Re: WM_DELETE_WINDOW

[Matthias Ettrich <ettrich troll no>]

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Dominik Vogt wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 21, 1999 at 08:20:30PM +0100, Matthias Ettrich wrote:
> > 
> > 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. 
> 
> And fvwm can hide it for you.  The 'close' function first tries
> to be nice and uses the WM_DELETE_WINDOW protocol, but if this
> fails it uses XKillClient.  Is more than this necessary?  I mean,

A window manager that does this is both nasty and not ICCCM compliant.
According to ICCCM, applications can (and should!) interact with the user on
WM_DELETE_WINDOW and may PERFECTLY LEGAL cancel the shutdown, without notifying
the WM.

Simply try a modern GUI application, modify some data and click on the close
button. You will get a messagebox: "Save data? [yes][no][cancel]". 
I don't believe a user who clicks cancel wants his application to be killed by
fvwm ;)

Matthias