Re: ICCCM breakage, IconicState, and desktops

["Sasha Vasko" <sasha aftercode net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Havoc Pennington" <hp redhat com>
To: "Sasha Vasko" <sasha aftercode net>
Cc: <wm-spec-list gnome org>
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 1:19 AM
Subject: Re: ICCCM breakage, IconicState, and desktops


>
> Sasha Vasko <sasha aftercode net> writes:
> > One ought to use virtual roots when implementing virtual desktops.
> >
>
> There are advantages to doing them via unmaps instead, IMO. So the WM
> spec definitely should not prohibit that approach.
>
> However we need to make explicit that the current spec allows this
> ICCCM violation, and that we have equated IconicState with "minimized"
> instead of "unmapped" and broken the invariants given in the ICCCM. I
> think we decided to make that explicit last time the topic came up,
> but I never put the patch into the document.
>

Nope, we decided to change wording of the paragraph, as that really was a
culprit.

Here is proposed wording from archives :

<quote>

Implementation note

There are different way of implementing virtual desktops. This specs
recommends the following way :

For each virtual desktop special window has to be created which we'll
call "virtual pseudo-root". Every managed window (or its frame window)
must be reparented to become child of the virtual pseudo-root of the
desktop it is on.
When particular desktop is activated  - corresponding virtual pseudo-root
is raised in window hierarchy, thus obscuring other desktops. When
desktop is changed for particular window - its is reparented to the
corresponding virtual pseudo-root.

Application developers should be aware that there are Window Managers
that currently implement virtual desktops in different ways. One of the
known implementation is to simply unmap frame windows of clients that are
not on the current desktop. At the same time client window of such client
may or may not be unmapped and its WM_STATE may or may not be changed into
Iconic State. As the result application, while managed by such window manage
r, may find itself in ambiguous state, when its windows are unmapped, yet
its WM_STATE has not been changed to Iconic.

</quote>



> Havoc

Sasha