Re: "Official" gnome window manager

[Marcus Butler <marcusb wspice com>]

On 13 Feb 1998, Jim Pick wrote:

> A Gnome window manager would only be 1 out of 15 or so in Debian.  The
> battle to have a single window manager standard was lost when the X
> consortium decided to allow multiple window managers.  Personally, I
> think that's a good thing.

 That decision is one of the big reasons why people are implementing
desktops now.  Mechanism v. Policy is dead.  When we start supporting ten
(or even three) different window managers, there are going to be
differences in application behaviour.  One WM might support MWM hints,
another might not.  If one application takes advantage of MWM hints on a
system without a WM that understands MWM hints, window decorations might
be out of place.  Part of a desktop system is a window manager.  Another
part of a desktop system is a consistent look-and-feel.  You can't have
the latter without the former.

 Marcus