NAME
wmanager-loop - loop running window managers chosen with wmanager
SYNOPSIS
wmanager-loop [OPTIONS ...]
DESCRIPTION
The wmanager-loop program starts either the window manager specified by
the WM variable or the first window manager listed in ~/.wmanagerrc (or
an X terminal emulator if none), and when it exits, runs wmanager(1) to
prompt the user for the next window manager. It loops doing this until
the user chooses “Exit this session” in wmanager(1). Any options given
to wmanager-loop will be passed on to wmanager(1).
If the WM environment variable is set, the wmanager-loop program tries to
interpret it as a window manager specification in the following ways in
the specified order:
· a full path to an executable file to run as the window manager;
· the name of a window manager listed in the /.wmanagerrc file; e.g.
“fluxbox” would match the following line:
fluxbox=/usr/bin/startfluxbox
· the program name of a window manager listed in the /.wmanagerrc file;
e.g. “startfluxbox” would match the above example.
· the start of such a program name; e.g. “start” would match the above
example.
· the end of such a program name; e.g. “box” would match the above
example.
If the WM variable is set and there is more than one line in
~/.wmanagerrc that matches the specification, wmanager-loop will exit
with an error message.
As mentioned above, if no window manager is specified in the WM
environment variable or found in the ~/.wmanagerrc file, the
wmanager-loop program attempts to start an X terminal emulator. If the
WMTERM environment variable is set, the wmanager-loop program uses it as
the path to the emulator. Otherwise it searches the user’s path for a
program named “x-terminal-emulator”, “urxvt”, “rxvt”, or “xterm” in this
order, and starts the first one found using its full path. If none of
the common terminal emulators on the above list is found, the
wmanager-loop program just runs “xterm” in the hope that something will
come up on the user’s display.
ENVIRONMENT
The wmanager-loop program uses the following environment variables:
WM The name, path, or partial path to the first window manager to
execute.
WMTERM The name of the X terminal emulator to execute if no window
manager could be found in the ~/.wmanagerrc file. If not
specified, the wmanager-loop program searches the user’s path as
described above.
EXAMPLE
To start using wmanager-loop, create a ~/.wmanagerrc file - generally
with wmanagerrc-update(1) - and add something like the following at the
end of your ~/.xsession file:
exec wmanager-loop -geometry +570+585
SEE ALSO
wmanager(1), wmanagerrc-update(1)
HISTORY
The wmanager-loop program was written by Tommi Virtanen in 2000 and later
modified by Peter Pentchev. This manual page was originally written in
perldoc format by Tommi Virtanen in 2000, and converted to mdoc format
and updated by Peter Pentchev in 2008.
AUTHORS
Tommi Virtanen 〈tv@debian.org〉
Peter Pentchev 〈roam@ringlet.net〉