Home Screenshots Documentation Download Get Involved

Documentation -> Overview

Matchbox Overview

• Feature list.
• Included applications and 'modules'.
• Dependencies.
• More information.

Matchbox feature list

• Small, lightweight and flexible ( WM can be as little as 50k ).
• Optionally dependent only on Xlib and not tied to any GUI Toolkit.
• Fully Themeable.
• Numerous Freedesktop.org standards supported.
• Well Documented through out.
• Support for Modern X Technologies - Xft, XRandR, XComposite.
• Optional PNG and JPEG Support.
• Internationalised with support for UTF8, GNU GetText and Pango text rendering.
• Optional Gconf, startup notification, XSettings Support.

Matchbox modules

Apart from optionally the window manager, all modules require libmb. You can find an installation guide here.

Core

• matchbox-window-manager

  A pretty much unique X window manager with a classic PDA management policy. The most developed and mature Matchbox application.

• matchbox-panel

  A flexible always present 'window bar' for holding application launchers and small 'applet' style applications. A number of applets are included in the module.

• matchbox-desktop

  A PDA style application launcher or 'item browser'. Its functionality can be extended by means of dynamically loadable plugins.

• matchbox-common

  A package containing shared icons and configuration data.

• libMatchbox (libmb)

  A small basic library that provides a large amount of shared functionality to the various matchbox librarys. Provides image processing, font abstraction, a tray app toolkit and more. It is licensed under LGPL.

Extras

Many of the extras are in early stages of development.

• matchbox-keyboard

  A Software based 'virtual' keyboard. Currently only available via SVN repository

• matchbox-stroke

  A simple handwriting stoke recogniser. Currently only available via SVN repository

• matchbox-input-manager

  A panel applet for user management of software infput methods.

• matchbox-desktop-img-browser

  An image broswer plugin for the matchbox desktop.

• matchbox-desktop-media-browser

  A movie and music playing plugin for the matchbox desktop using libxine.

• matchbox-themes-extra

  Various extra themes for matchbox.

• matchbox-panel-manager

  A GTK2 based tool for managing the panel .

• matchbox-keyboard-manager

  A GTK2 based tool for managing matchbox key shortcuts with gconf. As yet unreleased.

Matchbox Dependencies

Required

Building core Matchbox modules require the following:

• A C library
• An Xserver ( with MITSHM and SHAPE ext recommended )
• Base Xlibs - libX11 and libXext

Optional

All of the following are optional and enabled at compile time.

• Xft ( Included with your X Distro )

  Provides Anti-Aliased Text rendering of TTF fonts.

• X Composite http://www.freedesktop.org/software/xlibs

  Provides the ability for the window manger to perform complex rendering for effects such as shadows and translucent windows. This functionality should be considered very experimental.

• libPNG http://www.libpng.org

  A library providing support for the "Portable Network Graphics" image file format

• libJPEG http://www.ijg.org

  A library providing support for the JPEG image file format.

• Expat http://www.jclark.com/xml/expat.html

  An XML parsing library. Optionally used by the window manager for improved theme configuration parsing.

• libXSettings http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/xsettings

  Provides cross toolkit configuration settings such as theme parameters.

• startup-notification http://freedesktop.org/Software/startup-notification

  Provides application startup feed back and solid single application instance management.

• Gconf http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/

  GConf is a system for storing application preferences. For example the window manager can optionally use it for key settings.

• Pango http://www.pango.org

  Provides layout and rendering of internationalized text.

• GNU GetText and LibIntl http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/

  Provides support for multi-lingual text withinwithin matchbox.

• Linux kernel headers

  Required for 'DNOTIFY' support - async notification of file changes.

Some matchbox extras eg GUI configuration tools may have extra dependencies

It is highly recommended you enable at least Xft and PNG support
( matchbox will attempt to use this dependencies by default unless configured explicitly not to ).

More information

For more information please read the documentation, view screenshots, communicate via the mailing list and IRC and download the source.

For paid support, consulting and custom enhancements please visit OpenedHand.