NET_WM_PID is broken (was: NET_WM_PID and client leader)

[Mathias Hasselmann <mathias hasselmann gmx de>]

On 2 Aug 2001, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> Is it required to set _NET_WM_PID on all toplevels, or only the client
> leader window? What are people doing now?

	Apropos _NET_WM_PID: This hint is broken since the current spec
since doesn't distinguish between local and remote clients. Imagine what
happens if your X server, session manager has the process id 4311 and your
window manager manages a client coming from another machine unfortunatly
having _NET_WM_PID set to 4311 (since the client's process id on the
remote machine is 4311). In the case that your window manager implements
the _NET_WM_PING protocol and the remote client stops processing
_NET_WM_PING client messages your X session will die.


	To get arround this problem we could force all _NET_WM clients to
set the WM_MACHINE_NAME hint in a well defined manner. Or we would have to
introduce yet another _NET_WM hint describing the client's host. Third
solution: We could forbid remote clients to set the _NET_WM_PID hint.

Ciao,
Mathias
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