Re: Gnome is not easy to use in 800x600

[Frank Felfe <innerspace iname com>]

Ian Peters wrote:

>
> Do people expect an application to remember its border style, or its
> focus policy, or its stacking order, despite changing window
> managers?

Actually the application determines border style i.e. transient / top level etc.

> I would distinctly object to an application trying to
> set its position for me.  Netscape and Emacs try or tried to do this,
> and I've disabled that in my window manager, thank goodness.
>
> > > So, fix the apps, not the window manager... Anyway, it would be too hard for
> > > an app to manage all it's windows sizes and locations -- easier to set a
> > > proper wmclass.
> >
> > Hmmmm..? If an incomming email causes you email client to erase you entire HD,
> > would you say the incomming email has to be fixed or would you say its the
> > email clients fault  ????
>
> Email client, of course.  Does this have a point?
>
> Let me try this.  If my incomining mail didn't include a From: line,
> would I expect my email client to know it anyway?

No, but I would expect it to behave sane i.e. not crashing, messing up my desktop,
erasing data etc. The same I expect from my WM.

>
> Your claim is that it's too hard to make sure every app sets the
> wmclass correctly (a fairly simple task), and so instead we must
> duplicate the code and functionality of setting and remembering
> position in each and every application (something which would, btw,
> be fundamentally broken by ignoring the existing methods, such as
> session management and interacting with the window manager, which is
> responsible for /managing/ windows)?

I didn't say that we have to duplicate code & functionality.
I understood that gnome-libs save window properties like toolbar state etc. I think
that we can make gnome-libs also save the default position/dimension of the windows
it generates. When creating a window gnome-libs just gives this info to the window
manager what it does anyway. You always can set your WM to ignore this info. IMHO
this would be more consistent.

It is my understanding that the WM manages run time window data. I still think, that
persistent window data must be stored by someone else, otherwise the WM would take
over session management tasks. I thought the point of sawmill is to manage runtime
window data only and leave session management to other programs, but I might be
wrong. Is this kinda stuff specifies somewhere as standart?

regards
FF