Re: Pending EWMH additions

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 01:57:37PM +0200, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> Trying to get us closer to EWMH 1.2 again:
> 
> Havoc, would you mind syncing the draft thats up on freedesktop.org  with 
> cvs ? Then we are at least on the same page regarding the current state of 
> the draft.  (I committed a bunch of minor additions some time ago).
> 
> A couple of new issues have popped up since then:
> 
> 1) Workspace geometry / pager layout
> discussion revived at 
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-April/msg00000.html
> proposed patch in 
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-May/msg00039.html
>  
>  We seem to have reached consensus on this, just need to reformulate the 
> patch a bit to integrate it better in the spec (see comments in the 
> mentioned threads). Havoc, since you wrote the original patch, will
> create a new one ?

FVWM and MWM are the only programs which come close to proper handling
of a manager selection. FVWM 2.5.2 has a FIXME for the multiple target.
MWM may handle the manager selection alright, but fails to handle the
VERSION target required of it as a window manager.

I've written to X.org for information about getting the ICCCM fixed.
They have not replied.

Rather than leaving it as insider information, the EWMH should explicitly
relax the expectation of ICCCM 2.0 compliance. The same is true for the
other XDG specifications.


> 2) Alternative methods of implementing viewports / workspaces:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-May/msg00018.html
>  
> I think we should just reformulate the implementation notes sections 
> (2.3.1 and 2.5.1) to make it clear that we just give two examples and 
> other implementations are possible.
> Gregory, can you provide a patch for this ?

Yes. I'd like to be able to check the document out of CVS.


> 3) "Show desktop" feature:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-May/msg00019.html
> 
> Little discussion and only a sketchy outline how it should work. More 
> detail needed, I guess.

I would like to see this and more done along the lines intended by the
ICCCM authors.

  From: ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/R6/RELNOTES.TXT

  Another new facility is manager selections.  This use of the selection mech- 
  anism is not to transfer data, but to allow clients known as managers to 
  provide services to other clients.  Version 2.0 also specifies that window 
  managers should hold a manager selection.  At present, the only service 
  defined for window managers is to report the ICCCM version number to which 
  the window manager complies.  Now that this facility is in place, additional 
  services can be added in the future.

"Show Desktop" could be one of these services. I presented two more here:
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-May/msg00000.html

MWM provides some other services but ironically fails to provide the required
one. I can't decipher some of them from sources and because I've rarely used
it. MWM provided interaction with a workspace manager, which managed WSM_Sn,
but supposedly that was later dropped.


> 4) Saving window states in a non-SM context:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-May/msg00030.html 
> 
> No consensus yet.

I've completely lost track of the issues in that thread. :-/
(Maybe I will summarize it if I have the stomach for that.)

> 5) Clarification of the spec for multi-screen and Xinerama scenarios:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-May/msg00057.html
> 
> No concrete proposals yet.

*shrug*

> 6) _NET_WM_STATE_FLOATING:
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-June/msg00002.html
> 
> Seems to be fairly uncontroversial, although we would need somebody to 
> write a detailed explanation how wms should handle this state.  Havoc ?

"Sticky" gets its name from the window acting like it's stuck to the glass.

Something is not right here.

> 
> So, how do we get from here to a EWMH 1.2 ? 
> 
> 
> Matthias

I've not looked at the document as a whole in months. I'm not in a position
to judge that. However, having dates in the change history would be helpful
for purposes of bug reporting and tracking, if only to point out things
like:
 "Manager selections have been part of the ICCCM for more than 8 years. RTFM!"

;-)


Cheers,
Greg Merchan