Re: _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW, revisited

[Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net>]

Elijah Newren (newren gmail com):

> On 7/21/05, Billy Biggs <vektor dumbterm net> wrote:
> >   Isn't the only application-class where you want this
> > jump-to-current-desktop behaviour 'gaim' or other apps which have a task
> > bar item, you click on it, and the gaim window appears on your current
> > desktop?
> 
> Personally, no.

  What's the other example?  Lubos' KUniqueApplication example was an
interesting one, but I haven't seen any application that does this today
(and it could be implemented directly using the desktop switching
hints).

> >   This seems like the special case to me.  You never want KMail or
> > Mozilla to jump desktops unless you do something really crazy, and
> > lots of apps have multiple windows they want to move focus between.
> 
> As far as I can tell, you've introduced a third possible policy that
> could be implemented; I don't think it matches what either Lubos or I
> had in mind.  I think that helps my case, though.  I'm not trying to
> argue what the policy of the WM should be, I'm just arguing that there
> are more valid policies and that the policy shouldn't be built into
> the spec because that results in apps/pagers/WMs working around it
> when they don't like it.  I hate having a desktop where all apps
> behave totally differently.  This kind of thing was the whole reason
> _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE was introduced and the motif hints were
> deprecated.
> 
> 
> Incidentally, I just realized that our window selector is buggy.  We'd
> like an activation-from-pager-that-is-workspace-aware kind of hint,
> but there isn't any and we currently get the behavior _we_ want by
> doing _net_current_desktop + _net_active_window.  That's wrong because
> it's an attempt to enforce policy when the WM should decide it.  In
> particular, the WM should be allowed to treat such activation requests
> by moving the window to the workspace where the user is.  So, I need
> to pull that code out of gnome-panel/libwnck and instead create a
> message type (_GNOME_ACTIVATION?) and use it where available
> (otherwise using the _net_active_window as it currently stands) until
> an activation-from-pager-that-is-workspace-aware hint is added to the
> EWMH.

  I'm sorry, I don't understand your response.  What's the third policy
I have introduced?

  My problem is this:  if _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW can cause windows to switch
which desktop they're on, I have to somehow modify my code to only use
it when I know the application is currently visible, which is hard.

  -Billy