BlackBox 0.35.0

Introduction

The choice of window manager is often a very emotive subject for a Linux user. Some swear by the simplicity of Fvwm2 — often a standard install for a Linux distribution. Others prefer something that looks like Windows 95 (there are a number that do this). Yet another group prefer a more all-embracing ‘environment’ such as KDE or GNOME.

Now I’m not advocating any particular manager here (for the record, I normally use AfterStep), I just want to get my work done.

So, we come to one of the newer, lesser know alternatives called BlackBox.

What is a Window Manager?

I suspect that most people here know what a window manager is, but for people that are more familiar with the way Microsoft Windows does things I’ll give a quick overview.

With all versions of Windows, the look and feel — the way that every window has a minimise button and that the desktop has a taskbar and a ‘My Computer’ icon — is tied directly to the underlying GUI framework (without getting into some programming jargon it’s difficult to be much more precise).

With Unix and X things are different. X is the underlying GUI framework. Using it you can paint things on a ‘generic’ screen rather than worrying about what graphics card you have, you can find the location of the mouse and what the keyboard is doing. But X doesn’t say what the windows look like (in fact, it doesn’t even insist that you have them), which buttons go where or what they look like. Window Managers (and widget libraries such as Qt or GTK) add this on top of X.

Like most other things, the Unix approach is far more complex but more powerful.

Look and feel

First impressions are good. When BlackBox starts, an almost CDE-like tool bar sits at the bottom of the screen, resplendent in its 3D-effect, gradated-filled boxes. On the right is the time; on the left is a box showing the current work-space (virtual desktop) and the number of windows open (why?); to the right of this are buttons to move around the various workspaces and to switch to minimise windows; in the middle is a huge gap that, as far as I can tell, serves no useful purpose. Perhaps the authors have plans?

The default application menu, available by right-clicking on the desktop, has a number of useful programs immediately available. Again, it looks good but is not entirely intuitive. For example, menu items with a circle to the left open out sub-menus. Would it not make more sense to have an arrow on the right?

Small programs such as xterm appear immediately, showing that BlackBox is relatively efficient.

Window furniture is fairly standard. The ‘minimise’ button is in the top left, and makes the window vanish. It can be restored by clicking the ‘Icons’ button on the tool bar and then the window name. I generally prefer a more visual approach such as the way Window 95 does it, but this is a perfectly valid and popular approach. On the far right is the close widget and to its left is a ‘fill the whole screen’ button.

Window sizing and moving is implemented in a Mac-like way: drag and drop the title to move the window; drag and drop the bottom right of the window to resize. It might be considered heretical to say so, but I think I prefer the Microsoft drag-and-drop-any-corner approach.

Configuration

Black box is easy to install. Type “xmkmf -a ; make ; make install” and you’re well away. There are a few options that you can change before you start the build, but nothing much worth changing. No option for the installation directory is given which is a shame as I prefer to put non-RPM software in /usr/local rather than any of the ‘normal’ locations.

Like almost everything UNIX, to alter any configuration options on a day-to-day basis requires the editing of a text file (the short-cut menu has a promising sounding ‘Reconfigure’ option, but this just re-reads the file). While the format of the file isn’t too daunting, I’d have preferred a dialog based interface. This is a very common problem with window managers.

All the standard things can be changed, the font, the colours, etc. The configuration file looks similar to the Xdefaults file rather than the more usual Windows ini file — it’s good that BlackBox has some consistency with the rest of X.

Conclusion

BlackBox is a neat piece of software. The look and feel are impressive, the performance is good, installation is simple, stability for beta software is excellent (one crash during testing), but there is something missing.

I think that something must be individuality. I don’t see much here that can’t be achieved by configuring many other window managers.