KDE = Joy [LWN.net]

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 14, 2005 6:00 UTC (Wed) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385)
In reply to: KDE = Joy by job
Parent article: GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition

Historically I've reconfigured all the window managers I've used for more than a few hours such that they don't understand the "disallow resize" window hint to begin with. Sometimes the "reconfiguration" is done by editing the config files...you know the ones...every window manager has them...they typically come in a big tarball, and you edit the ones ending in ".c", then type "make" or something similar to update the WM config. ;_)

Hints that disable window controls seem kind of silly to me. Putting on my naive-user hat for a moment, I expect that if you can resize one window, you can resize any and all windows. Actually, before I actually used a Macintosh for the first time many years ago, I had read about user interfaces and I assumed that you'd be able to pretty much move, edit, and resize anything you like in any application while it was running. Needless to say, I've been disappointed with everything that has come since.

IMHO, applications that can't cope with window resize at all (e.g. those that behave in some anti-social or useless way when the WM blithely ignores the application and reconfigures its window anyway) should have some kind of default panning or scaling behavior imposed on them, preferably transparently so that the clueless application has no idea this is happening. The only reasonable excuse for disabling WM controls would be in an airport-kiosk type of situation--in which case it would make more sense to disable the controls globally in the window manager, so having the application WM hints makes no sense in that situation either.

(Log in to post comments)

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 14, 2005 7:27 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Every WM respects at least one hint to disable controls: the transience property. As long as you have to support that, why not make the control more configurable?

Hints

Posted Dec 14, 2005 14:19 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

That hint doesn't really mean to do that, it just means the window is associated with another application window and that it is likely to be short-lived. In fact, some window managers don't disable controls on transients. Many do, but there is no requirement that they work that way.

Hints

Posted Dec 14, 2005 20:16 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

The vast majority that provide any decorations at all disable them on transients: in fact, given the common use of transients for things like pop-up help bubbles, any wm that didn't disable decorations on them would be unbearable to use.

Hints

Posted Dec 14, 2005 23:45 UTC (Wed) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]

Pop-up help bubbles (and menus and drag+drop handles and other weird window cases) usually use override_redirect, not wm_transient.

I don't see a reason why transients (even real transients like dialog boxes) should not be organized or decorated differently--in fact, I think that's usually a good idea. The thing I insist on is that I retain the ability to arbitrarily move, size, raise and lower them (including the often-denied privilege of restacking a dialog window behind its parent, and independently minimizing parents and transients), regardless of decoration or initial position.

I do see many cases where the transient windows *themselves* are often a bad idea, but that's application misdesign that a window manager can't fix.

I've used truly hintless window managers (ones that don't move the keyboard focus from parent to transient and place the transient randomly, so I have to aim at the appropriate window with the mouse cursor for every single transient) and hintful window managers (ones that respect all of the hints to the letter and even impose restrictions of their own). If these were the only choices (thankfully they're not) then I'd pick the hintless WM, because it's at least possible to sensibly arrange windows with the hintless WM, even if I have to do a lot of extra work manually.