Re: Proposing _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN_EXCLUSIVE

["Ryan C. Gordon" <icculus icculus org>]

> I don't see how this proposal helps, then: either games have to be
> updated to care about the new _NET_WM_STATE value, or they have to be
> updated to not set the user's resolution.

Yes, that's true, in the absence of a proper solution, apps have continued to behave badly. It's not a reason to avoid solving the problem.

If I had to guess, the two biggest problem sources are SDL-based games and Wine, though, so the surface area of places that need updates are very small. For existing apps in the field, most of them can have a replacement libSDL dropped in, and naturally Wine just needs to be updated once for all win32 apps on a system.

Anything else can still mess up the desktop, as long as it has access to XRandR, but I think people will shy away from or patch those apps, too. There are so many benefits to fixing this problem, and serious downsides to not, that I think there will be real momentum to clean up the handful of misbehaving programs, whatever specific solution we end up going with.

--ryan.