Re: Sv: Window manager configuration utilities

[Paul Warren <pdw ferret lmh ox ac uk>]

On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Michael Rogers wrote:

> > The spec should require enough features to make a nice, integrated
> > environment while retaining code modularity. That includes setting the
> > background, either pluggable pagers or a way to embed pagers in the
> > k/gnome-panels, some standard way to configure common window manager
> > features, etc. 
> 
> My only reservation about breaking the window manager up into modules is
> that we need clean and extensible interfaces between those modules - the
> current spec makes wm/pager interaction /work/, but it's pretty ugly. On
> the other hand, a lot of people have expressed reservations about
> using CORBA. 

Yes, agreed.  The wm/pager interaction is pretty hacky.  Greg's message a
few days ago said similar - if the processes are going to communicate,
they'd do well to use some well defined IPC mechanism.  I am not
particularly familar with libICE, but I do know that it is a standard part
of X, so it shouldn't be too hard to persuade WM authors to add it as
yet-another-dependency for their beloved WM.  Indeed, any session aware WM
will be using it anyway.

> Personally I'd like to see a whole set of CORBA interfaces,
> eg to allow a pager to change the current work area, a window manager to
> call up the Gnome menu, and a web browser to set the background, leaving
> the programmers with the choice of implementing them or not. I don't think
> hints are the right solution for this kind of communication.

Quite.  They are just hints, not a proper, established IPC.  Corba would
be good for a Gnome-only spec.  If we are creating a more general wm
interaction spec, then perhaps a more general form of IPC is called for,
given the reluctance previously shown for adopting Corba.

yours,

Paul