Re: Applications and layers

[Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net>]

Havoc Pennington (hp redhat com):

> On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 07:46:56AM -0500, Billy Biggs wrote:
> > Since my first post I've educated myself on the two specs.  So let
> > me ask specifically about _NET_WM_STATE_ABOVE and BELOW, is this
> > something my application should support on startup or as a specific
> > 'mode', or is it something that a window manager should be setting?
> 
> The _WIN spec is dead dead dead, ignore it. Only use the _NET hints.

  Good to hear, thanks for the clarification.

> ABOVE and BELOW are generally user-manipulable states, in contrast to
> the semantic type (DESKTOP, DOCK, etc.). Normally you would set a
> semantic type and not set ABOVE or BELOW; the WM will then put the
> window in the normal layer for its type.

  Lubos Lunak and I had a discussion about this on IRC and it sort of
clarified a bit for me at least what DESKTOP and DOCK should mean, in
that, I should only use them if I am a desktop or a dock.  Right?

> However if for some reason defaulting your app to ABOVE or BELOW makes
> sense (perhaps a "sticky notes" app should default to BELOW for
> example), then it seems OK to set them on startup.
>
> Providing a --on-top/--on-bottom command line option or something has
> nothing wrong with it in principle, though personally I wouldn't add
> it to my apps on the grounds that it's bloat. ;-)

  My application is a TV viewer, and there are good reasons why you'd
want to have it always on top, or even always on bottom.  One of our
popular use cases is someone who is watching TV while doing other work.

  I want to make sure of two things though:
  1. If I provide an 'always on top' key binding or menu option, I don't
     want the the window manager to do this too but call it 'hover'.
  2. I only want options that are necessary.  If all window managers
     provide always on top/bottom in their menus (or maybe an
     'xkill'-style click-the-window-to-push-down), then it is bloat.

> > How should I describe these modes to the user?  "above" and
> > "below" don't make intuitive sense to me.
> 
> This is not something that's specified/standardized.
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98387 has some discussion if
> you are interested. Looks like "always on top" is a popular choice.

  Thanks alot for this link.  I guess I'm sad that the choice is not
clear, on both the wm and app side.  I'd feel alot better if at least
the names were standard.  "always on top" makes some sense to me, and I
guess "always on bottom" is passable, but I bet I'll have to come out
with a new version within the year that updates the names. :(

  -Billy