Re: Window manager interaction

[Wolfgang Lux]

Fred Kiefer wrote:

> Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:
> > > [...]
> > > 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...

IMHO Richard's proposal is much too complicated. I'd suggest something
radically simpler: If an application does not have an appicon the hide
command should just minimize all application windows. As far as I
understand this also was the solution used by Apple in OpenStep 4.2 for
Windows. See, e.g., http://support.apple.com/kb/TA45871 and search for
the term "hide" (with quotation marks) in that document. This can be
implemented trivially with the three-line patch below in  
NSApplication.m.

NSApp.patch
Description: Binary data

Wolfgang