added a general comment to dwm.h how dwm is basically organized

master
Anselm R. Garbe 2006-09-12 08:14:22 +02:00
parent 868159fd0a
commit e6cc22396a
1 changed files with 40 additions and 0 deletions

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dwm.h
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@ -1,6 +1,46 @@
/*
* (C)opyright MMVI Anselm R. Garbe <garbeam at gmail dot com>
* See LICENSE file for license details.
*
* dynamic window manager is designed like any other X client as well. It is
* driven through handling X events. In contrast to other X clients, a window
* manager like dwm selects for SubstructureRedirectMask on the root window, to
* receive events about child window appearance and disappearance. Only one X
* connection at a time is allowed to select for this event mask by any X
* server, thus only one window manager instance can be executed at a time.
* Any attempt to select for SubstructureRedirectMask by any connection after
* another connection already selected for those events, will result in an
* error generated by the server. Such errors are reported through calling the
* current X error handler.
*
* Calls to pop an X event from the event queue of the X connection are
* blocking. Due the fact, that dwm reads status text from standard input, a
* select-driven main loop has been implemented which selects for reads on the
* X connection and STDIN_FILENO to handle all data smoothly and without
* busy-loop quirks.. The event handlers of dwm are organized in an array
* which is accessed whenever a new event has been popped. This allows event
* dispatching in O(1) time.
*
* Each child window of the root window is called a client in window manager
* terminology, except windows which have set the override_redirect flag.
* Clients are organized in a global doubly-linked client list, the focus
* history is remembered through a global stack list. Each client contains an
* array of Bools of the same size as the global tags array to indicate the
* tags of a client. There are no other data structures to organize the clients
* in tag lists, because a single global list is most simple. All clients which
* have at least one tag enabled of the current tags viewed, will be visible on
* the screen, all other clients are banned to the x-location 2 * screen width.
* This avoids having additional layers of workspace handling.
*
* For each client dwm creates a small title window which is resized whenever
* the WM_NAME or _NET_WM_NAME properties are updated.
*
* Keys and tagging rules are organized as arrays as well and defined in the
* config.h file. These arrays are kept static in event.o and tag.o
* respectively, because no other part of dwm needs access to them.
*
* The current mode is represented by the arrange function pointer which wether
* points to dofloat or dotile.
*/
#include "config.h"