Musca Window Manager

From Musca

A simple dynamic window manager for X, with features nicked from ratpoison and dwm:

• Musca operates as a tiling window manager by default. It uses manual tiling, which means the user determines how the screen is divided into non-overlapping frames, with no restrictions on layout. Application windows always fill their assigned frame, with the exception of transient windows and popup dialog boxes which float above their parent application at the appropriate size. Once visible, applications do not change frames unless so instructed.

• Since not all applications suit tiling, a more traditional stacking window manager mode is also available, allowing windows to float at any screen location and overlap.

• There are no built in status bars, panels, tabs or window decorations to take up screen real estate. If the user wants any of these things, there are plenty of external applications available to do the job. Window decoration is limited to a slender border, which is coloured to indicate keyboard focus.

• Windows are placed in named groups which can be used in a similar fashion to virtual desktops. Groups can be added and removed on the fly, and each group has its own frame layout.

• The excellent dmenu utility is used to execute commands and launch applications, and it can also act as a window and group switcher. Basic EWMH support allows use of common panels, pagers and wmctrl.

• Windows and frames are navigated and focused on any mouse button click, including rolling the wheel, or alternatively driven entirely by the keyboard. Simple key combinations exist for window switching, group switching, frame control and screen switching.

• Frames can be dedicated to a single application window, preventing new windows usurping said frame. One frame per group can also be flagged as a catch-all so that all new application windows open there. The frame border colour changes to reflect these modes.

• Musca has multi-screen support out of the box, and will automatically create groups for every available screen.

Where to Start

• Download the source code.
• Try a tutorial.
• See the documentation.
• Check out the community.

Project Background

Thanks to ratpoison and dwm authors. Musca's code is actually written from scratch, but a lot of useful stuff was gleaned from reading the source code of those two excellent projects.

Extra kudos to dwm authors for creating dmenu! A true sliced-bread-beating invention.

But why do this when there are 17 million other window managers already swanning about the internet? Variety is the spice of life? Actually, ratpoison is very good and I used it for many years; but, I always wanted it to be just a little bit more friendly to the mouse, and just a little bit more informative about frame focus and layout, and just a little bit less modal (I can't think of a better way to say that) everywhere. Sleek little dwm is also great, and while it does focus-follow-mouse and has nice minimal yet informative frame borders, it can't do manual frame layouts and I couldn't add the feature to it satisfactorily (probably my fault). Other options like Ion3 and Xmonad were also fun, but ultimately had fluff of one sort or another. So, here is Musca: the strange offspring of ratpoison and dwm, and very likely only suited to my preferences ;-) Oh well.

Why is it named after a star constellation?

1. So it didn't have "wm" in the name.
2. Why not?