icewm (1)

NAME

icewm - lightweight X11 window manager

DESCRIPTION

IceWM is lightweight X11 window manager. The goal of IceWM is to provide a small, fast and familiar window manager for the X11 window system. Compatibility with the window manager is desired and will be implemented where appropriate.
It was originally designed to emulate the look of Motif, OS/2 Warp 4, OS/2 Warp 3 and Windows 95. Since it has a theming engine (hint: www.icewm.org others styles are possible. It also tries to combine the feel of the above systems whenever it is compatible.
Generally, it tries to make all functions available both by keyboard and by mouse (this is not currently possible when using mouse focus). Extreme configurability similar to fvwm and many other window managers is NOT the goal. However IceWM configurability is very good through its various preferences files.
IceWM consists of several parts:
icewm - the actual window manager binary. This is the one you need to get window decorations.
icewmbg - the background setting applications. It can assign plain background color or images in different formats to the X background, shared or separated for different workspaces. This program should be started before IceWM startup.
icewmtray - catches the Docklet objects installed by various applications like PSI.
icewm-session - runs all of the above when needed. Implements basic session management.
icesh - could be used to manage IceWM internals from command line.
icewmhint - used internally.
icesound - plays audio files on GUI events raised by IceWM.

OPTIONS

For most of the parts use option

-h, --help to see all of the options.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

ICEWM_PRIVCFG=PATH

Directory to use for user private configuration files, "$HOME/.icewm/" by default.

DISPLAY=NAME

Name of the X server to use, depends on Xlib by default. See X(1).

MAIL=URL

Location of your mailbox. If the schema is omitted the local "file" schema is assumed.

FILES

IceWM looks for its configuration files in the following directories, in the following order:
$(HOME)/.icewm/

User-specific configurations

/etc/X11/icewm/

System-wide customized defaults

/usr/local/share/icewm/

Default installation settings

Configuration files
keys

global keybindings to launch applications (not window manager related)

menu

menu of startable applications; usually customized by the user

preferences

general settings - paths, colors, fonts...

prefoverride

settings that should override the themes

programs

automatically generated menu of startable applications (this should be used for wmconfig, menu or similar packages, perhaps as a part of the login or X startup sequence)

theme

currently selected theme

toolbar

quick launch application icons on the taskbar

winoptions

application window options

startup

commands to execute on IceWM startup

shutdown

commands to execute on IceWM shutdown

Configuration directories
icons

icons used for applications (usually XPM files *_16x16.xpm and *_32x32.xpm)

ledclock

pictures of digits for clocks displayed in taskbar

mailbox

icons used for different states of mailbox

taskbar

pictures to customize look of the taskbar

themes

directory to store themes

EXAMPLES

Examples of above configuration files you can find in default installation path or in system-wide customizable defaults.

SEE ALSO

xinit(1), X(1),
www.icewm.org/manual
www.icewm.org/FAQ
www.icewm.org/themes

AUTHORS

The original version of IceWM was designed and implemented in 1997 by Marko Macek, in year 2001 it was maintained by Mathias Hasselmann then again Marko Macek took over.
IceWM man page written by Adam Pribyl, covex@ahoj.fsik.cvut.cz, 2005

BUG REPORTS

If you find a bug in IceWM please use bug reporting system on sourceforge.net/projects/icewm to report it.

COPYING

IceWM is released under GNU Library General Public License.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Library General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.