jkh@VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU (Jordan K. Hubbard) (02/07/88)
>If you're using Xlib instead of the toolkit (you are? fie!) >you can easily solicit events using StructureNotifyMask and keep track of As mentioned earlier, this is not necessarily foolproof. Since the window manager (whichever one it is) will be de/iconifying you, it makes sense for there to be some mechanism (perhaps a prop?) whereby the wm can communicate this back. uwm (the hacked version) keeps context information that tells whether or not the window is iconified, titled or generally modified in some way by the window manager. If the context handles were advertised, I suppose one could do XFindContext calls on a window to see what was defined for it, but this seems like a kludge. The REAL PROBLEM is a seemingly total lack of agreement on more "standard" property types. There are all sorts of gadgets that window managers are/will be creating in the near future (title bars, gadget boxes, etc etc) that are completely unchangable as far as clients are concerned. I can't even tell what a client chose for background foreground and border colors, which is essential if the window manager is to modify windows intelligently (who wants black and white gadgets on a multi-colored window?). Then there are things like the preferred title bar font, whether or not a title bar is even desired (a title bar on a clock looks stupid) and all sorts of size/shape specifications. I'm sure that someone, somewhere, is thinking about this (Ellis? You out there?), but they're not nearly public enough. I'd be more than happy to propose a few property types, but if the applications folk don't adhere to them (or if I've chosen conflicting names), it's for nothing. The same nasty divergence that occurred in X10 (what? You're writing a terminal emulator too??) is even more possible in X11. Who's driving? Jordan "Spaceman spiff is going down!" Hubbard jkh@violet.berkeley.edu hplabs!ardent!jkh DISCLAIMER: "I was with my girlfriend at the time... Morgan Fairchild. Yeah. That's it, Morgan Fairchild. We were, uh... In Paris. Yeah, that's it. Paris. Dancing..."
jkh@VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU (Jordan K. Hubbard) (02/08/88)
>uwm (the hacked version) keeps context information that tells >whether or not the window is iconified, titled or generally modified >in some way by the window manager. If the context were advertised... >... I made a mistake here. It looks the context manager keeps seperate information for each client, it doesn't allow you to share data between clients. Oh Well. As we were saying about properties? Jordan