## 1 Introduction ¶

StumpWM is a manual, tiling X11 window manager written entirely in Common Lisp. Unlike traditional window managers, StumpWM places windows in order to maximize the amount of the screen used. The window layouts managed by StumpWM are defined by the user in much the same way that windows are managed by GNU screen, or emacs.

Before StumpWM, there was ratpoison, another tiling window manager written entirely in C. StumpWM grew out of the authors’ frustration with writing ratpoison in C. Very quickly we realized we were building into ratpoison lispy-emacs style paradigms. StumpWM’s goals are similar to ratpoison’s but with an emphasis on customizability, completeness, and cushiness.