Re: Window Manager compliance

[jsk29 cornell edu]

On Thu, 20 May 1999, Martijn van Beers wrote:

> On Thu, May 20, 1999 at 07:43:41AM -0700, Michael Rogers wrote:
> 
> > 2) A new user would (reasonably) expect the background to be configured in 
> > the same place that other desktop settings are configured.
> 
> Which is entirely possible. You can start your WM's configuration
> program from the control-center.
> 

I would suggest, rather than starting the WMs config program from
the Gnome control center, that the gnome compliant WMs export a set of
configurable options _to_ the Gnome control center.

Currently we have, for instance, E-conf and the gnome-cc.  I'd like to
see E use gnome-cc as its configuration interface, rather than E-conf.
E (or what ever WM) could expose a set of interfaces to allow gnome-cc
to change its settings.  If there are some redundant interfaces, such as
an e:SetBacground, an xv:SetBackground, and a gnome:SetBackground, have the
window manager decide if it wants to override Gnome.  This way, every
place that Gnome allows the background to be set (from the cc, or from a
web browser, say)  the correct function to change it is called.

I'm personally not up on the whole corba scene, so I don't know whether it
would be the right way to attack something like this.  Maybe some extra
wm-hints are enough.

In fact, I'd be amused to see some of the hefty, running-the-whole-session
programs exporting their configuration interfaces this way.  Your file
manager, panel, user sound daemon, could all be tweaked from the main 
control panel.

Is this worth playing with?

John