Re: Applications and layers

[Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net>]

Havoc Pennington (hp redhat com):

> On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 11:32:27AM -0500, Billy Biggs wrote: 
> >   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?
> 
> Yes. Though, I think more things are probably DOCK than are currently
> marked as DOCK; e.g. I'd tend to mark gkrellm as DOCK. But no, a TV
> viewer is most likely not DOCK.

  Why would you mark gkrellm as DOCK and not ABOVE, isn't this exactly
what ABOVE is for?  Also, how do you mark gkrellm as DOCK?

> >   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.
> 
> The current spec doesn't try to specify the UI of the window manager
> (if it did, at some point there's no real reason to even allow
> multiple WMs, since they'd all be the same).  It's true that this
> sometimes makes it harder to design a proper application UI, no
> question.

  Your intent seems fair, but I worry that the spec is being too open
about how these attributes are at least intended to be used.  I think
more guidance can be given at least about what my responsibilities are
as an application.  For example, "am I responsible for providing the
always-on-top feature if users request it for my application?"

  It does now seem that I should provide methods in my app to set at
least the ABOVE and BELOW states.

  -Billy