Re: Coming proposal (was: Window Manager compliance)

["Michael Rogers" <bastard_machine hotmail com>]

Thanks for putting forward some new ideas, I think the question of WM 
integration is crucial to Gnome's development.

>	Here's some more brainstorming for the Gnome WM Compliance spec:
>
>1) The WM should detect if Gnome is installed and running.  If Gnome *is*
>running, it should default to having all its Gnome-duplicating features
>turned off.  By "Gnome-duplicating features", I'm referring to the list in
>my previous email.

This makes sense. Do you know how we can detect when Gnome is running? I 
suppose Gnome could set a property on the root window which compliant WMs 
would look for.

>2) The WM should provide some program or method to execute when the "Run
>Configuration Tool for [Window Manager]" button is pressed within the
>Gnome Control Panel, even if it's "xterm -e pico ~/.steprc".  This will
>allow the user to enable all of the features which the Window Manager has
>defaulted to "OFF" when it first detected Gnome.
>
>	For a very simple WM, this could be a line in a config file that
>says
>
>GNOME_DUP_FEATURES = on;
>
>	...and for a very complex WM, like E or WindowMaker, you could
>have the graphical config tool which will let you enable or disable
>particular features as you see fit.
>
>	Not that if a Window Manager makes the Gnome-duplicating features
>compile-time options, they would have to provide a new binary to enable
>the features here.
>
>	The spec would only require that the enabling of such features be
>done under Control Center->Desktop->Window Manager.

I don't know if it's necessary to enforce the use of the Control Center - 
you would be encouraging WM authors to make their non-Gnome options 
configurable from a Gnome capplet, which could be confusing. If they want to 
put their configuration files in an obscure place, let them... as long as 
Gnome-conflicting features are switched off by default, only the people who 
know and love the window manager will need to change them (and they will 
know how to do it).

>3) The Gnome WM Spec suggests that a disclaimer (or "notice" or "warning"
>or "info box" or whatever you want to call it) appears when a
>Gnome-conflicting feature is enabled while Gnome is running.  So if you
>turn on the Background-Handling feature, somewhere it tells the user "This
>feature conflicts with the Gnome environment.  We suggest you change the
>background under Control Center->Desktop->Background."

Definitely a good idea. Maybe a catch-all "Gnome detected - xxx features 
disabled by default, run xxx to re-enable them" would be enough.

>	So how does that sound?  I'm just brainstorming here.  My
>biggest worry is that this will be too complicated to implement, thus
>scaring away WM developers from Gnome compliance.

Agreed - it's important to keep it simple. The existing spec is complicated 
enough! I think the whole thing could be handled by window managers checking 
for a particular property on the root window at startup, then disabling 
certain features and displaying a message if the "Gnome running" property 
was detected. WMs which decide Gnome compliance at compile time don't have 
to worry about this, they should just disable all Gnome-conflicting options 
by default.


Michael Rogers


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