Re: new hint for EWMH

[Nathaniel Smith <njs pobox com>]

On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 10:55:20PM +0900, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> technically speaking - there already is a netwm property that lists all windows
> (_NET_CLIENT_LIST) so all you need to do is:
> 
> 1. get this
> 2. get geometry/attributes and window type property for each of these
> 3. if window type is appropriate - it works like your rect property.
> 
> yes - this is more round-trips, but it feels cleaner to me.

Not just more round-trips -- you need to monitor for changes, i.e.,
select for props on the root window (to catch _NET_CLIENT_LIST
updates) and then look at every new window to see what type it is, and
also monitor for ConfigureEvents on all input windows in case they
change size.

Alternatively, instead of selecting for events to stay up to date,
one could re-poll all those windows every time one wants to display a
menu.

Since this would be in the toolkits, with either approach we're
actually talking about every app doing all of these things all the
time.  That seems totally crazy to me.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
Details are all that matters; God dwells there, and you never get to
see Him if you don't struggle to get them right. -- Stephen Jay Gould