Version 0.95.1 released

Window Maker 0.95.1 was released on January 29th 2012.

The last official Window Maker release was version 0.92.0 from 2006, and version 0.95.1 contains many bug fixes and also a few new features. Window Maker 0.92.0 was already very stable, so most of the bug fixes are related to odd or not very frequent situations. One random example is the fix which avoids a segfault when creating more than 81 workspaces, as reported on youtube here.

Another bug-fix of peculiar nature is this one, which happened once every 49 days -- more precisely 2^32 milliseconds.

A lot of effort was put into cleaning up the code, with lots of code removal and tidying things up. The following output should give you an idea of the development in the last cycle:

[mafra@Pilar:wmaker.git]$ git diff --shortstat wmaker-0.92.0+..wmaker-0.95.1
 592 files changed, 118361 insertions(+), 133342 deletions(-)
[mafra@Pilar:wmaker.git]$ git diff --shortstat 688a56e8ab67b..wmaker-0.95.1
 566 files changed, 37676 insertions(+), 41817 deletions(-)

New features and highlights

This list is really very incomplete, but should give a first-order approximation to what are the new features in this release. For a bit more of details see the NEWS file included in the sources, although it also misses a lot of things. For the truly curious among you, reading through git log is the complete source of information.

• Left/right window maximization, making them occupy the left/right area of the screen

• Maximus (a.k.a tiled) maximization. Maximizes windows such that it occupies the largest area without overlapping other windows

• New mouse-resizing functionality. Windows can now be resized vertically (horizontally) using MOD+Wheel (CTRL+Wheel)

• History and TAB completion in the run dialog

• A WPrefs option to make icons bounce when their respective applications want attention

• New applications (wmgenmenu and wmmenugen) to generate the root menu automatically by looking which applications you have on your $PATH

• Automatic detection of configuration changes. Linux users whose kernel supports the inotify mechanism no longer can have their configuration changes detected automatically without polling, which reduces the number of CPU wakeups

• Dockapps can now receive special treatment by setting their WM_CLASS to "DockApp"

• And many trivial things which reduce little annoyances one might have. For example, an option was added to control whether or not Window Maker should do automatic workspace switching to satisfy a focus request from a window located in another workspace.