving between desktops would still honor the monitor the desktop is being requested on. If monitor1 wanted to switch to desktop 3, then that desktop is exchanged with monitor2 such that the following showed the active desktop on both monitors:

This concept is similar to how spectrwm or xmonad handles desktops.

Note: these each DesktopConfiguration mode can be changed on-the-fly.

but find themselves accidentally flipping pages when they do not want to. If -1 is given as the delay, scrolling is disabled completely.

The second form of invocation with two or three arguments is obsolete and should be replaced with the following three commands as needed:

Fvwm does this substitution automatically and prints a warning.

in your config file, or possibly better, set the EdgeThickness to zero. See the EdgeThickness command. If you want whole pages, use

Both horizontal and vertical should be positive numbers.

If the horizontal and vertical percentages are multiplied by 1000 or one of the keywords wrap, wrapx and wrapy is given then scrolling wraps around at the edge of the desktop. If

is used fvwm scrolls by whole pages, wrapping around at the edge of the desktop.

The optional 'screen RANDRNAME' specifies the RandR monitor which this setting should apply to, ignoring all other monitors. Without this option, it applies the value to all monitors.

In order to enable page scrolling via the mouse, four windows called the "pan frames" are placed at the very edge of the screen. This is how fvwm detects the mouse’s presence at the window edge. Because of the way this works, they need to be at the top of the stack and eat mouse events, so if you have any kind of error along the lines of: "mouse clicks at the edge of the screen do the wrong thing" you’re having trouble with the pan frames and (assuming you do not use the mouse to flip between pages) should set the EdgeThickness to 0.

A value of 0 completely disables mouse edge scrolling, even while dragging a window. 1 gives the smallest pan frames, which seem to work best except on some servers.

2 is the default.

Pan frames of 1 or 2 pixels can sometimes be confusing, for example, if you drag a window over the edge of the screen, so that it straddles a pan frame, clicks on the window, near the edge of the screen are treated as clicks on the root window.

The command takes 1, 2, 3, or 4 arguments. A single argument is interpreted as a relative desk number. Two arguments are understood as a relative and an absolute desk number. Three arguments specify a relative desk and the minimum and maximum of the allowable range. Four arguments specify the relative, absolute, minimum and maximum values. (Desktop numbers can be negative). If a literal prev is given as the single argument, the last visited desk number is used.

If arg1 is non zero then the next desktop number is the current desktop number plus arg1.

If arg1 is zero then the new desktop number is arg2. (If arg2 is not present, then the command has no effect.)

If min and max are given, the new desktop number is no smaller than min and no bigger than max. Values out of this range are truncated (if you gave an absolute desk number) or wrapped around (if you gave a relative desk number).

The syntax is the same as for MoveToDesk, which moves a window to a different desktop.

The number of active desktops is determined dynamically. Only desktops which contain windows or are currently being displayed are active. Desktop numbers must be between 2147483647 and -2147483648 (is that enough?).

Possible options are wrapx and wrapy to wrap around the x or y coordinate when the viewport is moved beyond the border of the desktop.

The name of the RandR screen.

To go to the last visited page use prev as the first argument. The GotoPage function should not be used in a pop-up menu.

Examples:

means to scroll down and right by one full page.

means to scroll right half a page and down a quarter of a page. The Scroll function should not be called from pop-up menus. Normally, scrolling stops at the edge of the desktop.

If the horizontal and vertical percentages are 100 or more and are multiplied by 1000 then scrolling wraps around at the edge of the desktop. If

is executed over and over fvwm moves to the next desktop page on each execution and wraps around at the edge of the desktop, so that every page is hit in turn.

If the letter 'p' is appended to each coordinate (horizontal and/or vertical), then the scroll amount is measured in pixels.

Without arguments or if the option reverse is given interactive scrolling takes place. The viewport scrolls as the mouse is moved. With the reverse option scrolling is done in opposite direction of the mouse movement, and without it scrolling in the same direction as the mouse.

The binding

gives an effect of grabbing and dragging the viewport with button 1 if Control and Meta is pressed.

If screen is given, followed by the RANDRNAME of a given display, then the specified screen is scrolled. This is only useful if using per-monitor or shared DesktopConfiguration and wanting to scroll a monitor other than the current monitor. Interactive scrolling always scrolls the current monitor.

