Re: Is there an official way for an application window to request to not show up in a Window Manager's alt-tab list?

[Dana Jansens <danakj orodu net>]

Hi,

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 4:45 PM, vr movingparts net <vr movingparts net> wrote:

Hey Mark, thanks for the reply.

The application in question has a main UI window and secondary windows. In certain cases, all windows will be full screened such that each window will be on a separate host monitor. Ideally, when this happens, only the main UI window would show up in the Window Manager's alt-tab list.

I was thinking that maybe _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_UTILITY would be appropriate here, but in earlier testing, it looked like at least Metacity ignored the position that I placed the secondary window at and insisted on fullscreening it on top of the main UI app fullscreen window, which won't work. I'm assuming from that testing that _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_UTILITY is probably not intended for the kind of thing I need to do.

Utility also sounds right to me, if its a secondary window which is attached to the main window and does not take focus in the standard way (alt-tab etc).  This sounds like an arbitrary restriction of Metacity.  Do most window managers let this use case work properly?  Can you a) ask the Metacity team to fix it, citing the majority of window managers as a community standard, or if that doesn't work b) tell your users to not use Metacity for this feature?

I'm not sure how a new window type would differ from Utility for this.

- Dana 

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Mark Tiefenbruck <mark fluxbox org> wrote:

Hi, Jason.

That's something that is probably "none of the client's business"
(which, to be fair, I would levy against skip_pager and skip_taskbar
as well). I personally would prefer a window to specify some category
of window type that it falls into (such as a dock or taskbar or menu),
and let the window manager decide whether or not it should be listed
for the user. If your window is something that should never receive
the focus, there are already provisions for that. What sort of
application do you have in mind?

 Mark

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 12:38 PM, vr movingparts net <vr movingparts net> wrote:
> re, all.
> In looking at the EWMH spec, I see _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_TASKBAR
> and _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_PAGER hints, but I do not see anything explicitly
> allowing an application to request itself to not be listed in the Window
> Manager's alt-tab window list.
> In some early testing, if I set these two _SKIP_ hints on my secondary
> application windows, Metacity, Compiz, and XFWM4 do not show my windows on
> their alt-tab lists, but KWin does.
> It seems that there's a gap in the spec for this functionality and I'm just
> wondering if it's this way because of previous discussions, or if this is
> something that should be remedied in the spec.
> Thanks! =:)
>
> --
>  -[ Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper    //  http://movingparts.net ]-
>  -[ KDE PIM Developer         //  http://www.kde.org  ]-
>  -[ bash fun -> :(){ :|:&};:  //  Numbers 6:22-26 ]-
>

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--

 -[ Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper    //  http://movingparts.net ]-
 -[ KDE PIM Developer         //  http://www.kde.org  ]-
 -[ bash fun -> :(){ :|:&};:  //  Numbers 6:22-26 ]-

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