Re: Other window managers with GNOME-Shell [Was: My thoughts on fallback mode]

[Havoc Pennington <hp pobox com>]

"other window managers with gnome-shell" doesn't even make sense
technically. the WM is entangled with the shell, which is the whole
point, because it lets you do more complex things and have smooth
graphics.

what you could have instead could be:

* have a well-defined interface to replace the entire shell, sort of
"EWMH plus more stuff." of course this is harder than writing a
regular WM since now you have the equivalent of the panel and the
compositor in there too. The "fallback mode" with gnome-panel and
metacity is essentially this. btw this is kind of back-to-the-future;
WMs such as WindowMaker and fvwm2 had their own "panel" etc. i.e. a
window manager used to be a whole desktop shell, as gnome-shell is,
instead of purely the window decorations.

* allow extensions to the shell that change how the window management works

Havoc