[comp.windows.open-look] not using window manager

wolinsky%isys@uunet.UU.NET (Jeff Wolinsky) (12/20/90)

We are developing an openlook/xview application on sun sparcstations.
For industrial reasons, we need our application's base window to take
over the entire screen without being resizeable nor moveable, nor easily
brought in front of the application's pop-up windows.

Our present strategy is to set override redirect on the application's
baseframe (which covers the whole display) so that olwm doesn't see it,
and to remap the sun keyboard's "Front" key (L5) to something else
(like Control-L5).  Pop-ups window will still be controlled by olwm.

This certainly prevents moving or resizing the base window, and although
pop-up windows can still be sent to the back by selecting "Back" from the
pop-up frame's menu, it's much harder to change mess up the window
stacking order (with no "Front" key or window border to click).

The questions are:

 Other than losing icon control for the base window, are there other
 losses and/or dangers to having a non-window-managed window?

and

 Is there a better way to prevent window moving/resizing/reordering?

Thanks.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey Wolinsky - Manager, Software Systems - Isys Controls, Inc.

wolinsky@isys.com  or  uunet!isys!wolinsky
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haydens@natasha.juliet.ll.mit.edu (Hayden Schultz) (12/21/90)

Why don't you grab all the mouse and keyboard events? Wouldn't that
simply prevent the window manager from getting any input that would
cause other windows from obscuring yours.

I suppose that processes that are already running and processing could
suddenly decide to do things, or if the xhost has been set so that
other cpu's can use the display another user could do something that
would interfere. But these are pretty pathological situations.

	Hayden Schultz (haydens@juliet.ll.mit.edu)
	MIT Lincoln Lab