Xmfm is an X11/Motif file manager. It allows users to manipulate files and directories in a visual way using icons to represent them. The icons are shown in three pane areas, representing executable files (programs), ordinary files and directories. These areas can be resized by dragging on the pane buttons (using the left mouse button). If the list of icons is too large to show in a pane, a scroll bar appears to the right of the pane, and the different parts of the pane can be shown by dragging or clicking (with the left button) in the scroll bar.
Files, programs and directories can be selected by clicking on them. At most one can be selected at any time. When one is selected, a list of possible actions associated with that file is shown in a set of buttons to the left of the panes. By then clicking on one of these buttons, the action is carried out on the selected file. If the left button is double-clicked on a file, program or directory, the default action is carried out on the selection. The default action is the first action shown in the action buttons.
A further set of buttons below these ones shows a general set of actions that can be applied in many cases (such as showing information on the selection). A click on one of these buttons applies the action to the selected file, program or directory.
Menu actions are used to perform file manipulation actions such as copy, and running other Unix programs from within xmfm.
xmfm accepts the normal Xt and Motif toolkit options. For example:
Xmfm uses a number of files to control behaviour. It uses the normal Xt resource database to control such things as foreground and background colours, server, and size. Indidual components can also be configured using this database and the widget hierarchy. See any book on Motif for this.
In addition, xmfm uses a configuration file to control the actions corresponding to different file types. A system default is set in the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/xmfmrc. The user can copy and modify this file as $HOME/.xmfmrc. The syntax used in this file is described in the Xmfm Users Guide.
The user can choose the icons to be shown for each file type. These icons must be in directories accessible from the XmGetPixmap() function call. See the Motif Programmers Reference Manual
Xmfm uses standard Motif widgets that can be customized as usual. The widget hierarchy is as follows: