NAME

wmanager-loop — loop running window managers chosen with wmanager

SYNOPSIS

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:

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⟩