XWIN(1)XWIN(1)NAMEXWin - X Server for the Cygwin environment on Microsoft Windows
SYNOPSISXWin [ options ] ...
DESCRIPTIONXWin is an X Server for the X Window System on the Cygwin environment
running on Microsoft Windows.
MODESXWin can operate in 3 different modes:
* Single Window: This is the default mode. Each X screen appears as a
single Windows window and all X windows are contained within this win‐
dow. (In X terminology, the Windows window contains the root window
for the screen)
* Multi-Window: In this mode XWin uses its own integrated window man‐
ager in order to handle the top-level X windows, in such a way that
they appear as normal Windows windows.
* Rootless: In this mode the X server works in a window containing the
whole screen but this root window (traditionally covered with an X
hatch pattern) is hidden from view, so only top-level X windows are
seen.
OPTIONS
In addition to the normal server options described in the Xserver(1)
manual page, XWin accepts the following command line switches, all of
which are optional:
OPTIONS CONTROLLING WINDOWING MODE
Only one of these options may be specified.
(default)
Windowed or rooted mode. Each X screen appears as a single
Windows window and all X windows are contained within those
windows.
-multiwindow
Each top-level X window appears in its own Windows window.
Also start the integrated Windows-based window manager.
-rootless
Run the server in rootless mode. The X server works on a win‐
dow covering the whole screen but the root window is hidden
from view.
-mwextwm
Experimental. The mode combines -rootless mode drawing with
native Windows window frames managed by the experimental exter‐
nal window manager xwinwm.
NOTE: -multiwindow mode uses its own internal window manager. All
other modes require an external window manager in order to move,
resize, and perform other operations on the individual X windows.
OPTIONS FOR SPECIFYING X SCREENS
An X display may be composed of multiple screens. The default behav‐
iour is to create a single screen 0 that is roughly the size of useful
area of the primary monitor (allowing for any window decorations and
the task-bar).
Screen specific parameters can be applied as a default to all screens
by placing those screen specific parameters before any -screen parame‐
ter. Screen specific parameters placed after the first -screen parame‐
ter will apply only to the immediately preceeding -screen parameter.
-[no]multimonitors or -[no]multiplemonitors
Create a screen 0 that covers all monitors [the primary moni‐
tor] on a system with multiple monitors. Fake XINERAMA data is
created describing the individual monitors, (This is similar to
the 'merged framebuffer' or 'pseudo-xinerama' mode provided by
some drivers for the xorg X server). This option is currently
enabled by default in -multiwindow mode.
-screen screen_number [W H [X Y] | [[WxH[+X+Y]][@M]] ]
Create screen number screen_number and optionally specify it's
height, width and initial position. Additionally a monitor
number (which count from 1) can be specified to place the
screen on, at which point, all coordinates become relative to
that monitor. Screen numbers must be contiguous starting from
zero and cannot be duplicated.
Examples:
-screen 0 @1 ; on 1st monitor using its full resolution (the
default)
-screen 0 800x600+100+100@2 ; on 2nd monitor offset 100,100
size 800x600
-screen 0 1024x768@3 ; on 3rd monitor size 1024x768
OPTIONS CONTROLLING THE APPEARANCE OF THE X SCREEN WINDOWS
These parameters only apply to windowed mode screens i.e. not in -mul‐
tiwindow or -rootless mode.
-fullscreen
The X server window takes the full screen, covering completely
the Windows desktop. Currently -fullscreen may only be applied
to one X screen.
-nodecoration
Do not give the Cygwin/X window a Windows window border, title
bar, etc. This parameter is ignored when the -fullscreen
parameter is specified.
-scrollbars
Alternative name for -resize=scrollbars.
OPTIONS CONTROLLING RESIZE BEHAVIOUR
-resize[=none|scrollbars|randr]
Select the resize mode of an X screen. The default is randr.
-resize=none
The screen is not resizable.
In windowed mode, if the window has decorations, a
fixed frame is used.
Alternative name is -noresize.
-resize=scrollbars
The screen window is resizeable, but the screen is not
resizable.
In windowed mode, if the window has decorations, a
resizing frame is used. Scrollbars are drawn when
needed to allow the entire X screen to viewed by
adjusting them.
This also permits screens bigger than the Windows vir‐
tual desktop to be used.
This parameter is ignored in -multiwindow or -rootless
mode. Alternative name is -scrollbars.
-resize=randr
The screen is resizable and the screen window is
resizeable.
