Comments on 1.0pre3/pre4

[Matthias Clasen <Matthias Clasen poet de>]

Ok, one more round of comments on 1.0pre3/pre4.

Matthias



_NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT
_NET_DESKTOP_NAMES
_NET_WORKAREA
_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS

It would be a good idea to state explicitly that these properties
are parallel in the sense that they all contain arrays of length
_NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS and their i-th entries all refer to the i-th
desktop.


Maybe we should add some information about allowed values:

The following are always true:
0 <= _NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP < _NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS < 0xFFFFFFFF.

WidthOfScreen  <= _NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY.width
HeightOfScreen <= _NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY.height

0 <= _NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT[i].x <= _NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY.width -
WidthOfScreen
0 <= _NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT[i].y <= _NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY.height -
HeightOfScreen

And a list of allowed values for _NET_SUPPORTED (although I strongly
question the usefulness of _NET_SUPPORTED):
_NET_CLIENT_LIST
_NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING
_NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS
_NET_DESKTOP_GEOMETRY
_NET_DESKTOP_VIEWPORT
_NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP
_NET_DESKTOP_NAMES
_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW
_NET_WORKAREA
_NET_VIRTUAL_ROOTS
_NET_CLOSE_WINDOW
_NET_WM_MOVERESIZE
_NET_WM_NAME
_NET_WM_VISIBLE_NAME
_NET_WM_DESKTOP
_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE
_NET_WM_STATE
_NET_WM_STRUT
_NET_WM_ICON_GEOMETRY
_NET_WM_ICON
_NET_WM_PID
_NET_WM_HANDLED_ICONS
_NET_WM_PING


_NET_WM_STRUT and _NET_WORKAREA must be explained in more detail.

It is my understanding that the strut quadruples specify a reserved
border
around the screen whose width can vary for the four sides. The border
thickness
is specified in _NET_WM_STRUT in the following order: left, right, top,
bottom.

The description of _NET_WORKAREA sounds as if it was defined in the same
way,
i.e. specifying the thickness of a border at the left, right, top,
bottom side
of the screen. But looking at the implementation made available by
Bradley
Hughes, I find workarea specified as a usual geometry, i.e. x, y, width,

height. What gives ? I personally find the usual geometry more natural.
It should also be specified that this geometry is relative to the
viewport
and will always specify a rectangle completely contain
What about windows which can't be maximized or shaded (e.g. because they
are
not decorated with a titlebar) ? This information is not currently
available
to pagers/taskbars, so they can't remove the corresponding items from
their
menus.


_NET_WM_ICON_NAME ? It has been proposed, why isn't it included ?  Maybe
this
has been neglected since most of the stuff addressed by the spec kind of

assumes that no icons are displayed.


_NET_WM_ICON_GEOMETRY Is this really a good idea ? It feels very hackish
to
expect the WM to display an animation, but not handle the icons. I'd say
we
should rather add instructions for detecting the window transition from
normal
to iconic state by third-party apps. Then the iconbox can handle the
animation
itself.