The function name is "Move-or-Raise", and it could be invoked from a menu or a mouse binding or key binding:

The name must not contain embedded whitespace. No guarantees are made whether function names with embedded whitespace work or not. This behavior may also change in the future without further notice. The letter before the action tells what kind of action triggers the command which follows it. 'I' stands for "Immediate", and is executed as soon as the function is invoked. 'J' is similar to "Immediate" but is delayed until a button is pressed or released or the pointer is moved, or the function completes. It is always executed before the other function actions. 'M' stands for "Motion", i.e. if the user starts moving the mouse. 'C' stands for "Click", i.e., if the user presses and releases the mouse button. 'H' stands for "Hold", i.e. if the user presses a mouse button and holds it down for more than ClickTime milliseconds. 'D' stands for "Double-click". The action 'I' causes an action to be performed on the button-press, if the function is invoked with prior knowledge of which window to act on.

There is a number of predefined symbols that are replaced by certain values if they appear on the command line. Please refer to the Command Expansion section for details.

Warning Please read the comments on executing complex functions in the section Scripting and Complex Functions.

Examples:

If you call

and "MailFunction" is

Then the last line of the function becomes

The expansion is performed as the function is executed, so you can use the same function with all sorts of different arguments. You could use

in the same config, if you wanted. An example of using "$[w.id]" is:

Note that "$$" is expanded to '$'.

Another example: bind right mouse button within the window button number 6 (this is a minimize button for the win95 theme) to iconify all windows of the same resource:

The following example binds function key

in the root window, with no modifiers, to the exec function. The program rxvt is started with an assortment of options.

Note that this function doesn’t wait for command to complete, so things like:

do not work reliably (see the PipeRead command).

The keyword Function may be omitted if FunctionName does not coincide with an fvwm command.

Warning: Please read the comments on executing complex functions in the section Scripting and Complex Functions.

The purpose of this command is to store internal information to fvwm which can be used bu fvwm functions, or when opening programs of a certain type. Previous to this command the only way to do this was via SetEnv but this is discouraged because it places such information in the environment, which pollutes it and makes the information global to other processes started by fvwm which may then modify them which might not be what’s wanted. Hence the point of InfoStoreAdd is to still allow for such information to be stored, but kept internal to fvwm.

In this way, one can build up as many key/value pairs as needed. Recalling the value of a given key happens through fvwm’s usual expansion mechanism. See the Command Expansion section for more details. For example:

Removing an entry from the InfoStore is done with the InfoStoreRemove command.

then a blank line is inserted. If it looks like

then a separator line is inserted. Can also be used as the double-click action for Menu or Popup.

Example:

Note: The PipeRead changes the pointer to a watch cursor by default during execution. However, some commands, for example xwd, need to take control of the pointer themselves and do not work. To disable the watch cursor, use the command prior to PipeRead

The PipeRead command executes synchronously. If you want to Exec something, but need the command to run synchronously, you might do something like:

The redirection causes any output from the program to go to stderr instead of being read as a sequence of commands by fvwm. PipeRead returns 1 if the given command could be executed or -1 if not (see the section Conditional Commands for the meaning of return codes).

Another usage of Silent is with binding commands Key, PointerKey and Mouse, this disables error messages.

Silent also disables the error message for non-existent commands. Note: This command is treated as a prefix to its command. Expansion of the command line is done as if Silent was not there.

Examples:

The above function starts an xterm on the current desk, waits for it to map itself, then switches to desk 2 and starts an xmh. After the xmh window appears control moves to desk 0.

Fvwm remains partially functional during a wait, but any input from the modules is queued up and processed only after the window appears or the command is aborted. For example, windows can not be focused with FvwmIconMan or FvwmPager during a wait.

You can escape from a Wait pause by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Escape (where Alt is the first modifier). To redefine this key sequence see the EscapeFunc command.

The format of the JSON blob looks like this:

These sections repeat for all screens/groups/etc, depending on how many there are of each.

In addition, the conditions may include one or more window names to match to. If more than one window name is given, all of them must match. The window name, icon name, class, and resource are considered when attempting to find a match. Each name may include the wildcards '*' and '?', and may consist of two or more alternatives, separated by the character '|', which acts as an OR operator. (If OR operators are used, they must not be separated by spaces from the names.) Each window name can begin with '!', which prevents command if any of the window name, icon name, class or resource match. However, '!' must not be applied to individual names in a group separated by OR operators; it may only be applied to the beginning of the group, and then it operates on the whole group.

Examples:

This goes to the next web browser window, no matter which of the three named web browsers is being used.

This goes to Mozilla’s bookmark manager window, ignoring other Mozilla windows and other browsers' bookmark windows.

