LinuxDevices.com: Matchbox–A Small Footprint Window Manager for Embedded Devices

Amazed by this, as soon as the iPAQ initially became available I
was quick to purchase one and took the, then, risky steps of
braving a Linux install. Thankfully, my experiment was successful
and I was soon greeted with a 240×320 X Server display running
various simple X apps.

“After the realization that the only real limitation was disk
space, it wasn’t long before much more exotic applications were
cross compiled or borrowed from Debian ARM distribution and made
available for the iPAQ. However, something soon became very
apparent: the small sized display and limited input meant that
although apps ran, they were uncomfortable to use.

“One of the main causes of this was that existing window
managers weren’t designed to cater to such a small display, let
alone a touchscreen and virtual keyboard or stroke recognizer for
character input.

“I realized a window manager designed with these constraints in
mind would prove a great help. I bought a book on xlib and began
work on… Matchbox…”

Complete
Story