In windowed mode, if the window has decorations, a
resizing frame is used.
Resizing the Windows window will use the RANDR exten‐
sion to change the size of the X screen. Likewise,
changing the size of the X screen using the RANDR
extension will cause the size of the Windows window
containing the X screen to be changed.
In -multiwindow or -rootless mode, if the X screen is
of the same dimensions as a Windows monitor or the vir‐
tual desktop, the X server will respond to the WM_DIS‐
PLAYCHANGED sent when those dimensions change by resiz‐
ing the X screen. Changing the size of the X screen
using the RANDR extension is not permitted.
The maximum dimensions of the screen are the dimensions
of the Windows virtual desktop.
-resize on its own is equivalent to -resize=randr
OPTIONS FOR MULTIWINDOW MODE-hostintitle
Add the host name to the window title for X applications which
are running on remote hosts, when that information is available
and it's useful to do so.
OPTIONS CONTROLLING WINDOWS INTEGRATION
-[no]clipboard
Enables [disables] the integration between the X11 clipboard
and Windows clipboard. The default is enabled.
-emulate3buttons [timeout]
Emulate a three button mouse; pressing both buttons within
timeout milliseconds causes an emulated middle button press.
The default timeout is 50 milliseconds. Note that most mice
with scroll wheel have middle button functionality, usually you
will need this option only if you have a two button mouse with‐
out scroll wheel. Default is to enable this option if Windows
reports a two button mouse, disabled otherwise.
-[no]keyhook
Enable [disable] a low-level keyboard hook for catching special
keypresses like Menu and Alt+Tab and passing them to the X
Server instead of letting Windows handle them.
-lesspointer
Normally the Windows mouse cursor is hidden when the mouse is
over an active Cygwin/X window. This option causes the mouse
cursor also to be hidden when it is over an inactive Cygwin/X
window. This prevents the Windows mouse cursor from being
drawn on top of the X cursor. This parameter has no effect
unless -swcursor is also specified.
-[no]primary
Clipboard integration may [will not] use the PRIMARY selection.
The default is enabled.
-swcursor
Disable the usage of the Windows cursor and use the X11 soft‐
ware cursor instead.
-[no]trayicon
Do not create a tray icon. Default is to create one icon per
screen. You can globally disable tray icons with -notrayicon,
then enable it for specific screens with -trayicon for those
screens.
-nounicodeclipboard
Do not use Unicode clipboard even if on a NT-based platform.
-[no]unixkill
Enable or disable the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination as a
signal to exit the X Server. The Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combi‐
nation is disabled by default.
-[no]wgl
Enable [disable] the GLX extension to use the native Windows
WGL interface for hardware accelerated OpenGL (AIGLX). The
default is enabled.
-[no]winkill
Enable or disable the Alt-F4 key combination as a signal to
exit the X Server. The Alt-F4 key combination is enabled by
default.
DRAWING ENGINE OPTIONS-clipupdates num_boxes
Specify an optional threshold, above which the regions in a
shadow update operation will be collected into a GDI clipping
region. The clipping region is then used to do a single bit
block transfer that is constrained to the updated area by the
clipping region. There is some overhead involved in creating,
installing, destroying, and removing the clipping region, thus
there may not be much benefit for a small number of boxes (less
than 10). It is even possible that this functionality does not
provide a benefit at any number of boxes; we can only determine
the usefulness of this feature through testing. This option
probably has limited effect on current Windows versions as they
already perform GDI batching. This parameter works in conjunc‐
tion with engines 1, 2, and 4 (Shadow GDI, Shadow DirectDraw,
and Shadow DirectDraw Non-Locking, respectively).
-engine engine_type_id
This option, which is intended for Cygwin/X developers, over‐
rides the server's automatically selected drawing engine type.
This parameter will be ignored if the specified drawing engine
type is not supported on the current system.
Default behavior is to select the drawing engine with optimum
performance that supports the specified depth and window con‐
figuration.
The engine type ids are:
1 Shadow GDI
2 Shadow DirectDraw
4 Shadow DirectDraw Non-Locking
8 Primary DirectDraw (unsupported, obsolete)
16 Native GDI (unsupported, experimental and barely func‐
tional)
FULLSCREEN OPTIONS-depth depth
Specify the color depth, in bits per pixel, to use when running
in fullscreen with a DirectDraw engine. This parameter is
ignored if -fullscreen is not specified.
-refresh rate_in_Hz
Specify an optional refresh rate to use when running in
fullscreen with a DirectDraw engine. This parameter is ignored
if -fullscreen is not specified.
