FVWM 's Windows buttons (Maximize Minimize ...), Themes

Question

I'm using the F Virtual Window Manager (FVWM). I'm wondering how to customize the window appearance (the theme) to

1. Add a minimize, maximize, and close button, so I have four buttons, arranged like this:

    ---------------------------------------
   |=         (Window Titlebar)       N M X|
   |---------------------------------------|
   |                                       |
   |                                       | 
   |                                       |
   |                                       |
    ---------------------------------------

   = is an - button; when clicked on it shows a menu containing move resize raise lower (De)Iconify Delete Close Destroy Identify
   N is minimize
   M is maximize
   X is close

2. How could I set the height of the window title bar?

  Answer: The height is govern by the `(Window Titlebar)` **Font size**.  
          Or;
          TitleStyle Centered Height 24  #for example

Answer 1

I'm a little rusty w/ FVWM, and what you are asking for here amounts to a chapter in a book, so I'll just provide a few pointers. In the future, try to ask one short specific question and refer to what you've tried/know. Note that the fvwm man pages are very extensive and in-depth. If you can't get along with them, I'd give up now, because that is the primary documentation.

The title bar buttons are numbered. You'll have to play around with that -- the (in-use, working) config I have at hand only uses 3 and 4 which seem to correspond to your = and X. I believe you have to define a style for them to appear, e.g.:

ButtonStyle 3 \
        ActiveUp (AdjustedPixmap gearfolder_32.png) \
        ActiveDown (AdjustedPixmap Xx.png) \
        Inactive (AdjustedPixmap gearfolder_32.png) 
ButtonStyle 4 \
        ActiveUp (AdjustedPixmap Jupiter_32.png) \
        ActiveDown (AdjustedPixmap Xx.png) \
        Inactive (AdjustedPixmap Jupiter_32.png) 

The buttons are associated with actions this way:

Mouse 1 3       A       Menu Window-Ops Nop

1 is the mouse button number, 3 is the title bar button number (corresponding to the ButtonStyle stuff above). 'A' refers to "any" modifier (others being 'C' = ctrl, etc.) including none. I don't know why it ends with 'Nop' (no-op -- maybe a menu action could go here), but the Window-Ops menu can be defined, e.g.:

AddToMenu Window-Ops
+       "(Un)Stick" Stick
+       "Move" Move
+       "Resize" Resize
+       "Layer Up" LayerUP
+       "Iconify (CM-i)" Iconify
+       "Layer Down" LayerDOWN
+       "Maximize" Maximize-Func
+       "" Nop
+       "change page" Popup change-page
+       "" Nop
+       "end" PopUp end-window

That's the kind of stuff you're seeing when you click the left title bar button. The "" Nop here just produces a horizontal line.

So, this is a partial answer. The following keywords mentioned here are all explained in man fvwm; they tend to be grouped by relation:

• ButtonStyle, ActiveUp/ActiveDown, Inactive
• AdjustedPixmap
• Mouse, Menu
• AddToMenu, PopUp, Stick, Move, Iconify, Resize

The other terms (eg. 'Window-Ops', 'Maximize-Func', 'LayerUP') are defined in the config I pulled from (which I did write, BTW, once upon a long time ago), although some of them are the same as identifiers used by example in the man page, I think.

Since getting all this straight can require a lot of fooling around, it's nice to be able to reload the config without logging out/restarting X. Add this to a menu somewhere:

+        "Restart FVWM" Restart

But; Restarting FVWM will restart every command that is stated in the config file and the FVWM commands. This will cause unwanted extra load and some messy duplications. So if you want to test single items and see how they change the FVWM look, you could use FvwmConsole.

To save yourself some time; you can now tweak the config and see what happens.