Re: Are their public standards for "window manager compatability"?

[raster redhat com]

On 10 May, Paul Johnson shouted:
->  
->  I love WindowMaker (WM ) and would be disappointed if I had to switch to
->  use Gnome.  I gave up on KDE because it didn't run well without their kwm,
->  and I expect gnome will lose users if some particular WM is specified.
->  
->  On the WM list, I asked the experts about gnome compatability and they
->  reacted with, well, dismay.  Several indicated they had made an effort to 
->  find out what Gnome would require and they were not able to do so.  I
->  think there is a fear that E will become the default window manager and 

fear? why? nothing to be afraid of. E won't bite. Well 0.14 doesn't. it
slides and glides.. :)

->  others will not be able to adjust because the "compatability" standards
->  are not well articulated.
->  
->  If I have this wrong, please point me to the place where the standards
->  are described and I'll make sure they get forwarded to the WindowMaker
->  crew.  I've found them to be extremely highly responsive and I'm sure
->  adjustments can be made.  WM is, after all, a highly evolved window
->  manager that talks to applications when the applications know how to talk
->  back.

currently its very simple.. make u're WM honor motif WM hints - if u
get a window setting these hints that has all the decoration flags off
(E 0.14 only checks if title and border are both off - if these 2 are
off it make sit a borderless window). all the MWM stuf u can extract
out of the fvwm source.. or in a few weeks you can juust steal mwm.c
from E that has all the mwm hints nicely packaged into one single
file..:)

as for the future, the ICEWM people have said they are planning on
extending WM hints to inlcude sticky and ontop hints. Has this been
actualyl coded yet? if so someone tell me.. :) i'll add it into E..
cause i'm goign to need that anyway.. either its been done, or i'll go
off and do it and tell people how - I will happily then hack the panel
 to detect a WM that supports these hints, and instead fo
override-redirect, use a normal managed window. I will probably have to
do this to gmc's icons too.. they will NOT behave well wiht E 0.14's
floating desktop system.. neither will the panel. this will also
benefit other WM writers/users.

also in addition Nat form Linuxnet has hacked a new set of properties
for backgrounds, so an app can infact extract the pixmap id of the root
window and then us it (ie to give a "tranparent" effect) - he's alreday
hacked this and I have the support in E 0.14 (since E sets the root bg
and all desktop bgs' too).

to "partake" in this protocol you set 2 properties on the rot window
(or in E's case the root window and every floating desktop aswell)
so that u have:

_XROOTCOLOR_PIXEL(CARDINAL) = 0
_XROOTPMAP_ID(PIXMAP): pixmap id # 0x1000023

the _XROOTCOLOR_PIXEL property is the pixel index (value) for a solid
bg - thie root window has this solid colro If the _XROOTPMAP_ID
property value is zero. 

in addition I can say E sets the following on the root window and every
desktop:
ENLIGHTENMENT_DESKTOP(CARDINAL) = 0

any window with that property on it is an E desktop, and the number
inthe property data is the desktop number.

E also sets a string property:
ENLIGHTENMENT_COMMS(STRING) = "WINID  1000022"

thats the "communications" poert for E - set ont he root window.
parse the string - check that window ID. if the window ID exists u can
talk to E.. thus you are pretty sure E is the Windowmanager. that
window Id COULd be recycled, so u can also chekc for that property on
the comms window itself.

Basically i'd like everyone writing WM's to come clean and "publish"
their work/coede/standards sofar and try not to re-invent what soemoen
already has done so we dont need to write piles of fallback code in
gnome to cope...


->  Paul E. Johnson                           pauljohn@ukans.edu
->  Dept. of Political Science              http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
->  University of Kansas                     
->  Lawrence, Kansas 66045                                         
->  
->  

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