Re: _NET_WORKAREA and dual head

[Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net>]

Bill Haneman (Bill Haneman Sun COM):

> FWIW I can see some accessibility use cases for reserving rectangular
> areas within the screen, in support of "always on top" sorts of
> applications like onscreen magnifiers and virtual keyboards.
> 
> However I do appreciate that this complicates matters a good bit when
> it comes to implementing support for these sorts of "struts", and I am
> not sure how essential such a capability is above and beyond the
> existing "reserve edges/corners" behavior.

  Hi Bill,

  Your examples of magnifiers and keyboards make sense.   I agree that
having a concept of these reserved areas is useful.  However, I am
wondering if we can manage the complexity of all of this based on the
application.

  For example, what are the uses of this information.  One is clearly
window placement by a window manager.  The application I am interested
in is dialog placement in an application.  If my application wants to
control where dialogs get placed, but not interfere with panels (or
virtual keyboards), would a single rectangular work area per Xinerama
head be sufficient in this case?  If so then the original hint might be
useful.  Similarly for the desktop icon example, although maybe that one
would be natural to have working in the general case.

  -Billy