Re: [EWMH] _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_AUXILIARY

[Lubos Lunak <l lunak suse cz>]

On Sunday 14 of October 2007, Mark Tiefenbruck wrote:
> I agree with you entirely, though some points have been made (or
> almost made, at least) that should not be ignored. The window manager
> should not be concerned with override-redirect windows at all, and
> these composite manager features really have no business in the
> wm-spec. Composite managers should have their own spec.

 Well, too late, they're already in. And even though they could be moved to a 
separate spec, I don't find that to be a good idea, given the big overlap. 
Say that one it's decided that it would be better if one of the window types 
would be better if it was managed by the WM - what then? Will parts of the 
two specs be shuffled around, or will they be duplicated? Is that really 
better than just ignoring the window types that don't apply to you, just like 
you ignore other parts of the spec that don't apply to you?

> For that matter, why are window managers being made with composite
> managers built in, anyway? The world would be a much better place if
> people could choose composite effects independently from the window
> manager

 Yes, it would. It would be also a better place if there were no wars and so 
on. Tough luck on both, I'm afraid :(.

> (you wouldn't believe how often I get asked "can I use fluxbox 
> in beryl/compiz?"). With that goal in mind, what information is the
> composite manager relying on that it can't get from EWMH?

 Synchronization. And simplicity, I suppose. And probably something more.

 Look at it like this: XCompmgr is AFAIK practically dead. KDE3's Kompmgr is 
not being developed anymore. Xfce's compositor is built-in. Metacity's 
compositor is (was?) built-in. KDE4's compositor is built-in (and, hell, I 
really didn't want to become a compositor developer). Glcompmgr is a toy 
(although I owe the author a beer or something). AFAIK Compiz originally 
started as a separate compositor called Glxcompmgr, then eventually David 
Reveman started adding WM features to it. Am I missing some other compositor 
worth mentioning?

> Making this information available should be our primary focus, IMO.

 Feel free to. Maybe all those people who have eventually settled on making 
the compositors built-in were wrong. But I personally think you can't get 
much further than Xcompmgr with a separate compositor, sorry. If somebody 
from Compiz is reading this, maybe they can say more.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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