Fwd: Window manager interaction

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

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?