This iconifies all the xterm and rxvt windows on the current page, except that the one named "console" (with the -name option to xterm) is excluded.

These two commands are equivalent; either one raises the next window which is not one of the named fvwm modules.

Any condition can be negated by using a an exclamation mark ('!') directly in front of its name.

AcceptsFocus, AnyScreen, CirculateHit, CirculateHitIcon, CirculateHitShaded, Closable, CurrentDesk, CurrentGlobalPage, CurrentGlobalPageAnyDesk, CurrentPage, CurrentPageAnyDesk, CurrentScreen, Desk, FixedPosition, FixedSize, Focused, HasBorders, HasHandles, HasPointer, HasTitle, TitleAtTop, TitleAtBottom, TitleAtLeft, TitleAtRight, Iconic, Iconifiable, Layer [n], Maximizable, Maximized, Overlapped, PlacedByButton n, PlacedByButton3, PlacedByFvwm, Raised, Shaded, State n, Sticky, StickyAcrossDesks, StickyAcrossPages, StickyIcon, StickyAcrossDesksIcon, StickyAcrossPagesIcon, Transient, Visible.

The AcceptsFocus condition excludes all windows that do not want the input focus (the application has set the "Input hints" for the window to False) and do not use the Lenience option of the Style command. Also, all windows using the NeverFocus style are ignored. Note: !Lenience is equivalent to the deprecated option NoLenience.

With the AnyScreen condition used together with any of the Current…​ conditions, windows that do not intersect the screen containing the mouse pointer are considered for a match too. For example:

The CirculateHit and CirculateHitIcon options override the CirculateSkip and CirculateSkipIcon Style attributes for normal or iconic windows. The CirculateHitShaded option overrides the CirculateSkipShaded Style. All three options are turned on by default for the Current command. They can be turned off by specifying !CirculateHit etc. explicitly. Note: Do not confuse these conditions with the style options of the same name. Specifically,

is not the same as

The prior selects windows with the name foo only in the Next command. In the second example, these windows are always matched in all conditional commands.

The Closable condition matches only windows that are allowed to be closed.

The CurrentDesk condition matches only windows that are on the current desk.

The CurrentGlobalPage condition matches only windows that are on the current page of the current desk, regardless of which screen the window is on. This condition implicitly activates the CurrentDesk condition.

The CurrentGlobalPageAnyDesk condition matches only windows that are on the current page of any desk, regardless of RandR screen .

The CurrentPage condition matches only windows that are on the current page of the current desk. This condition implicitly activates the CurrentDesk condition.

The CurrentPageAnyDesk and CurrentScreen conditions matches only windows that are on the current page of any desk.

The Screen [name] condition matches only windows which are on the specified screen.

The Desk [n] condition matches only windows which are on the specified desk.

The FixedPosition condition excludes all windows that do not have a fixed position, either set through WM hints or the Style option FixedPosition. Example:

The FixedSize condition excludes all windows that do not have a fixed size, either set through WM hints or the Style option FixedSize.

The Focused matches on the window that currently has the keyboard focus. This is not useful for the Current command but can be used with the other conditional commands.

The HasBorders condition excludes all windows that do not have borders.

The HasHandles condition excludes all windows that do not have resize handles.

The HasPointer condition excludes all windows that do not contain the pointer.

The HasTitle condition excludes all windows that do not have a titlebar.

The TitleAtTop, TitleAtBottom, TitleAtLeft, TitleAtRight conditions test for the titlebar at that window location.

The Iconic condition matches only iconic windows.

The Iconifiable condition matches only windows that are allowed to be iconified.

The Layer [n] condition matches only windows on the specified layer. The optional argument of the Layer condition defaults to the layer of the focused window. The negation !Layer switches off the Layer condition.

The Maximizable condition matches only windows that are allowed to be maximized.

The Maximized condition matches only maximized windows.

The Overlapped condition matches only windows that are overlapped by other windows on the same layer (or unmanaged windows if the option RaiseOverUnmanaged of the BugOpts command is used). Note that this condition can be slow if you have many windows or if RaiseOverUnmanaged is used and the connection to the X server is slow.

The PlacedByButton n condition is fulfilled if the last interactive motion of the window (with the Move command or as ManualPlacement) was ended by pressing mouse button n. Example:

The PlacedByButton3 condition has the same meaning as PlacedByButton 3. It remains only for backward compatibility.

The PlacedByFvwm condition excludes all windows that have been placed manually or by using the user or program position hint.

