Re: Removing wm/pager interaction

[Dominik Vogt <dominik vogt fvwm org>]

On Wed, Jun 14, 2000 at 05:36:04PM +0100, John Harper wrote:
> Michael Rogers writes:
> |> (1) the widget set used by the pager should match that used by the
> |> thing swallowing it
> |
> |It makes just as much sense for the tasklist buttons to match the window 
> |decorations as it does for the tasklist buttons to match the other applets.
> 
> I totally disagree -- the pager/tasklist should match the look of the
> `panel'. It's not a window border!
> 
> (of course ideally, window borders and widgets would look the same
> anyway..)
> 
> |
> |> (2) if the user changes window managers, it shouldn't affect the
> |> behaviour of the pager (since from their viewpoint, the pager is part
> |> of the desktop environment, not of the window manager)
> |
> |I don't think that's necessarily true. My point of view is that the pager 
> |manages windows, so it is part of the window manager. The basic jobs it does 
> |(moving, selecting, resizing and closing windows) are all jobs done by the 
> |window manager and not by any other part of the desktop environment.
> 
> You're looking at this from the point of view of a window manager
> hacker. To somehow who knows nothing about the underlying mechanisms, I
> think the pager would appear as part of the desktop. But I guess this
> is subjective.

Well, from this point of view the window manager is an integral
part of the desktop environment too.  If we follow this kind of
logic we'll necessarily have to demand that all compliant window
managers ose Gtk to draw their decorations/menus/...  I guess if
a user exchanges the window manager he has a good reason to do so
and can live with a slightly different look of the pager.  Don't
forget that a pager is mostly undecorated anyway.

> |It can adapt itself to size/orientation by listening for ConfigureNotify 
> |events on the swallowed window. I guess "other user preferences" means the DE 
> |widget set's look and feel. If the pager matches either the WM's theme and 
> |widget set or the DE's theme and widget set, I think that will be good enough.
> 
> Yes, I realized this. But I wanted another example :-)
> 
> (by orientation I meant that the pager might want to display itself
> differently in a vertical panel to in a horizontal panel; I'm not sure
> if that's necessarily true or not, but it can't tell just from the size
> of the window)

??? Why should a pager want to do that?  If it wants to we'll
need a panel/pager compatibility spec :-)

Overall I think Michael's idea simplified things a lot.  Up to now I
can see only minor inconvenieces in this approach, but on the other
hand it will take a lot of work from our shoulders.

Bye

Dominik ^_^

-- 
Dominik Vogt, Agilent Technologies, Dept. BVS
Herrenberger Str.130, 71034 Boeblingen, Germany
phone: 07031/464-4596, fax: 07031/464-3883, dominik_vogt@agilent.com