Re: NET WM Spec implementation and changes

[Jeff Raven <jraven psu edu>]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 10:00:20AM -0500, Sasha_Vasko@osca.state.mo.us wrote:
> 
> Ok here is the example :
> Lets say compliant application A has a configuration option "Always
> on Top", User sees it and says to himself " Oh that would be cool!"
> and goes ahead and enables this option. At the same time he has a
> window manager config, where he/she requested some specific layer
> for that kind of clients, which is not the top-level layer. User
> then expects to see application to pop up on top of everything, and
> is very disappointed when Window Manager overrides it and puts it
> somewhere in the middle of the stack. Althou minor amount of users
> may actually go and investigate and adjust WM config, majority
> of the users will just say : "Ah! That app is screwed!" or "This
> WM sucks!", or even "Hell! That Open Source software really sucks!".
> This is how it goes usually, and there is nothing you can do about it.
> 
> Accordingly it would be muuuuuuch better not to create such a
> confusion, since like I said, if window manager supports this
> functionality ( which is not all that easy to implement BTW) it
> MUST have its own options for that.
>

Any app which intends to offer any of these configuration options
(whether OnTop, Sticky, etc.) should check to be certain that the wm
supports it beforehand. Any app which does otherwise is just plain
broken.

> 
> ok, bbkeys is BlackBox specific app, therefore it can use some
> BlackBox specific extensions of the protocol in order to achieve
> that. I bet it is going to do that anyways, since this specs are
> far too short then what is needed in order to implement fairily
> complete window manager keyboard functionality.
> 

At present bbkeys (as well as bbpager, the Blackbox pager) is a
Blackbox specific app simply because the wm spec is not yet
finalized. However, both apps only require features of the existing
spec to function, and are intended to work with any spec-compliant
wm.

Jeff Raven