Re: Greetings

["Bradley T. Hughes" <bhughes tcac net>]

On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Michael Fulbright wrote:

> Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 14:04:15 -0400
> From: Michael Fulbright <msf@redhat.com>
> Reply-To: wm-spec-list@gnome.org
> To: wm-spec-list@gnome.org
> Subject: Greetings
> Resent-Date: 17 Jun 1999 19:33:28 -0000
> Resent-From: wm-spec-list@gnome.org
> Resent-cc: recipient list not shown: ;
> 
> Hello,
> 
>   This list has only been active for a few days now and I wanted to let
> everyone who has joined that it is not already dead :)
> 
>   Nathan Clemons is currently heading up an effort to get all the 
> people together who can help determine the future of window managers and
> desktop environments working together. As everyone knows, we are currently
> at a point where there is fragmentation between GNOME and KDE in many
> areas. I feel the specification of how each of these interact with a
> window manager is a 'no-brainer' for starting to work through the
> differences.

One good reference to look at is Nathan's site at
http://gnome.windsofstorm.net/wmhints/ which I'm assuming is a work in
progress.  The thing I like about it is the fresh start it offers.  Gives
us a clean slate to start from and open ended questions that need to be
answered before proceeding.

>   At the moment we have support from the icewm, mosquito, and the scwm
> authors.  Nathan is working on the blackbox window manager himself.
> He is also contacted the authors of the other major window managers, and 
> once we have everyone on board we will make a more general announcement
> requesting participation.  I think initially keeping the group small
> and focused will produce the greatest good quickly.

Support from the blackbox author may also be listed ;)  Nathan has examined
some of the patches people have made for blackbox, but there is no support
(from me at least) for GNOME compliancy because I strongly believed that
the spec needed to be revised (which is why i'm very interested in this
project as well).

>   Please send any ideas or comments you have to this list - I think it
> is imperative we try to come to a decision over the next few months so
> that window manager authors will have a solid specification to follow.

One comment/suggestion that I have has to do with the event proxy idea
(specifically the ButtonPress proxy described in the current spec).  Plain
and simple, I don't think it's a good idea trying to circumvent a design
strategy of X.  Problems could arise with applications fighting over
control of the cursor, which is why X only allows one client at a time to
receive a ButtonPress event.  Perhaps something other than a mindless proxy
should be conjured up (like perhaps someway for a single application to
tell the window manager that it would like to intervene and get root window
mouse events... which in this case I would like to suggest that the window
manager would select for a different input mask - minus ButtonPress - on
the root window, and then send a signal to the said application which would
then select for ButtonPress input on the root window)

> Cheers,
> 
> Michael Fulbright
> drmike@redhat.com
> Director - Red Hat Advanced Development Labs
> 
> 
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> 

regards,

Blackbox - An X11R6 Window Manager
     http://blackbox.wiw.org/      
__________________________________

Bradley T. Hughes <bhughes@tcac.net>