Re: override_redirect of X Window System

[Jan D.]

> On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 19:17, Jan D. wrote:
> > And that is what I said.
>
> I'm confused then. Why is it relevant? I don't think the functionality
> in that bug lets apps place themselves above the panel, I think it's
> there so users can move them  there.

Because if you can move the title bar above y=0, you basically have
fullscreen.  But Metacity don't let you do that.  Every other WM allows
that.

> > The good things about standards is that there are so many to choose
> > from :-)
>
> Not here :) There is only one protocol for fullscreening apps that I'm
> aware of.

Yes, but it is not a "standard" in  the sence, "included in the X
specification".  Freedesktop is separate from X, which is defined by
the X organisation.  So you can be complient to X without doing EWMH.

> > Seriously, there are WMs that where created before EWMH existed.  One
> > is CDE, which is used a lot.  Others in use still, are fvwm 1.x, 
> > olvwm,
> > mwm and KDE 1.x.
>
> Sure, but so what? There are people who still use Netscape 1, does that
> mean we shouldn't use anything not available in that version on the 
> web?

In the case of Emacs, yes.  Emacs has the unique property of being
the same in many platforms.  It would be a bad thing (IMHO) if full
Emacs functionallity relied on running Gnome or KDE.  Emacs is the same
on all X implementations.  It would be a bad thing if we changed that.

> > If we add a solution to Emacs that says "call this function to get
> > fullscreen" and then it does not work on peoples WMs, I think we are
> > going to see bug reports.
>
> If it's done using override-redirect it will generate more. Believe me,
> this is the technique we use currently in Wine, and it breaks pretty
> much everything (z-ordering, panels etc). There's a reason that 
> protocol
> was developed, and it's because it's badly needed.

I don't disagreee on the protocol, I think it is a good thing.  But
how it should be incorporated into Emacs is another thing.  If you read 
my
post you will see I talk against unsing override-rederict.
I rather put a general mechanism that works on every platform
at the C level and then create something like EWMH.el at the lisp
level.  After all, platform specific lisp packages is not uncommon, but
the C level should (again IMHO) be generic.

> > And if there is one response I don't like
> > w.r.t. things that doesn't work, it is "please change your
> > unrelated app/version/OS... to something else".
>
> Hacks for ancient/buggy WMs don't belong in emacs. If somebody insists
> on using software that doesn't keep up with the times, then they should
> be prepared to sacrifice some features.

I have no statistics, but I think there are more users running CDE
(without EWMH) than Gnome (or any other EWMH complient WM) today.

Hacks for old stuff do exist in Emacs.  WMs that don't implement EWMH 
is not "ancient/buggy", the spec has only existed for a year or so.  If 
it
where five years it would be a different matter.

> > Exposing XSendEvent can be potentially useful for more things than
> > fullscreen.  For example, expand vertically and/or horizontally that
> > are also in EWMH.
>
> That's true, but XSendEvent as an API is rather cumbersome, not to
> mention large. I'm not sure it makes sense to try and expose so much of
> Xlib in elisp.

It is not much different from the selection stuff that is exposed to 
elisp
today.

        Jan D.