Re: autofullscreen maximized windows with no decorations

[Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu sugarlabs org>]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 04:35, Ray Strode<halfline gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:32 AM, Tomeu Vizoso<tomeu sugarlabs org> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> we wish to use Metacity as the default window manager in Sugar and
>> have found a problem that is not clear how to solve.
>>
>> The lines in the link below will fullscreen all windows that have no
>> decorations and are maximized:
>>
>> http://git.gnome.org/cgit/metacity/tree/src/core/constraints.c#n424
>>
>> In Sugar's case, most windows will be maximized and won't have
>> decorations, but we don't want them to be put automatically in
>> fullscreen mode because in fullscreen mode Sugar activities display a
>> different UI (the toolbar on the top is hidden and the canvas fills
>> the whole screen).
>>
>> Also, we have a panel/dock that slides into the screen and should also
>> appear over maximized windows.
> For those interested, there was a discussion leading up to this mail on irc:
>
> http://www.gnome.org/~halfline/sugar-activity-fullscreen-behavior.txt
>
>> I will appreciate any feedback about what can we do here and, as a
>> proof of concept, I'm attaching a patch that adds a CLI switch for
>> disabling automatic fullscreening.
> I don't think a command line switch is really right for this.  There
> aren't really any other command line switches that adjust this kind of
> behavior.
>
> A gconf key probably makes more sense than a command line switch.
> Also as hp pointed out in the above discussion you might be able to
> just piggy back off of disable workarounds.

I'm not sure we want to disable any other workarounds, hopefully not
because we would like for normal applications to run inside sugar as
well as in gnome (at least regarding window management). I can adapt
the patch to use a GConf key instead of a cli switch, sure.

> Another possibility would be no option at all, but a new type hint
> TYPE_HINT_ACTIVITY or whatever that would give the right full
> screening behavior and could potentially be used to tweak other
> behaviors as well (although I don't know what other things could
> benefit from being tweaked)

Happy to go that way if people think it's best, though I don't expect
any more tweaks. We mostly just need that Sugar activities are
undecorated and maximized all the time, so are doing something similar
in the Sugar shell to what Maximus does in the ubuntu remix.

You can check the sugar code to switch from matchbox to metacity here:

http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/602
http://dev.sugarlabs.org/attachment/ticket/602/0001-Change-window-management-stuff-so-Sugar-can-use-a-st.patch

>> I can also open a ticket if you think this can be considered as a
>> valid bug or feature request.
> Probably best.  Note Thomas Thurman (marnanel on irc)  is the current
> metacity maintainer, so he's probably the best person to talk to about
> this.

Agreed, is he on this list? I pinged him on IRC some days ago about the ticket:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586600

Regards,

Tomeu

> --Ray
>