Re: Proposing _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN_EXCLUSIVE

[Michael Evans <mjevans1983 gmail com>]

I found out about this thread via "A Proposal To Fix The Full-Screen
Linux Window Mess" (
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIxNDg )

The true mess is that individual applications are going "fullscreen"
without permission from end users; this must be stoppable; performance
be damned, if I want something misbehaving windowed let me have it
that way.



As a casual gamer and long time Linux user I would like to voice some
concerns that are potentially representative of end user desires.

I personally, and I suspect many others, absolutely -detest- games
that startup in full-screen mode; especially when they trounce upon a
reasonably configured multi-head setup.  They are not even happy
occupying a single monitor and letting me use my other screen for
other tasks (at the same time!).

Also, exclusively locking input is completely ridiculous; but if you
must do something like that I suggest you look at what virt-manager
does (Left ctrl+alt is a combination that escapes out of input
binding).



Having enumerated my two biggest gripes I'll now be constructive in
proposing solutions.

The window manager is very much what should be controlling the
placement and ordering of windows.  Videogames share similarity with
video playback in that rendering output within a specified region,
possibly with occlusions from other windows, is a requirement.  It is
my strong opinion (joining this mailing list -only- to voice it) that
-ALL- requests for rendering options be just that; requests that the
end user is free to over-ride and ignore.

The WM should have any 'maximize' button mapped to 'sane defaults' for
doing (most of) what the advising application wants, while trying to
make the window as large as possible (even occupying full screen or
multi-screen if the game is aware of such capability).
The WM should have it's 'unmaximize' button mapped to stripping all
special features from an application and making it behave like other
windows.  This includes obeying focus under mouse behaviors.

It should be possible, per window and possibly as default per
application profiles, to have several styles of over-ride.

* Force output re-scaling (possibly with aspect ratio lock, possibly
with distortion; see various video players for Linux)
* Force disable input capture
* Force reporting constant focus (do not allow the application to be
aware of loss of focus)
* Snap returning controls to previous position values when re-acquiring focus
** (sub feature) delay re-focus for N mS on focus return (E.G. When
returning to a flight sim -hold- the focus at the previously saved
input values (capture via Ctrl+Alt escape?) for X ms to allow end user
to adjust to jumped mouse location or re-press keyboard keys of
interest.)

WM's may want to decorate the windowed application with buttons to
control these settings.

There should also be global options as above, as well as ways of
emulating 'full screen' experiences within a windowed mode (and
forcing that to be the default).