The Raised conditions matches only windows that are fully visible on the current viewport and not overlapped by any other window.

The Shaded conditions matches only shaded windows (see WindowShade command).

The State n or !State n conditions match only windows with the specified integer state set (or unset). See the State command for details. The argument may range from 0 to 31.

The Sticky, StickyAcrossDesks and StickyAcrossPages match only windows that are currently sticky, sticky across all desks or sticky across all pages. Please refer to the Style options with the same name and the commands Stick, StickAcrossDesks and StickAcrossPages for details.

The StickyIcon, StickyAcrossDesksIcon and StickyAcrossPagesIcon match only windows that become sticky, sticky across all desks or sticky across all pages when they are in iconified state.

The Transient condition matches only windows that have the "transient" property set by the application. This it usually the case for application popup menus and dialogs. The FvwmIdent module can be used to find out whether a specific window is transient.

The Visible condition matches only windows that are at least partially visible on the current viewport and not completely overlapped by other windows.

The new non-conflicting syntax allows a delimiter, a colon and optional spaces between the module name and the rest of the line. In this case a module name (or alias) can’t have wildcards.

At the current time the available modules (included with fvwm) are FvwmAnimate (produces animation effects when a window is iconified or de-iconified), FvwmAuto (an auto raise module), FvwmBacker (to change the background when you change desktops), FvwmBanner (to display a spiffy XBM, XPM, PNG or SVG), FvwmButtons (brings up a customizable tool bar), FvwmCommandS (a command server to use with shell’s FvwmCommand client), FvwmConsole (to execute fvwm commands directly), FvwmEvent (trigger various actions by events), FvwmForm (to bring up dialogs), FvwmIconMan (a flexible icon manager), FvwmIdent (to get window info), FvwmPager (a mini version of the desktop), FvwmPerl (a Perl manipulator and preprocessor), FvwmProxy (to locate and control obscured windows by using small proxy windows), FvwmRearrange (to rearrange windows), FvwmScript (another powerful dialog toolkit), These modules have their own man pages. There may be other modules out on there as well.

Modules can be short lived transient programs or, like FvwmButtons , can remain for the duration of the X session. Modules are terminated by the window manager prior to restarts and quits, if possible. See the introductory section on modules. The keyword Module may be omitted if modulename is distinct from all fvwm commands.

The ModulePath may contain environment variables such as $HOME (or ${HOME}). Further, a '+' in the path is expanded to the previous value of the path, allowing easy appending or prepending to the path.

For example:

The directory containing the standard modules is available via the environment variable $FVWM_MODULEDIR.

Warning: It is quite easy to hang fvwm with this command, even if a timeout is given. Be extra careful choosing the string to wait for. Although all modules in the fvwm distribution send back the "NOP FINISHED STARTUP" string once they have properly started up, this may not be the case for third party modules. Moreover, you can try to escape from a locked ModuleSynchronous command by using the key sequence

(see the EscapeFunc).

This command should not have a trailing ampersand. The command can have optional parameters with simple shell-like syntax. You can use ~ (is expanded to the user’s home directory) and environmental variables $VAR or ${VAR}. Here are several examples:

Note, currently with multi headed displays, restart of fvwms on different screens works independently.

but it does not save any window states over the restart.

Without this option, Restart preserves most per-window state by writing it to a file named .fs-restart-$HOSTDISPLAY in the user’s home directory.

Warning: The highest colorset number used determines memory consumption. Thus, if you define 'Colorset 100000', the memory for 100001 colorsets is used. Keep your colorset numbers as small as possible.

By convention, colorsets are numbered like this:

If you need to have more colors and do not want to reinvent the wheel, you may use the convention used in fvwm-themes, it defines the meaning of the first 40 colorsets for nearly all purposes:

http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/doc/colorsets

Each colorset has four colors, an optional pixmap and an optional shape mask. The four colors are used by modules as the foreground, background, highlight and shadow colors. When a colorset is created it defaults to a foreground of black and background of gray. The background and foreground are marked as "average" and "contrast" (see later) so that just specifying a pixmap or gradient gives sensible results.

options is a comma separated list containing some of the keywords: fg, Fore, Foreground, bg, Back, Background, hi, Hilite, Hilight, sh, Shade, Shadow, fgsh, Pixmap, TiledPixmap, AspectPixmap, Transparent, RootTransparent, Shape, TiledShape, AspectShape, NoShape, ?Gradient, Tint, fgTint, bgTint, Alpha, fgAlpha, Dither, NoDither, IconTint, IconAlpha, Plain.

fg, Fore and Foreground take a color name as an argument and set the foreground color. The special name Contrast may be used to select a color that contrasts well with the background color. To reset the foreground color to the default value you can simply omit the color name.

bg, Back and Background take a color name as an argument and set the background color. It also sets the highlight and shadow colors to values that give a 3d effect unless these have been explicitly set with the options below. The special name Average may be used to select a color that is the average color of the pixmap. If the pixmap is tinted with the Tint option, the tint is not taken in account in the computation of the average color. You should use the bgTint option to get the "real" average color. The background color is reset to the default value if the color name is omitted.

hi, Hilite and Hilight take a color name as an argument and set the highlight color. If the highlight color is not explicitly set, the default is to calculate it from the background color. To switch back to the default behavior the color name can be omitted.

sh, Shade and Shadow take a color name as an argument and set the shadow color. If the shadow color is not explicitly set, the default is to calculate it from the background color. To switch back to the default behavior the color name can be omitted.

fgsh takes a color name as an argument and sets the color used by the shadowing font effect. See the Font Shadow Effects section of the fvwm man page. By default this color is computed from the foreground and background colors. To switch back to the default the color name can be omitted.

Pixmap, TiledPixmap and AspectPixmap take a file name as an argument, search the ImagePath and use it as the background pixmap. Any transparent parts are filled with the background color. Not specifying a file name removes any existing image from the colorset. TiledPixmap produces repeated copies of the image with no scaling, Pixmap causes the image to be stretched to fit whatever object the colorset is applied to and AspectPixmap stretches to fit but retains the image aspect ratio.

Transparent creates a transparent background pixmap. The pixmap is used as a window background to achieve root transparency. For this you should use the ParentalRelativity option to the Style command. A subsequent root background change may be detected or not, this depends on the program used to set the background. If you use fvwm-root, xsetbg (xli), FvwmBacker with solid or colorset colors or a recent version of Esetroot (>= 9.2) a background change is detected. If background changes are not detected (e.g., if you use xv or xsetroot) you can force detection by using the -d option of fvwm-root:

Due to the way X implements transparency no guarantees can be made that the desired effect can be achieved. The application may even crash. If you experience any problems with this option, do not use it.

Using outline move and resize (see the OpaqueMoveSize command and the ResizeOpaque Style option) as well as setting the WindowShadeShrinks style may help. The transparency achieved with Transparent depends on whether the colorset is applied to the foreground or the background of a window. In the second case the transparency is relative to the parent window of the window on which the colorset is defined. For example:

gives an IconMan with a vertical grey gradient background and the buttons use the background (by transparency). To obtain a (root) transparent IconMan:

The Colorset IconMan option defines the IconMan window background, but the PlainColorset and the FocusColorset are drawn on the foreground. So, the transparency of the IconMan buttons is achieved by drawing nothing. Now if this IconMan is swallowed in an FvwmButtons as:

then, FvwmIconMan becomes a child of FvwmButtons and it is transparent relative to FvwmButtons. So, in this case FvwmIconMan uses Colorset 10 as background. If you want root transparency use the RootTransparent option. FvwmButtons FvwmIconMan, and FvwmIdent, are relatively simple. There is one main colorset option which defines the background of the window and the other colorsets (if any) are drawn on the foreground. The case of FvwmProxy is simpler, the two colorsets refer to the window backgrounds. FvwmPager is more complicated as almost everything in the pager are windows with some parental relations (the mini windows are the child and the desktops are the parents and all this is complicated by the hilighted page). So, the colorsets apply to the background of these windows. You should experiment. For FvwmForm and FvwmScript the situation is similar. There is a main window (a child of the root window) which corresponds to the main colorset and most of the widgets are windows which are children of the main window. Tint may work or not with the Transparent option. When the colorset is drawn on the foreground Tint should work. In some cases, tinting may be very slow. Tinting may work with fvwm menu (without animation). Tinting may work better if your X server has backing store enabled (try xdpyinfo to see if this the case). There is a chance that the backing store support of your X server does not work well with the terrible hack used to Tint the ParentRelative Pixmap. So, to get tinted root transparency it is more safe to use the RootTransparent option.

