Re: getting desktop size

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow alum mit edu>]

George wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Feb 14, 1999 at 12:58:20PM -0500, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> > Why should the WM tell the clients? They can read the hints just as well
> > as
> > the WM can. It wouldn't even be that hard to add an API call to
> > gnome-winhints
> > to compute this. I think we should try to keep to as few hints as
> > possible,
> > high server traffic == bad.
> 
> not to mention that I can imagine a case where the WM wants to tell the other
> processes that they should put their things in a specific rectangle, not just
> away from all the dock windows ...

Why should the WM tell them that?
 
> if the apps compute it themselves, they have to track the movement of all the
> windows, track new windows that pop up ... I see that as WAAAAAAY much
> more server traffic

Not really. The processes that care just select on the appropriate events, which
the server is generating anyway. I really think we should stay away gratuitously
adding new hints just as conveniences. In my strongly held opinion, _WIN_ hints
should be added only to communicate information that the app or WM can't currently
get. Keeping things simple is good because it makes implementing the hints in
new window managers simpler. If Gnome wants to stay true to its goals of window
manager independence, we should keep the threshold of implementing the extra hints
as low as possible.

 - Maciej