MISCELLANEOUS OPTIONS
See also the normal server options described in the Xserver(1) manual
page
-help Write a help text listing supported command line options and
their description to the console.
-ignoreinput
Ignore keyboard and mouse input. This is usually only used for
testing and debugging purposes.
-logfile filename
Change the server log file from the default of
/var/log/xwin/XWin.n.log, where n is the display number of the
XWin server, to filename.
-logverbose level
Control the degree of verbosity of the log messages with the
integer parameter level. For level=0 only fatal errors are
reported, for level=1 simple information about configuration is
also given, for level=2 (default) additional runtime informa‐
tion is recorded and for level=3 detailed log information
(including trace and debug output) is produced. Bigger values
will yield a still more detailed debug output.
-silent-dup-error
If another instance of XWin with the same display number is
found running, exit silently and don't display any error mes‐
sage.
-xkblayout layout
-xkbmodel model
-xkboptions option
-xkbrules rule
-xkbvariant variant
These options configure the xkeyboard extension to load a par‐
ticular keyboard map as the X server starts. The behavior is
similar to the setxkbmap(1) program.
See the xkeyboard-config(7) manual page for a list of keyboard
configurations.
The keyboard layout data is located at /usr/share/X11/xkb/.
Additional information can be found in the README files there
and in the setxkbmap(1) manual page.
For example, in order to load a German layout for a pc105 key‐
board, use the options:
-xkblayout de -xkbmodel pc105
Alternatively, you can use the setxkbmap(1) program after XWin
is running.
The default is to select a keyboard configuration matching your
current layout as reported by Windows, if known, or the default
X server configuration if no matching keyboard configuration
was found.
UNDOCUMENTED OPTIONS
These options are undocumented. Do not use them.
-emulatepseudo
Create a depth 8 PseudoColor visual when running in depths 15,
16, 24, or 32, collectively known as TrueColor depths. Color
map manipulation is not supported, so the PseudoColor visual
will not have the correct colors. This option is intended to
allow applications which only work with a depth 8 visual to
operate in TrueColor modes.
-internalwm
Run the internal window manager.
LOG FILE
As it runs XWin writes messages indicating the most relevant events to
the console from which it was called and to a log file that by default
is located at /var/log/xwin/XWin.0.log. This file is mainly for debug‐
ging purposes.
PREFERENCES FILE
On startup XWin looks for the file $HOME/.XWinrc or, if the previous
file does not exist, /etc/X11/system.XWinrc. .XWinrc allows setting
preferences for the following:
* To include items into the menu associated with the XWin icon which is
in the Windows system tray. This functions in all modes that have a
tray icon.
* To include items in the system menu which is associated with the Win‐
dows window that XWin-multiwindow produces for each top-level X win‐
dow, in both the generic case and for particular programs.
* To change the icon that is associated to the Windows window that XWin-multiwindow produces for each top-level X-window.
* To change the style that is associated to the Windows window that Win
I-multiwindow produces for each top-level X window.
The format of the .XWinrc file is given in the XWinrc(5) manual page.
EXAMPLES
Need some examples
SEE ALSOX(7), Xserver(1), xdm(1), xinit(1), XWinrc(5), setxkbmap(1), xkeyboard-
config(7).
BUGSXWin and this manual page still have many limitations.
The XWin software is continuously developing; it is therefore possible
that this manual page is not up to date. It is always prudent to look
also at the output of XWin-help in order to check the options that are
operative.
AUTHORS
This list is by no means complete, but direct contributors to the Cyg‐
win/X project include (in alphabetical order by last name): Stuart
Adamson, Michael Bax, Jehan Bing, Lev Bishop, Dr. Peter Busch, Biju G
C, Robert Collins, Nick Crabtree, Early Ehlinger, Christopher Faylor,
John Fortin, Brian Genisio, Fabrizio Gennari, Alexander Gottwald, Ralf
Habacker, Colin Harrison, Matthieu Herrb, Alan Hourihane, Pierre A Hum‐
blet, Harold L Hunt II, Dakshinamurthy Karra, Joe Krahn, Paul Loewen‐
stein, Kensuke Matsuzaki, Takuma Murakami, Earle F. Philhower III, Ben‐
jamin Riefenstahl, Yaakov Selkowitz, Suhaib Siddiqi, Jack Tanner, Jon
Turney and Nicholas Wourms.
X Version 11 xorg-server 1.15.0 XWIN(1)
