Re: [EWMH] _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_AUXILIARY

["Havoc Pennington" <hp redhat com>]

Hi,

On 10/3/07, Denis Washington <dwashington gmx net> wrote:
> Yes, override-redirect windows are also faded in and out

Right, what I'm asking is whether we have any precedent for *hints* on
these windows.

It's kind of a weird thing, because override redirect has always been
the "don't mess with my window at all" escape hatch. Metacity for
example won't even create an inside-WM representation for these
windows.

For compositing managers, I guess if it didn't mess with your window
at all then the window wouldn't be drawn on the screen. But I'm
wondering to what extent the escape hatch still exists. Do we have in
the EMWH these days something like "override redirect causes the WM to
ignore a window for purposes of resizing, stacking, and window
navigation; however, override redirect has no effect on compositing
the window"?

Anyway - regarding the hint proposal, one suggestion is to come up
with a more descriptive name than AUXILIARY, such as VISUAL_EFFECT.
Then in defining what the WM should do with this window, spell out
that the CM should render the window "as is" - which is almost saying
"do the equivalent of override redirect for compositing, since
override redirect itself does not apply to compositing" - that is,
composite this window literally without overriding anything. I don't
know. Anyway, it needs to be precisely specified what you want the CM
to do and not do.

I'm not sure whether out-of-CM effects like this really work... it
seems possible to me that fancy effects spanning multiple X clients
essentially have to be in the CM.
Depends on whether you can adequately specify what an arbitrary CM
should do with the window here.

I'm sure someone who hacks on CMs will be able to address your
proposal better than I can ;-)

Havoc