X Window System概念摘录

Window

What other graphical user interfaces usually call a window is a top-level window in the X Window System. The term window is also used for windows that lie within another window, that is, the subwindows of a parent window. Graphical elements such as buttons, menus, icons, etc. are all realized using windows.

A window can only be created as a subwindow of a parent window. This causes the windows to be arranged hierarchically in a tree. The X server automatically creates the root of the tree, called the root window. The top-level windows are exactly the direct subwindows of the root window. Visibly, the root window is as large as the screen, and lies behind all other windows.

A possible placement of some windows: 1 is the root window, which covers the whole screen; 2 and 3 are top-level windows; 4 and 5 are subwindows of 2. The parts of window that are outside its parent are not visible.

Window manager

A window manager is a program that controls the general appearance of windows and other graphical elements of the graphical user interface. Differences in the look of X Window System in different installations stem mainly from the use of different window managers or from different configurations of the window manager.

The window manager takes care of deciding the position of windows, placing the decorative border around them, handling icons, handling mouse clicks outside windows (on the “background”), handling certain keystrokes, etc.

From the point of view of the X server, the window manager operates as a client just like any other client. The initial position and the decorative borders around windows are handled by the window manager using the following requests:

1. an application can request the server not to satisfy requests of mapping (showing) subwindows of a given window, and to be sent an event instead;
2. an application can request changing the parent of a window.

The window manager uses the first request to intercept any request for mapping top-level windows (children of the root window). Whenever another application requests the mapping of a top-level window, the server does not do it but sends an event to the window manager instead. Most window managers reparent the window: they create a larger top-level window (called the frame window) and reparent the original window as a child of it. Graphically, this corresponds to placing the original window inside the frame window. The space of the frame window that is not taken by the original window is used for the decorative frame around the window (the “border” and the “title bar”).

The window manager manages mouse clicks in the frame window. This allows, for example, a user to move or resize the window by clicking and dragging on the border or on the title bar.

The window manager also handles icons and related visual elements of the graphical user interface. Icons do not exist at the level of the X Window core protocol. They are implemented by the window manager. For example, whenever a window has to be “iconified”, the FVWM window manager unmaps the window, and creates a window for the icon name and possibly another window for the icon image. The meaning and handling of icons is therefore completely decided by the window manager: some window managers such as wm2 do not implement icons at all.

X display manager

The program known as the X display manager shows the graphical login prompt in the X Window System. More generally, a display manager runs one or more X servers on the local computer and accepts incoming connections from X servers running on remote computers. The local servers are started by the display manager, which then connects to them to present the user the login screen. The remote servers are started independently from the display manager and connect to it. In this situation, the display manager works like a graphical telnet server: an X server can connect to the display manager, which starts a session; the programs of this session run on the same computer of the display manager but have input and output on the computer where the X server runs (which may be the computer in front of the user or a remote one).

The X Window System ships with XDM as the basic supplied display manager. Other display managers include GDM (GNOME), KDM (KDE), WDM (using the WINGs widget set used in Window Maker) and entrance (using the architecture used in Enlightenment v.17).