Re: saving window states

["Matthias Clasen" <Matthias Clasen poet de>]

> Metacity doesn't have the feature where it can save window states on
> the basis of the window's class/name. User requests for this indicate
> that people have been using this feature in other window managers to
> save window states. However, the feature seems broken to me.
> Class/name don't identify windows uniquely, so I don't see how to
> avoid for example restoring a main window's state to a dialog.

> Some use cases:
> - most apps should open main windows at the same size/position each
>   time
> - to make gkrellm remember to be on all workspaces
> - most apps should _not_ remember their workspace (should 
>   come up on workspace where they were launched)
> - document windows ("New Document") should probably follow some kind 
>   of placement algorithm, but perhaps each specific saved document 
>   should remember its particular state
> - conceivably some users want all windows to use the placement
>   algorithm

I don't see this as saving window state at all. Its just a convenient
way to configure how the wm should treat certain windows (which can be 
identified by class or/and name, and possibly also by _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE)

I consider this out of scope for the EWMH, since we explicitly say that 
wm configuration is not covered. (I'd like to point to the exact section
where we say this, but I just noticed that the spec is completely 
unnumbered - Havoc, can we change the formatting of the freedesktop.org 
specs to include section numbers ? That would make it easier to cite them
exactly.)

> Of course in the session management case, it's well-defined how saving
> window state works.

Saving state of uniquely identified windows is clearly the realm of 
session management. There you can do it, since clients participating in 
SM make their windows uniquely identifyable by SM_CLIENT_ID + 
WM_WINDOW_ROLE.
Trying to do this without SM is futile.

Matthias