Re: [Usability] Resizability of windows

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

On 5/4/06, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> The techincal window manager aspects of this issues strike me as a
> different problem.  It seems to be trying to fit the different window
> types into predefined categories which seems like a tough task to solve
> for everything.

Well, an always ongoing task at least, yes.  But logically necessary
by the design of X11 and the ICCCM (see also
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2005-August/msg00006.html)

> Irrespective of that I hope we can agree that it would be useful to be
> able to have a maximize button on windows with scrollable lists or other
> widgets which could expand to fill any available space and give users with
> larger screens the options to quickly view more of what is available.
>
> Any thoughts on how we can make it so that useful maximize button can be
> shown in relevant cases?

You'd probably be interested in
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=320673.  And
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=315910 (which shows how to
at least workaround the issue for now in your own local copy of
metacity).

More to the point, though, I think the mess in how the allowed-actions
code works needs to be cleared up so that it is maintainable and the
originally-intended behavior actually works.  That'll probably be a
while as it is with competing time constraints.  But when that's done,
I'd need a list of how we want things to work, which is were Matthew's
new wiki page looks useful (though it also means some arguments on
wm-spec-list, getting gtk+ to support it too, lots of application
patches...).  He seems to have omitted a maximization column, though,
so that'd be needed.


Hope that helps,
Elijah