Re: MDI on X11

[Greg Badros <gjb cs washington edu>]

Matthias Ettrich <ettrich@troll.no> writes:

> > 
> > W.r.t. MDI, let's refocus on what the protocol would need to have in it
> > to allow an application to provide enough information to let a WM do an
> > MDI-like thing to satisfy those who want the tighter grouping of
> > document windows that MDI affords.  (As I wrote previously, I think it's 
> > the wrong level of abstraction to have an application manage the MDI
> > interface and just have the WM decorate the windows).
> 
> I think you missunderstood me. I do _not_ want the application to manage any
> MDI interface, that's the whole point why I am discussing this issue here. In
> fact I want the WM to manage it. All the application has to do is telling the
> WM that this child window of it is an MDI workspace. The WM then simply does
> what it usually does with the root window: it manages all the children.

Yes, you're right, I misunderstood.  But I still think that there is a
difference between what you are suggesting and what I was thinking:

You want the application to provide the MDI workspace window, while I
was thinking that the window manager would provide the frame for that
workspace window.  The advantage of your approach is that the
application has a lot of control over that window.  My approach would
rely on hints to convey all information that the application wants to
impose on that frame window, then have the window manager do everything
else.  The advantage of my approach is that non-MDI aware apps that use
a group leader window could still be used with the MDI frame provided by 
the WM.

> I'm quite certain that several KDE applications will start using MDI once it is
> in Qt. If the application can't find a window manager that supports the
> protocol, it is forced to do some window management itself, with bascially a
> standard KDE look and feel. Personally I don't mind if KDE applications look
> inconsistant with other WMs, so there's no real need for me to push the
> protocol through if you don't want to ;)

This part is a bit bothersome -- that the application has to do extra if 
the WM doesn't support a feature.  I assume this "extra" window
management that the app would have to do is actually going to be a part
of Qt, but it still seems unfortunate.  Why shouldn't Qt MDI apps just
degenerate to multiple top level windows instead?  I might never want an 
MDI interface, and I'd like to have that option.

The relevance to this list should be deciding what extra information the
application needs to tell the WM if it is not going to provide the MDI
frame window.  (What other things are you anticipating that would
necessitate the MDI workspace window to be under application control?)

Greg