[jjpp meso ee: wm-spec: _NET_DESKTOP_LAYOUT]

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

----- Forwarded message from Jaak Pruulmann <jjpp meso ee> -----

X-Sender: jjpp cu1 fut ee
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 18:05:49 +0200 (EET)
From: Jaak Pruulmann <jjpp meso ee>
To: hp freedesktop org
Subject: wm-spec: _NET_DESKTOP_LAYOUT

Hi!

After few hours of trying to figure out why my metacity 2.4.3 thinks I
have 4 rows and 3 columns of workspaces while Gnome 2 pager (came with
gnome-panel on my debian unstable) has 3 rows and 4 columns, I learned
that in last versions someone has patched metacity to "do the correct
thing" and to act by spec (Problem report about changing x and y, related
to vertical and horizontal layout). Yet gnome pager seems to think that
the other way is better.

After some google'ing I managed to find the spec and tried to find out
what the correct behaviour is. It appears that the spec is buggy. It first
claims that X is rows and Y is columns (section 3.12 in latest version;
5th paragraph) and then continues with examples that show exactly the
opposite. Probably it should be corrected one way or the other. Easiest
way is perhaps swaping "rows" and "columns" in 5th paragraph, but it might
be even better to rename parameters x and y to something more intuitive -
cols and rows or something less abstract like that .. (doublechecked,
sample layouts use x as columns and y as rows regardless of direction).

It also means that tehere are some broken pagers/windowmanagers out there
- either is gnome pager broken or is metacity. 

[btw, I think that the spec should include section or paragraph about how
to contribute or where to write and where is the latest version available.
It took me quite a few minutes to figure out that the mailing list is
probably the way. but as it was not specified how to act in case like
this, I do what I like better and write personally to you. :]

jaak pruulmann,
just a programmer.. 

[eh, and std-i'm-not-a-native-english-speaker-disclaimer should be
added. if there is anyhing you cannot understand then just ask - i'll try
to rephrase..]

----- End forwarded message -----