Thomas Adam, creator of the FVWM3 window manager and one of the key developers of FVWM, as well as the maintainer of the portable version of the terminal multiplexer tmux, has published the CoW (Compositor on Wayland) project, aimed at creating a stacking window manager in the style of FVWM and MWM, using the Wayland protocol instead of X11. Key differences include a simpler configuration mechanism that employs a command set similar to tmux commands, usable both in the configuration file and the IPC interface for remote control. The code is written in C and is distributed under the ISC license. Builds are available for Arch Linux, Fedora, and OpenBSD.
CoW is implemented on top of the modular compositor server River, which is responsible for implementing the Wayland protocol, rendering, and managing input/output access.
CoW includes abstractions for window management, IPC, commands, and features for stacking, decoding, and compositing windows. This separation allows for a focused attention on window management features without being distracted by the intricacies of working with the Wayland protocol.
On top of the window manager run the cowbar panel, the cow-appmenu application menu, the cowpager virtual desktop navigator, the cowbuttons launcher, and the cowiconman window list viewer interface. Instead of a built-in panel, the Waybar panel can be used. CoW version 0.4 is notable for adding the ability to use top-level window containers to create arbitrary window layouts on the screen (a top-level window can be split into columns and rows that can be resized independently of each other).
Sursa: opennet.ro
