WM_DELETE_WINDOW

[Matthias Ettrich <ettrich troll no>]

Hi, 

WM_DELETE_WINDOW is a nice WM protocol, but far from sufficient.

One of the standard questions of new X users is: "what to do with a program that
hangs and therefore doesn't close when I click on the close button?"

Overcoming this limitation is difficult. One solution is the fvwm way to
put the burden onto the user and to provide two entries "quit" and "close" in
the window operation menu (at least my old fvwm used to have this in its default
configuration). Disadvantage: the difference between quit and close is hard to
document and will hardly be understood by any normal user. And frankly, it's a
purely technical thing the interface should hide. 

The KDE way is to provide "quit" only, but offer a process manager and a
kill-window function in addition. But using these things requires at least
reading some documentation.

My suggestion is to add a new wm protocol, NET_WM_PING:
type = ClientMessage
window = client window
message_type = WM_PROTOCOLS
format = 32
data.l[0] = NET_WM_PING
data.l[1] = opaque handle set by the window manager to identify the ping

The client that recieves this message is obliged to send it back to the root
window immediatly ( set window=root and do a XSendEvent ).


With this protocol, the window manager has the possibility to issue a ping
right before sending the WM_DELETE message. If the reply doesn't arrive within
say 4 seconds it can display a message box: "The application doesn't react,
shall I kill it? [kill] [try again][cancel] "

Of course this procedures only works for clients that request the new wm
protocol, but that's better than nothing.


Matthias