Andrew J Glover flexifoil@btinternet.com writes:

By its name, I would think its an extension of another WM, aewm: http://www.red-bean.com/~decklin/aewm/

Correct. Frank Hale translated it to C++, via http://sapphire.sourceforge.net/ and we're still working on tidying up that core. That should be a work-alike of aewm, which I don't find particularly easy to use.

I'm maintaining my work as a patch so that I can merge in fixes to aewm++ as they become available. My little fork adds in some features that I miss such as: - right-side grab bar which moves the window like the title bar - raise on move - resize box at bottom right - split minimise and maximise buttons - funky 3d shading effect - removes at least two semantic bugs in button presses

I use the included root menu applications, but I've also got apps (goodies, in the terminology of the project) which do such things as virtual desktops, hot keys, autoraise, a "busy watch" pointer when CPU is busy and alt-tab window switching. Other people are working on adding automake/autoconf and writing a decent root menu goodie. Some time, we may get around to adding FreeDesktop wm-spec support so that it'll play nice with GNOME-aware apps.

The basic idea is to make the window management system as modular as is practical, so you can choose the right mix of features for you, minimise your memory usage and maximise the speed. Don't like alt-tab? Don't have it! Want different root menus? Fine, just replace the goodies concerned! All this without having a bloated window manager that supports all possibilities. That's the bit which will take some packaging together, preferably with a "control panel" or something that lets you switch features off and on.

Anyway, until then, I'll send the patch to whoever wants it. I guess I'll say something on-list when it's packaged.