Re: MDI on X11

[Russell Nelson <nelson crynwr com>]

Greg Badros writes:
 > > 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.

I'm confused here (and maybe a little ignorant too).  Seems to me that
there's no difference between the standard Windows MDI system, and a
WM which reparents the MDI windows into a frame below the MDI parent.
So if your application uses MDI windows under a WM which is
MDI-ignorant, it's going to have a pile of windows which belong to the
same program but which have to get managed separately.  OH WELL.

The application still functions, it's just a bit more of a pain to
use.  If this bothers the user particularly, they can get a modern WM, 
or give the application its own desktop or area to play in.

 > 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.

I can't think of anything you get from a Windows MDI application that
you can't get from an X WM that knows about window grouping.

-- 
-russ nelson <rn-sig@crynwr.com>  http://crynwr.com/~nelson
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