WHY: Re: Still need a hint for undecorated windows

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Tuomo Valkonen wrote:
> On 2005-06-24, Carsten Haitzler <raster rasterman com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 11:54:54 +0200 Lubos Lunak <l lunak suse cz> babbled:
> >
> >
> > > I yet to have actually see somebody saying a single reason why this is really
> >
> > application developers want it 
>
>
> Because they mistakenly think they know better than the user or the wm maker
> how UIs should work, not because they have any real reason for it. This kind
> of thinking only eventually leads to the loss of such a blessing as a
> separate window manager, and thus to absolute unusability.

Ridiculous.

Here's a GOOD REASON for this hint:

* applications sometimes want/need to post windows that should not be 
decorated, and perhaps shouldn't even be distinguished visually as 
"separate top level windows" - examples are certain types of popups, 
splash screens, and transient windows.

The usual way to deal with this problem is to either use WM_TYPE_DOCK, 
which is semantically inaccurate, or (more commonly) to use 
override-redirect.  The problem with override-redirect is that it 
'hides' the window from the WM, thus conflicting with assistive 
technologies such as onscreen magnifiers, onscreen keyboards, and 
defeating other WM functions.

I agree that the WM is a "blessing", e.g. a Good Thing.  It does lots of 
things for us _besides_ just adding decorations and drag handles.  Why 
should we have to defeat all of the positive functionality of a WM in 
order to get undecorated windows (or else abuse WM_DOCK) ?

You may think that splash screens are evil, that popups should never be 
toplevels, yadda yadda, but this hardly matters.  Although the WM spec 
*should* set some degree of policy and encourage "good UI design", it is 
really hopeless to think that wm-spec-list is an appropriate universal 
arbitrator of what is good and bad.  I don't think we can reach 
consensus that all forms of undecorated window (in an 
otherwise-decorated DE) are forever evil; therefore an UNDECORATED hint 
is required (until such time as all applications which disagree with you 
  die out).

The accessibility issue is a strong practical reason (as opposed to just 
a philosophical one) why the hint is better than just requiring such 
apps to use override-redirect or DOCK.

thanks for listening

Bill
> > AND end application and wm users want it too. 
>
>
> Some may want fancy window-specific decorations and behaviour, but the fancy
> window non-manager that this kind of people use can provide these. It's what
> the WM is for! 


--
------
Bill Haneman
Gnome Accessibility Project
Sun Microsystems Ireland