Re: Work in Progress: draft 1.9a

[Sparr <sparr0 gmail com>]

> On Sun, 04 Jul 1999, Marko Macek wrote:
> > Matthias Ettrich wrote:
> > >
> > > > > It looks like we need at least three lists then :
> > > > >
> > > > >     _NET_CLIENT_LIST creation/mapping order
> > > > >     _NET_CLIENT_LIST_FOCUS focus order, for external alt-tab implementation
> > > > >     _NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING stacking order (for tools like a pager).
> > > > >
> > > > > While STACKING looks important to me, FOCUS isn't. An external alt-tab
> > > > > implementation can monitor both _NET_CLIENT_LIST and _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW to keep
> > > > > track of the focus chain.
> > > >
> > > > To implement Alt+Tab you need Z-ORDER. If we are going to do this we
> > >
> > > For CDE-style Alt+Tab you need the stacking order, yes. For the IMO more useful
> > > KDE(and MS-Windows)-like Alt+Tab you need the focus chain.
> >
> > Since when does Windows use focus chain? AFAIK it has used Zorder since
> > forever.
> > (I admit you would need focus chain if activating the window doesn't
> > raise it).
>
> On Windows, z-order and focus chain is the same. KDE does focus chain.
>
> Sorry for the confusion.
>
> Matthias

First, an apology for resurrecting a 20 year old thread. I don't actually expect to make a difference here, but I am hopeful to collect any historic insights tempered by later information and experience. It seems to me that when _NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING was implemented and _NET_CLIENT_LIST_FOCUS was omitted from the standard, there was at least some expectation that the two lists would be the same in some, perhaps most, use cases. Today this expectation is broken by tiling window managers that allow some floating windows, or floating window managers that allow windows to be pinned to the background. Have there been any proposals considered since then that might be useful in this scenario? Google suggests no one ever mentioned _NET_CLIENT_LIST_FOCUS again after this thread.

Clarence "Sparr" Risher