RE: New Fullscreen Window Method

[Giles Atkinson <Giles Atkinson eu citrix com>]

Lubos,

I think you missed my point.  It is not about whether or not a WM should act on a particular value for _NET_WM_STATE: that is a window management policy decision and always rests with the WM.  The point is that if it is going to act on a value when expressed by client message, then it should (I propose MUST) act on it when expressed by setting the property as a hint before the map request that takes the window out of the Withdrawn state.

The SHOULD in that paragraph is ambiguous and exact meaning of "honor" is undefined in this context, but I think it makes more sense to interpret "honor" here as "read and interpret" than "read and execute exactly".

> I'm pretty sure KWin immediatelly makes windows fullscreenif they request 
it during mapping, and if not, then it's a bug.

It was certainly a bug (except that the spec says it's not) when I coded for this several years ago.  I have not done detailed tests on later versions.

Giles

-----Original Message-----
From: wm-spec-list-bounces gnome org [mailto:wm-spec-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Lubos Lunak
Sent: 06 February 2012 11:29
To: wm-spec-list gnome org
Subject: Re: New Fullscreen Window Method

On Friday 03 of February 2012, Giles Atkinson wrote:
> There are two problems that I see with the existing full-screen mechanisms:
>
> 1) There is no way to ensure that a window initially appears in full-screen
> state, causing flicker on initial mappings and complexity in the
> application.
>
> This problem exists for all the window states, and the "fullscreen
> monitors" protocol. For the states the spec says: "The Window Manager
> SHOULD honor _NET_WM_STATE whenever a withdrawn window requests to be
> mapped. A Client wishing to change the state of a window MUST send a
> _NET_WM_STATE client message to the root window ...".  That SHOULD ought to
> be a MUST.

 No, it ought not. If a WM does not implement e.g. shading, then it's free to 
ignore it, because it can't do anything else anyway. Even if it does 
implement it and decides it is not suitable for whatever reason, it still 
should be free to do what is sensible and not whatever a random app thinks is 
the best idea in its limited view of the world. If apps could decide what 
goes on on the desktop, there'd be no point in having a window manager in the 
first place.

> When I last looked at this it seemed to be widely ignored, and 
> as WMs quite reasonable tend to ignore client messages for withdrawn
> windows, it seems necessary to wait for the window to be mapped before
> requesting full-screen and monitor spanning.

 I'm pretty sure KWin immediatelly makes windows fullscreened if they request 
it during mapping, and if not, then it's a bug. It's a bug as well if any 
other WM does not do that (or, alternatively, it's a deliberate choice, 
either way, there's no point having in a spec trying to work it around).

-- 
 Lubos Lunak
 l lunak suse cz
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