I have decided to do a WM/DE as a school project.
I was thinking about "Deep Architect" for my DE and have no
idea what to name my first "learning" WM. Any suggestions?
Feedback on my ideas?

(thx to Will aka SlackerLX for spelling correction):

Project: Window Manager

Name: Hasn't been decided yet.

By Alexander "BBB" Brink

I have two goals for my project:

#1: Make a simple WM.
The purpose of this will be to learn how window management works with X11 servers. The WM should be able to do basic stuff like having window decorations, a simple taskbar and running for example XMMS. Then I'm going to write a tutorial on the subject so that others don't have to walk the path I walk. That is, there are no tutorials on how to make a WM so you have to learn by studying other WMs which is very difficult. Also since I haven't used Xlib much makes this a very uncertain goal. I should be able to complete it before the deadline, but I don't know how much time Ill have left for goal #2.

#2: Make a Desktop Enviroment.
When I'm done with #1, I'm going to start work on my DE.
The things I want to focus on:
#A: Looks. Most themes for Gnome and KDE look the same and awful (usually some form of gray). A theme could for example be autumn leaves as window decorations.
#B: Scalability. The user should be able to choose what functionality he wants by selecting which loadable modules he wants. For example he/she should be able to choose between a simple taskbar that is fast and lightweight or a very feature-rich one that takes up more system resources.
#C: Reasonable CPU and RAM usage. This is somewhat foggy, but 12MB RAM for a stupid Gnome clock-applet is NOT reasonable. Of course, I won't get a binary footprint as small as for example Fluxbox with all the features enabled, but again I think that the resource usage of KDE and Gnome are completely mental.
You should not over-engineer code like KDE and Gnome devs do
(if you are not a dev; don't ask what that means :P ).

And here are some ideas I want to try to implement:
#Separate theme and style:
We all know what a theme is, but what is a style? I don't know if style is a perfect name, but for example a style could be something similar to Gnome/KDE/Windows with a taskbar at the buttom. Another style could something like MacOSX. Another one could be completely different: the current window should take over the entire screen and by pressing a button the user brings up a menu at the middle of the screen with a list of all the windows. You get the idea.

The theme should be responsible for the look of the desktop while the style defines how the user manages window positions and stuff.

I don't know if I can use an existing window toolkit or if I have to make my own. I'd prefer using an existing WT (if it's compatible with goals 2:A-C) since it would be time consuming to write my own WT. I'll investigate and decide what to do when I start on #2. If I make my own WT I could try writing a OpenGL backend similar to Cairo/Glitz that uses OpenGL for rendering. Since Ive been hacking around with OpenGL for some time that part should not be much of a problem. However, making other X11 programs that don't use my WT, co-existence will be a headache. I suspect I'll have to use new X.Org features like Xdamage and Xcomposite.

How bout calling it Sigma? Just a suggestion..

-A

Not bad, but I don't know what http://www.sigmaphoto.com/ would say about that :P .
Any legal advice? If I name my WM for "SigmaWM" can Sigma Corporation sue me or
something?

AlebriWM

No more?
Expected a flood of suggestions...
Maybe wrong forum?

Here are some more ideas:
Fast Composite
FX Composite

I really like FX composite since FX sounds fast and
flashy and composite sounds sophisticated and fits
great with my ideas in general.

Any comments? Please?

Yeah not a bad idea.. You can also make an anagram out of a few words and put an X in the end.

-A