Re: Compositing managers spec

[Nathaniel Smith <njs pobox com>]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 03:22:06PM +0100, Dennis Kasprzyk wrote:
> Composite managers will always want to have a finer differentiation of the
> window type, than the current _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE types provide. I think
> that something like _NET_CM_WINDOW_SUBTYPE could fullfill such task. If we
> find a type description that makes also sense from the window manager point
> of view, then we can define it as _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE window type.

_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE already has support for describing a single window
with multiple different degrees of specificity -- you can list as many
window type atoms as you like, in order from most specific to least
specific.  Trying to work out ahead of time which sorts of windows a
window manager "should" need to differentiate as opposed to those that
a compositing manager "should" need to differentiate seems like a
fool's errand to me.  The only time it would be obvious is when the
hint was a purely visually-oriented direction to the CM, and then we'd
just be reinventing Motif-style hints, which sucked the first time.

(As a more minor engineering issue, you also introduce the possibility
that the two properties could contradict each other, and have
different environments resolve the conflict in different ways,
creating incompatibility.  _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE does not have this
problem.)

-- Nathaniel

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