I've made a small start at supporting some EWMH features, in a new
branch. You might have noticed that it appeared on the launchpad page:
https://code.launchpad.net/~rhialto/ctwm/ewmh .

I do have to grumble about the EWMH documentation though. I was looking
for it from the apparently official website for it, freedesktop.org.

If one starts at http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/,
clicks "specifications" to get to
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/,
clicks "Window manager specification" to get to the offical page for the
EWMH "de-facto standard"
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/wm-spec/ .
That page claims the latest spec version is 1.3 and refers to a
nonexistent cvs module.  Various other links there are also stale.
Completely by accident I discovered
http://standards.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/wm-spec-1.5.html
which seems to be a much more current version of the same.                      

The fact that the website is so not updated doesn't really inspire much
faith in the effort that went into the documentation process.

And even though the oldest version of the document that I can find there
(1.1 from 2001) is about 9 years after ctwm was started (1992), it
doesn't take into account the possibility that a window might occupy
more than 1, but not all workspaces. (Not to mention the way ctwm uses
virtual root windows to show more than one workspace at once, with
Virtual Screens).

I subscribed myself to their mailing list but it is really low volume
(read: I haven't had a response yet to my mail).

Anyway, after that, the positive news:

my branch is a small start, and has implemented

- "--replace" option, which causes the newly started ctwm to tell the
  running wm to quit, and take over. This makes it easier to switch wms
  when the one you want isn't the one that was started. Especially since
  they tend to lack menus with a "quit" option.
- a few window properties so that separate "pager" programs know how
  many workspaces there are and which one is current.
- can be compiled without the GNOME option which implements some
  outdated protocol.

It's a small start but I wanted to include at least some feature that
can be seen. I tried it in a Xubuntu desktop and suddenly it knew I have
9 workspaces and showed the correct one as the current.

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert  -- The Doctor: No, 'eureka' is Greek for
\X/ rhialto/at/xs4all.nl    -- 'this bath is too hot.'

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