Sawfish 1.7.0.1

[sonc]

Sawfish 1.7.0.1



Sawfish is an extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language. The project's policy is very minimal compared to most window managers.

Its aim is simply to manage windows in the most flexible and attractive manner possible. All high-level WM functions are implemented in Lisp for future extensibility or redefinition.

Here are some key features of "Sawfish":

· Powerful key-binding: Virtually every functionality provided by Sawfish can be bound to keys (or mouse buttons).
· Event hooking: For many events (moving windows etc.) you can customize the way Sawfish will respond.
· Window matching: When windows are created you can match them to a set of rules and automatically perform actions on them.
· Flexible theming: Sawfish allows for very different themes to be created and a variety of third-party themes is readily available.

What's New in This Release:

Notes:
· When you report a crash, please add the backtrace, by invoking Sawfish with the command line option "--interp". Read the file `CONTRIBUTING' for more infos.
· Prompt API change [Jeremy Hankins] If you have code which utilizes prompt, it is affected. When you call the function `prompt', directly pass helper functions as function arguments. They used to be set as global variables. This change is straightforward, so it's not difficult to update your code. See `sawfish.wm.util.prompt' for details.
· Mouse-button support state Sawfish claimed to support mouse-buttons 1
· 9, but it is known that drag of buttons 6
· 8 may not work. The button 9 doesn't work at all, so we withdraw it.
· Functions `maybe-raise-window' and `maybe-lower-window' are now obsolete. [Teika Kazura] Replace them with `raise-window*' and `lower-window*' defined in `sawfish.wm.util.stacking'. Only difference is that the obsolete version supports a feature of Nautilus (GNOME file manager) which was dropped long ago.

Build and Installation:
· Configure-option `--with-nine-mousebuttons' is dropped. See the item "Keyboard layout switching support" below.

Bug Fixes:

· Maximized windows wrongly covering other windows on startup [Jeremy Hankins] Sometimes maximized windows would overlap "avoided" windows (e.g., the gnome-panel, or a trayer) on startup. Sawfish now defers maximization until the initialization is complete, preventing this problem.
· Viewport initialization bugfix [Jeremy Hankins] Under certain circumstances viewport slots were wrongly shifted when Sawfish was restarted, ending up with some windows outside of the virtual desktop. This has been fixed.
· Keyboard-layout switching support [Teika Kazura] Previously, when you switched the keyboard-layout, or more correctly the keyboard-"group" (which is mainly for multilinguals) keyboard- and mouse-bindings got messed-up. Now, this can be prevented by invoking Sawfish with the new commandline-option `--5-buttons'. It is assumed that modifiers are common among keyboard groups. More precisely, what's supported is switching by `ISO_Next_Group' or similar, bound to a key (for example ctrl + alt). It appears as "option" in X keyboard configuration, like "grp:ctrl_alt_toggle". If you use some utility to switch the layout and it confuses Sawfish keybindings, please restart Sawfish. With that commandline-option, you won't be able to bind Sawfish commands to mouse buttons 6
· 8. This may be fixed in future.
· Atom handling fix on 32-bit architecture (Java fix). [Teika Kazura] Function `x-atom-name' now accepts all 32 bits. Previously only 30 bits were treated if the architecture was 32-bit. 64-bit systems hadn't had this bug. It used to cause "Bad argument" error, most notably on Java applications. (In theory, an atom is set by X server, not a client. But Java applications seem to be affected often by this bug.)
· Applications menu bugfix [Matthew Love] Correct alphabetic ordering of menu-entries is done. Previously they were sorted [A-Z][a-z] (first all upper- then all loser-case entries). Also the function for detecting the language has been improved. It now better follows the freedesktop.org specification.
· Edge-flip and infinite-desktop now work after screen-resolution change. [Christopher Bratusek]
· Sawfish now starts up correctly when receiving a session-id or session-prefix from GNOME-Session [Clinton Ebadi, Christopher Bratusek]
· Draft animator bugfix. [Christopher Bratusek] The "draft" animator had two issues: on one hand the drawn numbers were always black (therefore possibly invisible), on the other hand those numbers weren't erased from the screen. Both have been fixed. Internally, it's done by the new `x-draw-text' function described below.
· Resurrection of two variables [Teika Kazura] User options `workspace-boundary-mode' and `workspace-send-boundary-mode' couldn't be set from the configurator, but this is fixed.
· Command `xterm' fix [Teika kazura] It couldn't be invoked as a key binging if the optional "command" argument was unset by the configurator, i.e. an empty string.

New Features:

· Desktop-environment integration [Christopher Bratusek] Support for XFCE integration was added. It's just like GNOME/KDE4 integration: it sets `xterm-program' and `browser-program' (unless already set by user), and adds XFCE logout/help/customization menu-entries to the Sawfish root-menu. Improvements: All menu-entries for GNOME/KDE4 do now have accelerators. Entries for invoking `gnome-control-center' or KDE `systemsettings' have been added. The KDE4 detection has been improved. See also the item "Applications menu improvements" below. A new variable `desktop-environment' tells which desktop environment is running (*note External Applications::).
· Applications menu improvements [Matthew Love] Applications menu now looks more like that of GNOME / KDE / XFCE if one is running. (further improvements are planned) The user option `apps-menu-ignore-no-display' is now gone and replaced by `apps-menu-show-all'. If `apps-menu-show-all' is `nil' (default), the menu looks much like that of GNOME / KDE / Xfce, by hiding some applications. If it's `t', then all installed applications are shown. An intermediate option, the symbol `maybe' is possible, as described below. Technically, fields `NotShowIn' and `OnlyShowIn' in files `/usr/share/applications/*.desktop' tell under which desktop environment that application wants to be shown. If `apps-menu-show-all' is `nil' or `maybe', they are respected. Items with field `Hidden' or `NoDisplay' are usually not to be shown. They are respected if `apps-menu-show-all' is `nil'. The KDE specific directory is now searched, too while menu generation.
· New window rules [Christopher Bratusek]
· `fixed-size': this disables resizing, or more precisely, functions `resize-window-interactively', `halve-window-size' and `double-window-size'. (Maximization is still possible. Use `never-maximize' to prevent maximization.)
· `never-close': this disables closing. Only interactive closing is prevented, and you can delete windows with `never-close' property from a lisp program.
Update of emacs major mode `sawfish.el' [Teika kazura] It is now distributed with Sawfish window manager. Improvements are:
· Evaluation used to choke when it encountered `#f' or `#t'. This is fixed.
· Highlighting of the keywords like `define' works again.
· `describe-function' have been broken, but it works again.
· In `describe-variable', the value of the variable is pretty-printed.
· `sawfish-load-symbols' can be called interactively to update the cached symbols.
· Better introductory part.
· New frame-parts `border-width' and `border-color' [Alexey I. Froloff] A "border" of a window surrounds the window and all other frame parts. (*note Frame Part Definition::)
· New commandline-option `--5-buttons' See the item "Keyboard-layout switching support" above.
· `x-draw-text' function [Christopher Bratusek] It is similar to `x-draw-string'. Generally, if you use a `display-message' like message, call `x-draw-string'. If you want to draw on the screen directly use `x-draw-text' (*note X Drawing::.)

Translation updates:
· Updated translations since 1.6.0 are Danish (da), British English (en_GB), German (de), Spanish (es), Slovenian (sl), and Swedish (sv). All translation files are now in UTF-8. Changed languages are Galician (gl), Italian (it), Romanian (ro), and Turkish (tr). The rest were already UTF-8. [Teika Kazura]

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