Re: mandatory _NET_WM_PING

[Philipp Lohmann - Sun Germany <Philipp Lohmann Sun COM>]

Hi,

Marko Macek wrote:
> Hi!
>
> As discussed before, there is no reliable way for a window 
> manager to know that an application implements the wm-spec 
> hints.
>
> Therefore I propose to make the implementation of _NET_WM_PING protocol
> mandatory for applications 
> implementing this specification.

I'd rather have an additional property in which the application can tell 
which version of the hints the application supports; apart from 
overloading the ping protocol this would have the advantage for WMs 
supporting applications written according to earlier versions of the spec.

> Beside it obvious usefulness for killing hung windows.

How obvious is this usefullness really ? Does an app hang just because 
its stuck opening a file on a slow NFS-server ? Why should a WM decide 
that an app is hung ? The user will do that anyway if he's bothered by 
it and kill it; with automated killing you inevitably kill applications 
which are indeed not hung; as e.g. the gnome session manager likes to do 
with OpenOffice.org which happens to start longer than the default 
settings of the session manager allow and therefore kills it outright..

Regards, Philipp

--
E pluribus Unix