Re: Regressions in GNOME 2 vs 1.x

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Gregory Merchan <merchan baton phys lsu edu> writes:
> On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 06:40:49PM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> <snip>
> >
> > We've defined the group leader hint to mean "an application" -
> > i.e. all windows with the same group leader are in the same
> > application.
> 
> But how have you defined an application?
>

In the same sense as MacOS defines it. "Gnumeric" for example is an
application.
 
> > libwnck is broken right now and uses the client leader instead for
> > WnckApplication, though in practice the two leaders always define the
> > same thing, this was just a not-paying-attention bug on my part.

I was wrong here; libwnck just has bogus comments claiming that it
uses the client leader, while really using the group leader.

> They are not always the same, nor should they be so. If (say) Abiword
> is an application and I'm running it twice on the same display, then
> I have two clients, but I would probably want only one group. (Or is a
> client something other than an X client?)

A client is a session client, really.

In practice both group and client leader will be set by the toolkit
and will identify a single process, though there should be API for
sufficiently enthusiastic app authors to do better than this.
 
> I assume you mean the window list (or whatever it's being called); I don't
> see how the pager would use groups. (er, or is it being called the pager?)
> If it's what I think it is, then that's good because the fix should be easy.
> :-)

Yes, the window list.

> Sorry if this is too abstract, theoretical or academic for this
> list. I don't know what other list would be appropriate for talking
> about such things.  Perhaps we need a new list for talking about
> making use of the existing technology and planning implementation
> and integration? It seems a waste to run on X and not make use of
> what it makes possible.

No, this is on topic for desktop-devel-list.

AFAIK we do use the group leader, however. It's what WnckApplication
is based on. On wm-spec-list Jim Gettys confirmed that a window group
was supposed to be "an application" and we decided to clarify that
interpretation in the spec, I think. I don't know if I ever got around
to actually patching the spec.

Havoc