Standardizing _METACITY_UPDATE_COUNTER

[gtg990h mail gatech edu]

I recently implemented support in Qt and kwin for using the X11 SYNC extension 
to synchronize window frame and client repaints.  
   
Currently, the protocol I use is the same as the one Havoc Pennington 
originally outlined: 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/wm-spec-list/2002-December/msg00023.html 
 
The current implementation in kwin appears to be compatible with the one in 
metacity. 
   
The kwin side of the patch is about to go into CVS, so Lubos Lunak suggested  
contacting the metacity developers about standardizing this behavior, or at 
least making it public so things don't change unexpectedly. Also, it appears 
that the toolkit side of the patches have not made it into GTK+. Standardizing 
the behavior might make it easier to get GTK+ and Qt to support the sync 
counter. Lastly, the freedesktop.org X server will make it possible to 
double-buffer window resizes like MacOS X does, and as noted in the original 
message, the sync counter makes that possible.   
   
The patches for Qt and kwin can be found at:  
   
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kwin-sync.diff   
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/qt-sync.diff   
   
Sincerely,  
    Rayiner Hashem