tvtwm is an X window manager

X window manager

An X window manager is a window manager which runs on top of the X Window System, a windowing system mainly used on Unix-like systems.Unlike the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows platforms which have historically provided a vendor-controlled, fixed set of ways to control how windows and panes display...

 derived from twm

Twm

In computing, twm is the standard window manager for the X Window System, version X11R4 onwards...

 to which it adds the virtual desktop

Virtual desktop

In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the size of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical limits of the screen's real estate through the use of software, This saves space...

 feature from swm

Swm

swm is an X Window System window manager developed by Tom LaStrange at Solbourne Computer in 1990. The most important innovation of swm was the introduction of the virtual desktop...

. All of these window managers were originally written by Tom LaStrange. The current maintainer of tvtwm is Chris Ross.

Unlike most more recent virtual window managers, tvtwm models the root window as a single large space, with the physical desktop being a viewport onto that virtual root window. The user can scroll the viewport around the virtual desktop either by pressing certain keys or by clicking into a scaled down representation of the virtual desktop, the so-called panner.

History

• Announcement of patchlevel 1 31 August 1990
• Announcement of patchlevel 2 5 September 1990
• Announcement of patchlevel 3 3 October 1990
• Patch 4 (no announcement) 16 November 1990
• Announcement of patchlevel 5 24 April 1991
• Announcement of patchlevel 6 13 June 1991
• Patch 7 was included on the contrib tape for X11R5
• Patch 10 was included in the contrib section for X11R6
• The latest release is patchlevel 11.