What is MWM?
MWM (the Motif Window Manager) was Athena's default window manager
until July 2001, when Sawfish was made the default. The rest of the
information here remains for historical purposes.
Project Athena has decided to make MWM (the Motif Window Manager) the default
window manager for users beginning with the spring term '90. MWM is a new
window manager made available by the OSF (Open Software Foundation) to provide
users with a more intuitive, industry-standard interface. Based closely on
the Presentation Manager (PM) "look-and-feel", users of PM, MS-Windows, and
Macintoshes should adjust quickly.
Another reason for the change to MWM as the default is that the old default,
UWM, is no longer supported by the X consortium, and further, is not ICCCM
compliant. (The ICCCM is a manual that states how X programs should interact
in order to behave as "good X citizens".) MWM *is* supported, by a large
foundation, and is nearly ICCCM compliant.
Features that new users will notice immediately are the title-bars
visible on every window and the decorations that surround each window.
Besides providing a 3D look, these decorations are functional. For
example, moving a window can be accomplished by dragging it by its
title-bar. To resize a window, grab the appropriate edge or corner and
drag it.
One of the main ideas behind MWM is to provide the user with as many options
to perform the same action as possible. You will find that nearly anything
can be accomplished with either the mouse or the keyboard, and there are
several ways to do it.
MWM, like UWM, provides keyboard shortcuts as well. It is also highly
customizable, as is UWM. More information is available on any of the subjects
mentioned above.
There are drawbacks, though. MWM is a much larger program and so will use
more of the available memory on your machine. It also runs slower, and may
grab keyboard input when you don't expect it. We expect that some people will
want to switch over, instead, TWM, and will provide directions on how to
do that too, on request.
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