Siemens RTL Tiled Window Manager

[Christoph Lohmann]

Greetings comrades,

I am proud to announce, that we (Paul Onyschuk an I) got the
Siemens RTL Tiled Window Manager to work on modern systems. It
was one of the early tiled window managers and has some ideas
of dwm, but is something different. Just try it out.

At [0] is the source of the patched rtl, to compile with
modern gcc versions. You will need liboldX[1] for the compila-
tion.

Instructions:

% tar -xzf rtl-5.2-working.tar.gz
% cd rtl
% mxmkmf && make && make install
# will install to /usr/bin
% cat > ~/.rtl.tools
XTerm
<Tab>xterm
<Ctrl+D>
% rtl

Now use the right mouse button to use the menus. The .rtl.tools
file is needed, so you are able to at least start an xterm from
within rtl.

There seem to many yet untouched features in rtl, which are doc-
umented in the doc/ directory.


Sincerely,

Christoph Lohmann

[0] http://www.r-36.net/tmp/rtl-5.2-working.tar.gz
[1] http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/liboldX/

[Christoph Lohmann]

Greetings comrades,

before you guys start using rtl like dwm, here's a presentation
video[0] about how it was intended to be used.


Sincerely,

Christoph Lohmann

[0] http://www.open-video.org/details.php?videoid=8038

[Connor Lane Smith]

Post by Christoph Lohmann
before you guys start using rtl like dwm, here's a presentation
video[0] about how it was intended to be used.

Ellis Cohen wins. I demand that 1:00 - 1:25 be used to introduce every
talk on dwm from here on out.

cls

[Andrew Hills]

Post by Connor Lane Smith
Ellis Cohen wins. I demand that 1:00 - 1:25 be used to introduce every
talk on dwm from here on out.

I'll second that. I also enjoyed his closing remark: "We don't always
use the available space because sometimes it just can't be used."

--Andrew Hills

[Paul Onyschuk]

On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:20:49 +0100

Post by Connor Lane Smith
Ellis Cohen wins. I demand that 1:00 - 1:25 be used to introduce every
talk on dwm from here on out.

You can also check extras/rhymes in source code. This is small part,
to not spoil too much:

"C'mon baby, cut the crap
I don't want to overlap"

[hiro]

I like this, but it also does too much.

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:20:49 +0100

Post by Connor Lane Smith

Post by Christoph Lohmann
before you guys start using rtl like dwm, here's a presentation
video[0] about how it was intended to be used.

Ellis Cohen wins. I demand that 1:00 - 1:25 be used to introduce every
talk on dwm from here on out.

what a funny guy. that ^^ or somebody creates a parody video for dwm.
(oh wait that wouldn't be suckless, yeah just cut the part from the rtl video)

[Paul Onyschuk]

On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:03:29 +0100

It was one of the early tiled window managers and has some ideas
of dwm, but is something different. Just try it out.

Just to give some idea about time frame (mostly based on sparse
informations from comp.windows.x discussion group):

- RTL was useful back in 1986, although it was based on Adrew Project.
- In 1987 porting to X11 began.
- First wider public release was made in 1988, RTL version 5.1 was
distrusted on X11R3 contrib tape.
- (Not sure about this) Later on RTL was available on MIT ftp in X11
contrib section. I found information about RTL version 5.2pl1. Hard to
say if it is true, because it seems that X11R3 contrib was wiped out
from MIT servers completely.

It is one of the first tiling window managers, and I would say first
for X11. Project is interesting thanks to availability of source code
and detailed documentation. Source code is licensed on permissive/copy
free terms [1]. So called advertising clause was used, so it is
incompatible with GPL.

Anyway it seems like it wasn't popular back then. I guess there are few
reasons for that. Tiling was used by Digital Research and Microsoft
back in the days, not because they wanted - it was direct result of
Apple lawsuit. Secondly it was pretty big program back then - people
behind RTL steeped into unknown water, and as research project they
ended up with huge number of options and ideas.

I can point out some features about RTL after some early usage:
- It is 100% mouse driven.
- Using maximal space is secondary goal, main principle was to not
overlap windows.
- It has some kind of grouping support using settings (need further
investigation).
- Icons are used to represent "closed" windows.

Was is the point of digging out 20+ year old code? Tiling isn't new
idea, but evolved over the time. Watching video and making assumptions
is very different from playing with one of the tiling ancestors. It
also showed the state of X11 - old code isn't removed at all.


[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Permission_Notice_and_Disclaimer

[Anselm R Garbe]

Post by Christoph Lohmann
I am proud to announce, that we (Paul Onyschuk an I) got the
Siemens RTL Tiled Window Manager to work on modern systems. It
was one of the early tiled window managers and has some ideas
of dwm, but is something different. Just try it out.

I've heared of this window manager in the early days when starting
with wmi development back in 2001 or so.

However when looking at its overcrowded feature set and implementation
I would say it is very far away from sucking less. Despite the fact
that it has some tiling features, it is not simple at all. Looking at
those crappy window flags that one can set and all the corner cases
that those flags result in -- is a retrospective proof in itself why
this concept never gained considerable attraction.

Nevertheless I agree with the first statements Ellis made.

Cheers,
Anselm