Using ctwm with Xubuntu or Xfce4

[Rhialto]

Recently I reported the existence of 2 packages that allow one to use a
different window manager in Gnome and KDE, which could potentially be
adapted to work for ctwm. For Xubuntu / XFCE, nothing like that seemed
available, and there was reportedly no official method of replacing
xfwm4.

I thought of a hack though. I noticed that the session manager has
$HOME/bin early in its path (and I don't think I configured that myself
in some way). That opens up a way to replace xfwm4 with a script that
actually calls ctwm. It just needs to convert or remove the command line
arguments that are unknown to ctwm.

The new mwm-hints support nicely makes the menu bar and panel borderless
and title-less, and the background with the file icons turns out to be a
full-screen window too (which you can of course iconify if you want it
out of the way).

So here it is (attached). If you are using Xubuntu or Xfce4, save it as
~/bin/xfwm4 and kill the existing xfwm4. The session manager will try to
restart it and run this script instead.  The next time you login it is
used immediately.

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

#!/bin/sh
#
# Fake xfwm4 that really calls ctwm.
# 
# xfce4-session has $HOME/bin early in its path, so placing this script
# there will override the real xfwm4.

# Typically called by xfce4-session as
# xfwm4 --replace --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 
3e89db529-4b10-4dd5-bbce-b7ce86be2722

display="${DISPLAY:-:0}"

while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do
    case "$1" in
        --display)
            display="$2"
            shift 2
            ;;
        --sm-client-id)
            shift 2
            ;;
        *)
            shift
            ;;
    esac
done

exec ctwm -display "$display" -W

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