Re: _NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT

[Paul Warren <pdw ferret lmh ox ac uk>]

On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, John Harper wrote:

> I was reading the draft spec and this caught my attention:
> 
>     _NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT x,y, CARDINAL[2]/32
> 
>     Array of two cardinals that define the top left corner of the
>     current view. For window managers that don't support paged
>     desktops, this is always (0,0). If a client wants to change the
>     desktop viewport, it can send a _NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT client
>     message to the root window (type _NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT, format 32,
>     l[0]=<new x>, l[1]=<new y>). 
> 
> I think this has the same problem as the current spec: some window
> managers have separate current views on each desktop; some have a
> global current view that's applied to all desktops
> 
> But the pager has no way of knowing which behaviour is being used, and
> so can't accurately tell which view is active on each desktop

Indeed.  Tim Janik pointed this one off-list, and I hadn't got round to
mentioning it...

> A possible solution is to make this property an array of pairs, one per
> desktop,

Yep, that's the solution we came up with too :-)

I suggested that if only one pair is provided, that is taken as the active
viewport for all desktops.  This saves maintaining a list of identical
numbers for WMs that do not support different active viewports on
different desktops.

yours,

Paul