Re: Fwd: Window manager interaction

[Fred Kiefer]

Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:
> 
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Richard Frith-Macdonald <address@hidden>
>> Date: 16 October 2009 07:29:59 GMT+01:00
>> To: Philippe Roussel <address@hidden>
>> Cc: address@hidden
>> Subject: Re: Window manager interaction
>>
>>
>> On 15 Oct 2009, at 21:34, Philippe Roussel wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> When using GNUstep applications under a Gnome desktop and it's
>>> Metacity window manager, I often 'lose' those applications : if I
>>> minimize a windows, it appears in the task bar as expected but if I
>>> hide the application there's nothing left in the task bar. The only
>>> solution seems to launch the application again to get it back.
>>>
>>> I'm running with GSAppOwnsMiniwindow set to NO and GSSuppressAppIcon
>>> set to YES as I don't want AppIcons to appear on the desktop.
>>>
>>> Is it the intended behavior ? Did I miss something ?
>>
>>
>> The documentation says:
>>
>> GSSuppressAppIcon
>> A boolean value, NO by default. Specifies wether the application icon
>> window should not be displayed. Set to YES for background server
>> applications.
>>
>> I think the expectation is that, if you have set GSSuppressAppIcon to
>> YES, it's because your app is not intended to appear on-screen (I
>> think that's what 'background server' means), or that your window
>> manager will be handling activation of the app some other way.
>>
>>
>> The other default (GSAppOwnsMiniwindow) is the one which is supposed
>> to control whether miniwindows are controlled by the application or by
>> the window manager, and if that's set to 'NO' then (as I understand
>> it) the miniwindows should not appear on the desktop.  I'm not sure
>> how well this works though.
> 
> I haven't looked at the code for ages, but I suspect that the
> application icon window is handled as a special case and
> GSAppOwnsMiniwindow does not effect it (shouldn't that be
> GSAppOwnsMiniWindow rather than GSAppOwnsMiniwindow anyway?).
> 
> I think the current code probably does the wrong thing with the app icon
> window... if it's suppressed then the app just doesn't create it, but it
> might make more sense for it to be created off-screen ... so that we
> still have the icon window but it's unseen.
> 
> Then, we would always be able to minimise the icon window when we hide
> the app.  If we did that then presumably the window manager would
> display a reference to the minimised icon window in whatever manner it
> normally displays minimised windows, and the window manager's mechanism
> for unminimising it would be able to unhide the application (we could
> have the gui watch for the icon window being unminimised and
> automatically unhide the app at that point).
> 
> Would this be a workable way of curing this particular window manager
> interaction issue?

First off, we already have a related bug report for this problem, #18199
and perhaps it would be best to add any further comments there, to make
it easier to reference things later on.

Your idea sounds feasible to me, we will of course need to add a bit
more logic to it, for example only to minimize the hidden app icon
window when there is no other window. And putting it off screen may not
be enough for some window managers to not display it in there program
bar or what ever they use. Also we need to make sure that the app icon
window wont get show after activating its mini window. And of course
this will have to work with all window managers out there...