Re: Gnustep Window Manager

[Ivan Vučica]

Hello James,

I don't see anything in mainstream window managers that has a particular 
animosity towards OS X style. I'm saying window managers -- because mostly it's 
desktop environments' panels that are conflicting in case they are placed on 
top.

Easiest solution is moving panel to another side of the screen, or not using 
panels. Or using a nicely behaving desktop environment.

Next solution would be integrating the menu system with Ubuntu Unity's menu 
system, which means integrating with their global menu. This is good unless an 
app places an NSView inside a menu item. I never got a basic libdbusmenu-glib 
based app written in C to work, and there was some discussion about using 
DbusKit. I remember a comment about DbusKit not implementing dbus's "objects". 
Either way, I'm too unfamiliar with dbus, with DbusKit, and with gnustep-gui's 
menu implementation to be able to significantly help here.

What I don't think needs extra integration with a global menu is -- the window 
manager.

That doesn't mean I think there is no need for a GNUstep-specific window 
manager, such as the one written for Etoile. Document-oriented architecture in 
Cocoa and GNUstep is a wonderful thing, more so when the window manager can 
actually allow you to drag the document icon right from the window title; or 
when the window manager can allow you to go to document's parent folder; stuff 
like that. (NB: OS X actually seems to treat windows as "undecorated", and the 
window title is part of window's hierarchy accessible from application code. So 
the menus I'm talking about are part of the application, not the window 
manager. Under X11, however, it'd make sense if window managers handled this.)

I'm also curious, what feature do you think existing window managers are 
missing to better integrate with a global menu? Or are you suggesting producing 
an entire desktop environment?

On 18. 3. 2013., at 22:45, James Carthew <jcarthew@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi guys, I'm interested in using GNUstep as a desktop environment and I'd 
> like to make the system a bit more integrated with the window manager etc. 
> I've noticed that there are three ways to use the GUI environment as Windows 
> style, Mac OSX style and as the older NEXT stye, but the Window managers 
> available only seem to cater for the Windows or NEXT styles of window 
> management. I'd like to write a newer window manager that handles 
> configuration using the Defaults system and which would support better 
> integration/awareness of the horizontal menu bar when it's enabled. Would 
> anyone else be interested in this project?
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--
Ivan Vučica
ivan@vucica.net - http://ivan.vucica.net/