Re: STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION (was Re: _NET: Disabling shading)

[Lubos Lunak <l lunak suse cz>]

On Wednesday 01 of October 2003 20:54, Marko Macek wrote:
> Lubos Lunak wrote:
> > As I already said there, I first thought about using the Urgency hint
> > from ICCCM, but I eventually decided not to. I wasn't sure if it would be
> > ok to set this hint from the WM, and moreover the meaning of this state
> > is actually somewhat opposite to being urgent.
[snip]
> >
> >  Rob, if you start implementing it in Metacity, I'd first suggest talking
> > to me :). The spec will actually need few more additions (timestamps in
> > messages and identification who sent it, whether an app or a pager), and
> > some of the mechanisms can be somewhat tricky. It's been some time since
> > I wrote that proposal. I'm actually now trying to collect up all these
> > things for proposing the necessary ones here.
>
> I also have plans to implement this in icewm.

 Uh oh :). Ok, I'm going now to collect all the spec additions.

>
> There is already support for using UrgencyHint + internal state (for new
> windows, raise request) for this. Exposing this in a standard manner
> would be nice.
>
> Should the WM also set this flag when UrgencyHint is set?

 As said above, I first though the urgency hint could be _the_ flag for this, 
instead of adding new state. But (besides my understanding of WM_HINTS as 
being set only by the client) the semantics are different. First of all, I'm 
actually not sure what the exact semantics of the urgency hint are. 
STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION attention means something like "please have a look at 
me when you have time". The urgency hint could be interpreted the same way, I 
think treating them (from users point of view) equally to 
STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION would be fine WRT ICCCM. However, if I understand 
FVWM's configuration right, they treat it as "show me no matter what, I'm 
terribly important". And I understood the urgency hint the same way when 
reading its description for the first time.

 Technically, UrgencyHint and STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION cannot be the same. 
UrgencyHint is controlled only by the client, both set and reset, while 
STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION can be set by both, and is unset by the WM (KWin does 
so when the window gets activated).

 But with your question, I don't know. Perhaps yes. Perhaps the WM would 
prefer to interpret UrgencyHint the same way FVWM does.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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