Re: proposed addition to EWMH: _NET_WM_NORMAL_GEOMETRY

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster rasterman com>]

On Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:00:14 -0700 "Mark Tiefenbruck" <mark fluxbox org>
babbled:

> > then again - one would argue... how often do users change wm's? really? is
> > this worth standardising? i know that it is possible for me to support this
> > - but
> 
> Well, I'm guessing that just about every single one of our users
> (yours and mine and Dana's too) switched his WM at some point. It's in
> the best interests of progress for users to be able to try out new WMs
> seamlessly. Who knows what will be blamed on you?

switched at some POINT. my point is - how many times do they switch - runtime -
and expect everything to "just come up as before". personally i'm willing to
accept a user even has to shut down all apps and their login session to change
wm's - even though they don't have to, i believe people switching wm's on the
fly is a RARE occurrence. most users try a wm for a bit - then stick to switch
a few weeks or months or years later. some of them go through a "try every wm
around for a few hours" phases - but these are rare and generally will live
with the "iffiness" of all their apps not quite being in the right state after
a switch.

so the point is - how many times a DAY or HOUR do you expect the typical user
to switch WM's? (not restart)? not even typical - the vast majority of users?

i'd put it at maybe 1 WM change per year. as an average. possibly less.

> > its usefulness is dubious as i have other things i also need to store
> > between restarts too and will still need private properties for this.
> 
> I agree with this. We still need our own layer and window decoration
> properties, but these haven't been standardized very well (and
> probably can't be). If we're all going to be storing this info anyway,
> I think we should be making a point to interoperate.

sure - as i said  i don't see a problem with this - but the arguments for it
are not very strong.

> My situation is that I'm going to have to implement this as a new
> property either way. I would prefer that it be a standard one so that
> I don't have to change it later and so that it's compatible with other
> window managers.

you will need buy-in from a reasonable number of other wm authors to bother
making it a standard. my suggestion - make it a private property (just rename
it) and otherwise implement as you would - when you have done that - debugged
it, added the other 5 or 2 properties you really need for a restart / wm change
to work THEN propose that - what you have, as a standard just with a rename to
NETWM properties. this lets you refine your stuff without having to do "design
by committee/mediocrity" :) a lot faster and more convenient - especially as in
this case i don't think we see users needing to clamouring for such
interoperability :)

-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster rasterman com
裸好多
Tokyo, Japan (東京 日本)