Re: [Notion-general] floating pop-up

[Arnout E. <no...@bz...>]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 01:00:34AM +0200, Wojtek Aniszewski wrote:
> Well, Juri's advice helped in that I know I have some possibility of
> forcing windows to float. So for example, I have added a defwinprop
> for gimp, and all gimpish windows float.

Great. After the initial release, I think we should spend some time creating
a good set of default winprops.

> Now, this is a tricky matter, so I will try and give you the best
> example I can, and simple too. So let's say you open eog (eye of
> gnome) in a tiled ("default" type) workspace. It is sucked into a tile
> (stretched) and sits there. That's ok, I expect this. 

OK

> But then, I click "File>Open" and the "Open file" dialog is stretched too. 
> THIS is the "pop-up" I've been talking about (to be clear - I would like this
> window to float and NOT GET RESIZED (it has a convinient default
> size)). Maybe I should have called it "dialogs". 

I agree. This is a dialog, and dialogs should float.

> I say more: over two years of using ion/notion - this is what sucks
> the most. 
> Want a spectacular example? - no problem. Try open/save
> dialogs in Audacity. If ever opened on a tiling workspace, audacity's
> open/save dialogs are stretched in good'old way. But when later opened
> on a floating workspace, they tend to not only remember they were
> stretched, but ...stretch further (approximately, to size 5000x300 or
> something). I daresay it may piss the hell out of anyone:)

I agree, though this sounds at least partly as a bug in Audacity too :).

> How would I like notion to know what is a dialog? Well, I'm a
> scientist and I mostly program CFD in Fortran, so don't expect
> interface-wisdom from me:) But the most obvious guess would be:
> 1. eog opens,gets its window class and instance
> 2. if another window of the same class opens, it should float.
> Unfortunately, as I can check by clicking rmb, the 'open' dialog has
> the same class, instance, only different XID. This cold be used
> somehow, I guess. I know it's not a good plan, because it modifies
> behavior for all subsequently opened eog windows, not only dialogs.
> But well...

Right. Luckily, there are 2 standardized ways in which dialogs can be 
identified.

Dialogs should set the standard ICCCM WM_TRANSIENT_FOR property (see also
http://tronche.com/gui/x/icccm/sec-4.html#WM_TRANSIENT_FOR ). I think Notion
already treats windows with WM_TRANSIENT_FOR better (though I'm not sure about
'good').

Unfortunately, Eog does not appear to set the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR property on the
'Open Image' dialog. Arguably that's a bug in Eog or even Gnome.

There is, however, a second way to identify dialogs: the EWMH/NETWM extensions
to the specification add a _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE property that can be set to
_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DIALOG. Notion currently only does something special with
windows of type _NET_WM_WINDOW_DOCK (when mod_dock is loaded).

We should probably treat windows of type _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DIALOG the same 
as windows with WM_TRANSIENT_FOR set. Would you like to submit a feature 
request for that? Mention Eog and Audacity so we can verify that this indeed
has the desired result.

> sorry for writing such a long post! (I had to throw it out:))

No problem at all!


Kind regards,

Arnout

> 2011/10/20 Arnout Engelen <arn...@bz...>:
> > Hello Wojtek,
> >
> > Did Juri's reply answer your questions? I'd be curious to know how you'd
> > want notion to decide which application to float and which to open in a
> > frame.
> >
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Arnout
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 03:26:31PM +0200, Wojtek Aniszewski wrote:
> >> Hi.
> >> Sorry if this has been mentioned before. So, point is: is there a way
> >> to make new (popping up) window float by default?
> >> I mean even on a tiled workspace. Such as, for example, I'm opening
> >> four consoles on a tiled workspace, run $mplayer foo.avi in one of
> >> them , and I like the new mplayer window to float, not to be trapped
> >> in the tiling.
> >> (I think that awesome has something like this by default.)
> >> I'm not making a feature request out of it, just ask if this can be
> >> done, e.g. by tweaking cfg_ioncore.