Re: Spec Purpose and Definition

[Matthias Ettrich <ettrich troll no>]

On Wed, 23 Jun 1999, Michael ROGERS wrote:
> >> Which other programs would wish to maximise or activate windows?
> >
> >A big office-like application or IDE that offers a configuration option to
> >start up just like it was closed may want to set the maximize hint.
> 
> Set a hint, yes. Maximise its own window, no. That breaks the "chain of
> command" (user->window manager->application) and allows an application to
> define its own window layout policy.

It's still a hint, only given while beeing mapped. The wm may obey or ignore
it. Applications _should_ be allowed to define its own window layout policy.
ICCCM encourages that with the USPos hints, unfortunately ICCCM doesn't have a
concept of one of the most important attributes: maximized. This is why we have
to add it.

[snip]

> 
> I think if my computer started switching desktops on its own while I was
> working, whenever an application thought it had something important to tell
> me, I would get very irritated. However, I know that E provides this option
> for popup windows. Can't imagine it being anything but annoying...

As I pointed out it's very useful for particular applications, for example
knotes. Where's you UNIX spirit? If you don't like a particular application,
don't use it. We are not here to define what is good or evil or what users
should do and what not. 

[snip]
> 
> >Don't resctrict application programmers too much. At least not if the necessary
> >code in the wm is just the 3 lines necessary to catch the client message and
> >call the appropriate function.
> 
> I'm not really worried about the three lines of code.  :)  I'm worried about 
> the idea of an application deciding to override the window manager and choose 
> its own stacking position, desktop, etc, and changing the active window or 
> active desktop whenever it likes. This is just going to annoy the user.

Please, let this desicion be made by the application developers. If the user
feels like this all is crap, he/she can tell the window manager to ignore all
these hints.

Michael, you are basically saying: ICCCM already gives applications too much
possibilities, why adding even more?  Frankly, this is the whole point in
discussing on this list. The big bunch of "proprietary" hints shows, that this
is more than necessary and so we want to clean up this mess. If you don't
agree with this goal, I wonder what your mission here is. We are surely not here
to turn back the wheel.

I'll be away for a couple of days now. I hope someone will write another
technical specification of the discussion so far. There was important feedback
to certain points of the draft that needs to be worked in (better naming, motif
hints, etc.).


Matthias