Re: Pager/switcher per workspace or per screen

["Mark Tiefenbruck" <mark fluxbox org>]

> > Pardon my bluntness, but this seems like utter nonsense. What does
> > window switching have to do with _NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS?
>
> That's what I'm asking, more or less. There isn't a hint which was
> particularly close to what I was talking about; perhaps we need a
> whole new hint for this instead.

I think that would be better.

> > Why is the
> > pager controlling or even interested in the behavior of alt-tab?
>
> The pager is not necessarily controlling the behaviour of alt-tab. It
> might be worthwhile for the pager and the WM to communicate about
> whether windows from all workspaces should be shown or just the
> current workspace, and in fact we have had a nontrivial number of
> people requesting this behaviour. There's no sane place to do this
> other than using EWMH-style hints.

I've seen requests for alt-tab to allow switching between all managed
windows on the screen. I still don't see what this has to do with the
pager. Certainly the pager is showing all workspaces, anyway, or else
it's not much of a pager. Why would the window manager and pager need
to communicate at all regarding alt-tab? I don't see any possible
benefit.

> > Even
> > supposing that makes sense, if a pager wants alt-tab to behave in a
> > cross-wm way, then it should implement alt-tab itself.
>
> No, because alt-tab should be implemented by the window manager.
> Allowing a pager to become a window manager is a recipe for pain.

I don't see why it must be implemented by the window manager. For
instance, I see http://code.google.com/p/superswitcher/ as a perfectly
reasonable application. These sorts of programs are exactly what EWMH
is for, in my opinion.

  Mark