RootTransparent [ buffer ] creates a root transparent background. To make this option work, you must use an Esetroot compatible program, fvwm-root with the --retain-pixmap option or FvwmBacker with the RetainPixmap option (and colorset or solid backgrounds). The buffer keyword is useful only when the Tint option is used too. This speeds up creation of windows which use the colorset (useful for fvwm menus) at the cost of memory usage. It also speeds up opaque move and resize which can be unacceptably slow without buffer. However, this option may add a lot of memory to your X server (depending on the size of the image used to set the background). In summary, using outline move and resize for modules which use such a colorset may be a good idea.

Shape, TiledShape and AspectShape take a file name as an argument, search the ImagePath and use it as the shape bitmap. TiledShape produces repeated copies of the bitmap with no scaling, Shape causes the bitmap to be stretched to fit whatever object the colorset is applied to and AspectShape stretches to fit but retains the bitmap aspect ratio. If the file is a pixmap in xpm format the shape mask (all opaque pixels) of the pixmap is used. For png and svg images, the shape mask is equivalent to all not completely transparent pixels (alpha > 0).

Warning Due to the way X11 implements shapes you cannot take back making windows shaped. You may have to restart fvwm or the shaped application.

?Gradient …​ creates a pixmap and stretches it to fit the window. ?Gradient may be one of HGradient, VGradient, DGradient, BGradient, SGradient, CGradient, RGradient or YGradient. The gradient types are as follows: H is horizontal; V is vertical; D is diagonal from top left to bottom right; B is a backwards diagonal from bottom left to top right; S is concentric squares; C is concentric circles; R is a radar like pattern and Y is a Yin Yang style (but without the dots). Please refer to the Color Gradients section for the syntax of gradients.

Tint takes 2 arguments, a color and a percentage between 0 and 100. It causes the image defined using ?Pixmap or ?Gradient to be tinted with the specified color using the percentage. If the image is transparent Tint tints only the image part. Unfortunately, a colorset background specified using the Transparent option can give strange results. See the Transparent option for details. With no arguments this option removes the tint.

fgTint takes 2 arguments, a color and a percentage between 0 and 100. It causes the color defined using fg to be tinted with the specified color using the percentage. With no arguments this option removes the tint.

bgTint takes 2 arguments, a color and a percentage between 0 and 100. It causes the color defined using bg to be tinted with the specified color using the percentage. If the sh and hi colors are not specified, they are recomputed from the tinted bg color. With no arguments this option removes the tint.

Alpha takes a percentage between 0 and 100 as an argument. It causes fvwm to merge the image defined using ?Pixmap or ?Gradient with the bg color using the percentage. If the percentage is 0 the image is hidden and if it is 100 the image is displayed as usual (no merge). The default is 100 and it is restored if no argument is given.

fgAlpha takes a percentage between 0 and 100 as an argument. It causes fvwm to merge the text and the colorset background using the percentage. If the percentage is 0 the text is hidden and if it is 100 the text is displayed as usual (no merge). This option has an effect only with fonts loaded by Xft, see the Font Names and Font Loading section. The default is 100 and it is restored if no argument is given.

Dither causes fvwm to dither the image defined using ?Pixmap or ?Gradient. This is useful only with displays with depth less than or equal to 16 (i.e., on displays which can only display less than 65537 colors at once). The dithering effect lets you simulate having more colors available that you actually have. NoDither causes fvwm to do not dither the images. Dither is the default if the depth is less than or equal to 8 (a screen with 256 colors or less). In depth 15 (32768 colors) and 16 (65536 colors), the default is NoDither, however this effect can be useful with images which contain a lot of close colors. For example a fine gradient looks more smooth.

IconTint takes 2 arguments, a color and a percentage between 0 and 100. It causes fvwm or a module to tint the "icons" which are rendered into the colorset background with the specified color using a percentage. Here "icons" means, fvwm Icons, fvwm menu icons, MiniIcons which represent applications in various modules, images loaded by modules (e.g., images specified by the Icon FvwmButtons button option) …​etc. With no arguments this option removes the icon tint.

The color gradient syntax has two forms:

?Gradient colors start-color end-color

This form specifies a linear gradient. The arguments denote the total number of colors to allocate (between 2 and 1000), the initial color and the final color.

Example:

?Gradient colors segments color length color [length color] …​

The second form specifies a nonlinear gradient. The arguments are: the total number of colors to allocate (between 2 and 1000), then the number of segments. For each segment, specify the starting color, a relative length, then the ending color. Each subsequent segment begins with the second color of the last segment. The lengths may be any non-negative integers. The length of one segment divided by the sum of all segments lengths is the fraction of the colors that are used for the segment.

Examples: