Re: Extended Window Manager Hints

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Daniel F Moisset <dmoisset arnet com ar> writes:
>     I've just been trying to read the document about extwmhints at 
> http://developer.gnome.org/doc/standards/extwmhints/book1.html, but most
> links seem broken. Do you know about another place where I can find this
> document?

That is some ancient draft thing, the spec is at http://www.freedesktop.org

>     My interest for this proposal comes from a discussion at the
> gnome-usability list. The discussion is long and you can read it in the
> archives (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/ , the threads about
> instant-apply windows), but a summary is in this post:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2002-January/msg00044.html
>     Essentially, the idea is that clients should be able to ask the WM
> what capabilities provides in its frame ;i.e., if the frame has a close
> button, for this case, but it could be useful to have other capabilities
> (other buttons, title text visible, moveable, resizeable, etc.)
> available.
>     I'm interested in your oppinion about this issue. This has been a
> long flamewar at gnome-usability for not having something like this.

My opinion is that it's safe to assume the WM has some way to close a
window, whether key shortcut or button or menu. In general apps should
just assume the WM is sane, and not try to work around it in any way.
There's no point working around the installed OS; you wouldn't install
your own X server to be sure X works. One just has to assume the
system works and tell users to get a better system if theirs sucks.

Havoc