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Free Pascal Window Manager: what changed

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11## History
22
33![fpwm running in Xnest (circa 2008)\|380px](/wiki-images/d/d0/Screenshot-fpwm.png) The Free Pascal Window Manager was started in 2006 by Andrew Haines, Daniel Franzini and Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho. The main motivation for this project was to give a greater visibility for applications written in Free Pascal, which face difficulties to find adequate deployment in Linux because the Linux distributions prefer to deploy the standard programs which are packaged by each Window Manager, such as KDE or Gnome. FPWM should come as a simple, but easy to use Window Manager which also deploys a full set of useful applications. This set of applications is developed in the [[Free Pascal Application Suite]] project. Unfortunately, due to the lack of free time, lack of enough knowledge of X11 and the general difficulties in finding information about how to write a window manager, the project soon stalled.
44
55In the second half of 2010 the University of São Paulo through Prof. Dr. Pedro Luiz Pizzigatti Corrêa has given its support for the project by making a team of 4 students available to help in its development for 1 semester as part of the engineering course in the university. This counts as executing a subject with 2 credits. In this project, with most of the code and fixes coming from Felipe, it was achieved the total conversion of the wm2 window manager to Pascal, making it fully functional by the beginning of 2011.
66
77The next step after achieving a functional window manager is modifying the windows to have a more normal layout.
88
99## Guidelines
1010
1111FPWM should be simples, light-weight and easy to use. It should be usable for both tablets / touch-screen devices and for normal desktop computers with a mouse. It should provide a taskbar similar to Windows, as well as icons in the desktop. It should have larger borders and larger icons in its tablet mode, and a more common appearance in its desktop mode. It should provide a system tray icon area and respect the Free Desktop specifications for Window Managers.
1212
1313## Subversion
1414
15-` svn co `[`https://fpwm.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fpwm`](https://fpwm.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fpwm)` fpwm`
15+```text
16+ svn co https://fpwm.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fpwm fpwm
17+```
1618
1719## Tutorials
1820
1921### Installing Linux in a virtual machine inside Windows
2022
2123- First download Virtual PC: [Download the full version of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=04d26402-3199-48a3-afa2-2dc0b40a73b6&DisplayLang=en)
2224
2325- Tutorial to install Linux in Virtual PC: [Run Linux in Windows](http://www.pcreview.co.uk/articles/Windows/Run_Linux_in_Windows/)
2426
2527### Configuring the login screen in Linux
2628
2729#### Adding XTerm as an option in the login screen
2830
2931For debugging purposes one can add the XTerm as a Window Manager in the Linux login screen.
3032
3133Then when logging in choose XTerm from the list of window managers. This will open an empty X11 with a single XTerm instance running which you can use to open a real Window Manager, fpwm for example.
3234
3335The following terminal commands can be utilized to to start fpwm:
3436
3537 cd /path/to/fpwm
3638 ./fpwm
3739
3840To add XTerm in the list of choices, one should add the file 99xterm.desktop to a folder which contains one .desktop file per window manager. This file can be obtained from: <http://fpwm.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/fpwm/resources/99XTERM.desktop?revision=107&view=markup>
3941
4042And should be similar to this:
4143
4244 [Desktop Entry]
4345 Encoding=UTF-8
4446 Name=XTerm
4547 Comment=XTerm
4648 TryExec=xterm
4749 Exec=/usr/share/X11/xdm/Xsession xterm
4850 Icon=
4951 Type=Application
5052
5153In Mandriva Linux with GDM (Gnome login manager) the folder to place this file is: /etc/X11/dm/Sessions/ In Mandriva Linux with KDM (KDE login manager) the folder to place this file is: /usr/share/apps/kdm/sessions/
5254
5355## Issues
5456
5557\<\<\< March 2017 \>\>\>
5658
5759When compiling (latest snapshot from sourceforge) with Lazarus 1.6 and FPC 3.0.0 it show this error:
5860
5961**Compile Proyect, Target: fpwm: Output Code 256, errors: 1 hints:** 4
6062
6163fpwmrotated.pas(406,34) Error: Illegal type conversion: "ShortString" to "Pchar"
6264
6365The other hints are:
6466
6567fpwmgeneral.pas(65,17) Hint: Local variable "sAct" does not seem to be initialized
6668
6769fpwmgeneral.pas(21,6) Hint: Unit "xlib" not used in fpwmgeneral
6870
6971xproto.pas(74,6) Hint: Unit "x" not used in xproto
7072
7173xproto.pas(74,9) Hint: Unit "xmd" not used in xproto
7274
7375## Lap-Tupniquim project
7476
7577This Window Manager might be utilized in the brazilian digital school desks if it proves to be good enough for it:
7678
7779- Project Lap-Tupniquim: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvEv0aWo94Q>
7880
7981## External links
8082
8183- [X11 Book: Xlib Programming Manual](http://www.niksula.hut.fi/~jkirma/books/xlib.pdf)
8284- [Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual](http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/)
8385
8486---
8587*From the Free Pascal wiki, page "Free Pascal Window Manager", as it stood on 2017-03-23 after a change by Jma sp, out of the wiki's dump of 2024-05-26. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's [[Licensing]] page. If you have concerns about this material, [message the admin](/wiki-contact).*
8688Category: FPC
8789Category: GUI

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