Re: Namespace

[Matthias Ettrich <ettrich troll no>]

On Sun, 07 Nov 1999, Elliot Lee wrote:
> On 7 Nov 1999 12:16:26 -0500, Matthias Ettrich <ettrich@troll.no> wrote:
> 
> >I want to extend the specs a bit for KDE-2. We need for example support for
> >"docking" (the small 16x16 icons in the panel near the clock).
> >
> >I will design a protocol that fits into the spirit of the NET protocol.
> >Obviously we will not have the time to agree on that, but I'm wondering what
> >name one should choose for extensions like that?
> >
> >Possibilities are _KDE_xxxxx or _NET_KDE_xxxx
> >
> >I would prefer the second one.
> 
> Well, the first question (coming from the uninformed me) is "what does this have to do
> with the window manager"?

I was asked to support this via a simple window hint in KDE because it's
extremely easy this way to support docking from any application written with
any toolkit.

A docking window is still a window, managed by the window manager but might
appear within some other application. This concept gives a lot of stability:
the panel may die or be restarted, the app may show the dockwindow before the
panel has been started or later, etc. It will all magically work without any
higher-level ipc mechanism. Docking is done via XMapWindow, undocking via
XUnmapWindow. Can't be easier.

I don't expect this list to agree on a protocol for this, I was just asking
the general question whether we want to allow/encourage people to use use
subnamespaces in the NET protocol or net. I can prefix with "_KDE" just as well.

Since KDE and many KDE application will use this protocol and it's so easy to
support in the WM, I expect the majority of window managers to support it
anyway after the release of KDE-2.0. So I don't really care if we cannot put it
into the specs now.


Matthias