Customizing the Motif Window Manager

This chapter describes how to set some of the basic mwm (Motif Window Manager) resources:

• Specifying colors for client window frames, icons, menus, and mattes
• Specifying window decorations
• Specifying the size and placement of windows
• Specifying the size and placement of icons
• Specifying fonts
• Specifying input focus

There are three types of mwm resources:

Component appearance resources

These resources specify appearance attributes of window manager components such as menus and icons.

Specific appearance and behavior resources

These resources are used to specify mwm appearance and behavior; for example, colormap and keyboard input focus policies. They are not set separately for different mwm components.

Client-specific resources

These mwm resources can be set for a particular client window or class of client windows. They specify client-specific icon and client window frame appearance and behavior.

For example, you could specify the following resources for mwm in your .Xdefaults file:

Mwm*background: LightBlue
Mwm*foreground: Black
Mwm*activeBackground: Blue
Mwm*icon*foreground: DarkSlateBlue
Mwm*keyboardFocusPolicy: pointer
Mwm*focusAutoRaise: true
Mwm*UseIconBox: true
Mwm*iconBoxGeometry: 3x2
Mwm*my_application*iconImage: ~/my.bitmap

Notice that the class name for mwm is Mwm.