Re: [Gaim-devel] window management and focus policy

[Etan R. <de...@ed...>]

On Thu, 12 May 2005, Michael R Head wrote:

> Still, I think there is merit in supporting specs supported by both
> GNOME and KDE. These are the default environments most new (and old!)
> linux users will be presented with. There are an awful lot of
> development resources being poured into both of these projects, and they
> get a lot of eyes and mouse clicks.

These projects do have a tremendous amount of development resource
poured into them, and as such as trivial a patch as making Urgent bold
the taskbar in the same way that DEMANDS_ATTENTION does would seem to be
something that should have gotten done already. The fact that this is
not the case is my main concern here.

> Put another way, should I really have to switch to fvwm2 for nicely
> integrated notification to work? Put yet another way, why spend a lot of
> time coding around the admitted deficit in the current version of
> metacity's window managment, when they support a way of notifying the
> user?

We aren't coding around anything, and in fact if we chose to support
DEMANDS_ATTENTION just so that metacity/libwnck would start working we
would in fact have started coding around the metacity/libwnck deficit.

> Compliance of the entire fd.o wm-spec is tracked at the bottom of this
> page:
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fwm_2dspec
>
> I checked the source file linked for fvwm. It currently does not support
> "demands attention".
>
> But that's really besides the point. Does it have to be an xor
> situation? Can't both be supported side-by-side?

A wm most certainly can (and in fact should) support both, that's the
heart of the issue here, metacity/libwnck *is not* supporting both.

I have no problems making gaim support both, I have problems doing so
before the main offenders calling for us to support both fail to do so
themselves. (Especially when they are projects significantly larger than
the one I'm working on, with many times the resources available to
them.)

> I wasn't intending to waste everyone's time with the old DE-centric vs.
> WM-centric X debate, so let me rephrase my point:
>
>         Is it easier to add code that sets
>         _NET_WM_STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION or to try and get GNOME and KDE
>         to properly support the Urgent hint?

This isn't about ease of solution it's about getting everyone to do the
right thing. If I was convinced that metacity/libwnck was going to solve
their end of the problem in the immediate future I would almost
certainly begin 'fixing' gaim for our side of the issue.

	-Etan