X-Window Manager Programming

Not sure if this is supposed to be here or in the programming section, as it could fit both.

Hello everyone,
My name is Kaiidyn and I have been searching for a while on how to make my own X-Window Manager (like gnome/kde etc)
I have been doing research for a couple of days now, but I cannot find anything relative to my situation.

What I am trying to accomplish is to have my own custom (from scratch?) window manager that works exactly as I want it to work, and look how I want it to look.
And of course to learn :-)

Does anyone have any information on how to begin with this?
Tutorials or books maybe?

Kind regards,
Kaiidyn.

Hello,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaiidyn

My name is Kaiidyn and I have been searching for a while on how to make my own X-Window Manager (like gnome/kde etc)

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actually, these two are desktop environments. The WMs are just a small part of the project and are called "metacity" and "kwin".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaiidyn

What I am trying to accomplish is to have my own custom (from scratch?) window manager that works exactly as I want it to work, and look how I want it to look.
And of course to learn :-)

Does anyone have any information on how to begin with this?
Tutorials or books maybe?

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You want the XLib programmer's and reference manual, especially chapter nine.
http://tronche.com/gui/x/xlib/
Internet Archive Search: xlib

I suggest that you get the source to twm and start with that. It is one of the smallest X-Windows desktop managers you can get. Also, as suggested, you should get the Xlib manuals (published by O'Reilly) and I suggest the Xtoolkit manual as well. There are about 8 or 9 books in the entire X-Windows reference set, and I regularly use about 4 or 5 of them. Each is a BIG doorstop, and the entire set will take up several linear feet of your bookshelf, not to mention set your budget back quite a bit... They run about $30-35 USD per volume (new). :-) Anyway, the four volumes I use the most are 1, 2, 4, and 5. Ie,

Vol 1. Xlib Programming Manual
Vol 2. Xlib Reference Manual
Vol 4. X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming Manual
Vol 5. X Toolkit Intrinsics Reference Manual

If you are into serious X programming (such as writing a window manager), then you really need all 4 of these.

Thank you for the replies,
I will look into it later today :-)