Re: _NET: Disabling shading

[Dominik Vogt <dominik vogt gmx de>]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 08:23:00PM +0400, Denis O. Mikhalkin wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 18:40, Dominik Vogt wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 06:23:38PM +0400, Denis O. Mikhalkin wrote:

> >  The fvwm mailing list is already full of mails a la "why can't I
> > iconify/resize/maximise/... this specific window?" 
> This is because the author of whatever toolkit that is didn't declare
> that the window can't be "iconify/resize/maximise/". This is exactly we
> are against of - everything should be specified.

Hm?  The MWM hints are not specified?

> And we receive numerous
> complaints that our windows ARE being
> focused/minimized/resizable/decorated or ARE NOT some of these while we
> declared that they will be and it happens because some hints/state
> hasn't been specified correctly so some freedom of interpretation has
> been left either for us or WM.

I somewhat suspect that these complaints come from the developers.
I can't imagine why a user would complain that she is able to
iconify a window.

> We are against this - freedom here should
> be in the wide variaty of possibilities, not in a wide range of
> interpretations.
> 
> >  So what would a "disallow shading" hint add to predictability? 
> It will add that our windows won't be shaded(I am speaking about Java).
> So we can predict that, and we can tell developers "your window won't be
> shaded". And they write in their documentation "this window won't be
> shaded". 

Congratulations.  So you 'fix' bad application design by
restricting what the user is allowed to do oh her machine. :-)

> >  What's important for an application may be completely irrelevant for the app's
> > user. The developer can not decide that.
> What do you say? Do I not know how my office application should work?

No, you don't and you can't.  Only the user can decide which
window policy she likes.  In my eyes, writing applications that
fall over just because they are shaded, received focus, become
invisible etc. is amateurish.  A good rule in writing applications
is to never trust user input.  Window management policy *is* a
form of user input, so relying on a specific behaviour for
critical aspects of the application is wrong.

> Do I not know which windows it shows and how? Definitely, WM can't know
> this,

The WM *can* and know this because it does not make thing up but
usually follows user requests.

> while I do, and user will after he works with my application for
> some time or reads documentation.

... and you end up with 100 applications, all working slightly
differently.  I don't understand why you consider this
predictable.

> What a nice surprise it will be when after that the program will
> start to work differently because WM decides to display windows
> differently.

The window manager does not just 'start to work differently' for
no reason but because the user told it so.  Ignoring the wishes of
the users is a mistake in application programming.

Ciao

Dominik ^_^  ^_^