Re: My comments on the WM spec

["Matthias Clasen" <Matthias Clasen poet de>]

Sometime ago, you wrote to wm-spec-list gnome org:

>   _NET_SUPPORTING_WM_CHECK
>
>   "set with the same value" is potentially unclear. Better to say
>   "also set to the ID of the child window". And I think it
>   is useful to extend the rational here: the property on the
>   child window is used so that an active window manager can
>   be distinguished from a stale _NET_SUPPORTING_WM_CHECK
>   property that happens to point to another window. If the
>   _NET_SUPPORTING_WM_CHECK window on the client window is missing
>   or not properly set, clients should assume that no conforming
>   window manager is present.
>
>   Reading over the ICCCM again, I realized that this really
>   is the wrong way of doing things - really we should be
>   working on top of the selection mechanism described in
>   sections 2.8 and 4.3. The X selection mechanism is meant
>   the way in X to control ownership of shared resources,
>   and the ICCCM describes how starting one window manager
>   should cause the previous window manager to cleanly give
>   up control of the root window. Of course, I don't know if any window
>   managers actually conform to the ICCCM in this respect.

You're right, this would be better. I brought fvwm to full ICCCM2 compliance
about a year ago, including manager selections, urgency hint and client side
colormap setting. I think I can claim that fvwm is still the only fully
ICCCM2
wm in existence.

Matthias

Sorry, I'm not on the list, so please CC me if you reply.