tmb@ganymede.UUCP (10/13/88)
Often, I would like an X application to open its windows inside another window (or to get a window manager to operate on the subwindows of another window). Is there an agreed upon way of communicating this to the application? This question applies to both X10 and X11. For example, using an environment variable, I might say: $ PARENTWINDOWID=1234567 myfancyxapplication & Or, for you C-shell users: % setenv PARENTWINDOWID 1234567 % myfancyxapplication & I believe this facility is very important if X is to integrate well with UNIX. The reason is that the UNIX way of writing applications is to write lots of little independent magic cookies (e.g. a program to display histograms, a program to display pie charts, a program to do a file dialog), and to interconnect them via pipes. However, often the windows that these magic cookies open should open inside a single window for the whole application. Thanks, Thomas. PS: please reply directly to me as well as to the list, since I don't know whether my uucp link will keep up with the flood of postings on xpert and I might just cancel my subscription.
RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) (10/13/88)
There is no agreed upon way of specifying the parent window to run inside of. The ICCCM under review in the X Consortium currently contains the notion of a "pseudo-root" that gives essentially this kind of mechanism (but with a slightly different viewpoint), and we have *experimental* support for this that will probably be in the R3 Xlib implementation, but there are a number problems with it, and it may be that a different solution is required.