CWM(1)

NAME
cwm - a lightweight and efficient window manager for X11

SYNOPSIS
cwm [-s] [-f fontname]

DESCRIPTION
cwm is a window manager for X11. It was originally inspired by evilwm, but was rewritten from scratch due to limitations in the evilwm codebase. The from-scratch rewrite borrowed some code from 9wm. cwm contains many new features which all concentrate on the efficiency and transparency of window management. cwm also aims to maintain the most simplest and pleasant aesthetic.

BASIC OPERATION
We will adopt the following notation:
C   Control
M   Meta (Alt on PCs)
S   Shift
M1  Left mouse button
M2  Middle mouse button
M3  Right mouse button
cwm is very simple in its use. Most of the actions are initiated via keybindings. The current keybindings are described below, their functionality is described in more detail later.
C-M-Enter
    Spawn a new terminal.
C-M-Delete
    Lock the screen.
M-Enter
    Hide current window.
M-Down
    Lower current window.
M-Up
    Raise current window.
M-/ Search for windows.
C-/ Search for applications.
C-M-l
    Label current window.
M-Tab
    Cycle through currently visible windows.
M-S-Tab
    Reverse cycle through currently visible windows.
C-M-x
    Delete current window.
C-M-Escape
    Enter group edit mode.
C-M-[n]
    Select group n, where n is 1-9.
C-M-0
    Select all groups.
M-Right
    Switch to next group.
M-Left
    Switch to previous group.
C-M-=
    Toggle vertical maximization of window.
The mouse bindings are also important, they are:
M-M1
    Move a window.
C-M-M1
    Toggle a window's membership in the current group. A blue highlight indicates the window has been added to the group, a red highlight indicates it has been removed.
M-M2
    Resize a window/Select a window.
M-M3
    Lower a window.
The options for cwm are as follows:

-s  Set sticky group mode on. The default behavior for new windows is to not assign any group. This changes the default behavior to assigning the currrently selected group to any newly created windows.

-f fontname
    Makes the Xft(3) font string fontname the default font.

SEARCH
cwm features the ability to search for windows by their current title, old titles and by their label. The priority for the search results are: Label, current title, old titles in reverse order and finally window class name. cwm keeps a history of the 5 previous titles of a window. When searching, the leftmost character of the result list may show a flag:
!   The window is the currently focused window.
&   The window is hidden.
The following keybindings may be used to navigate the result list:
[Down] or C-s
    Select the next window in the list.
[Up] or C-r
    Select the previous window in the list.
C-u Clear the input.
[Enter]
    Focus the selected window.
[Esc]
    Quit.
C-a Whenever there are no matching windows, list every window.

GROUPS
cwm has the ability to group windows together, and use the groups to perform operations on the entire group instead of just one window. Currently, the only operation that is supported is to hide and unhide the grouped windows. Together with the -s option, this can be used to emulate virtual desktops. To edit groups, enter the group edit mode, and select/unselect the groups with the group selection mouse click. A blue border will be shown on the currently selected windows. The group selection keyboard shortcuts can also be used to change which group to edit.

MENUS
Menus are recalled by clicking the mouse on the root window:
M1  Show list of currently hidden windows. Clicking on an item will unhide that window.
M2  Show list of currently defined groups. Clicking on an item will hide/unhide that group.
M3  Show list of applications as defined in ~/.calmwm. Clicking on an item will spawn that application.

~/.calmwm
Any directory entries here are shown in the application menu. When it is selected, the image is executed with execve(2). One use of this is to create symbolic links for your favorite applications in this directory using ln(1). The entries term and lock have special meaning. When they exist they point to the terminal program and screen locking programs used by the keybindings specified above. The defaults for these are xterm(1) and xlock(1), respectively.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
cwm contains some code from 9wm.

AUTHORS
The cwm software has been developed by Marius Aamodt Eriksen <marius@monkey.org> with contributions from Andy Adamson <dros@monkey.org>, Niels Provos <provos@monkey.org> and Antti Nykänen <aon@iki.fi>. Ideas, discussion with many others.