Re: GTK+, WM, desktops and CSD

[Olivier Fourdan <fourdan gmail com>]

Hi Matthias,

On 6 March 2015 at 02:12, Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 3:23 PM, Olivier Fourdan <fourdan gmail com> wrote:
> I have little desire to discuss the pros and cons of csd and whether
> something essential (consistency ?!) was lost when we started using
> them, but a few points are worth replying to.

I completely agree and this really wasn't my intention in the first
place (thus the mention of CSD being a controversial topic at the
beginning of the thread). I wouldn't want this thread to be hijacked
to pursue some vendetta against CSD, GTK+ or any other particular
concept/project.

> > The use of Motif MWM hints for this is a anachronism IMHO, but that's
> > another story.
>
> I agree somewhat. We used them because we thought that they would be
> almost universally supported. That turned out to be farther from the
> truth than expected.

Yeah, we discussed that in some bugzilla iirc :)

> But consider the alternative: If we had started
> by suggesting a new cross-desktop spec for CSD, we would still be
> arguing about protocols for proxying button clicks back and forth
> today...

Again, I won't disagree here, driving a cross-desktop spec to a wide
consensus can be a daunting task.

> > Ideally, GTK should be able to use CSD even without a compositor. The
> > only reason it requires a compositor is because it uses the shadows as
> > resize handles. Ideally, it should use a larger border width when
> > there is no compositor - But that would another set of patches as not
> > directly related to the hint proposed.
>
> Yes, I've been thinking that myself recently: We should fall back to
> having 'fat borders' instead of 'invisible borders+shadow' if the
> environment can't support them. A patch to do so would be most welcome
> (I'm well aware that gtkwindow.c is not the easiest place to add new
> functionality like this...)

OK, I'll try to take a look at this, but I am not familiar with that
particular code in GTK+, so don't hold your breath...

Cheers,
Olivier