Re: Preserved Window Placement

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

> It seems like, rather than try to make a decision about how this
> should work, Linux desktops have collectively decided to “do
> essentially nothing and let individual applications figure it out”
> instead.

This is not true as I said before. Nor btw is it a Linux thing. X is not
Linux X is way bigger.

> And the idea that the window manager shouldn't do this and that the
> applications themselves should do it will only produce one result: a
> complete mess of inconsistent behavior that will leave the user to
> surmise that window placement across the system is arbitrary, random
> or maybe just broken. Which is exactly our current situation.

Which is why the toolkit does the heavy lifting and it tells the session
manager how to get that application back into its previous state.

> Is there any possibility of reconsidering this problem as something
> that should be managed by the window manager?

The window manager in an X environment may be running on another machine,
running another OS, or even being a thin client. X applications are also
able to do things like have windows open on multiple desktops and
machines at once.

The MacOS approach assumes applications are constrained to a particular
narrow set of behaviours, local and to some extent written with one set of
tools.

That's not to say the X approach couldn't do with improvement, but that
its solving a whole different and vastly larger problem space.

Alan