Re: Reference window manager (was: Automatically minimizing owned windows)

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Mon, 2007-01-01 at 15:36 +0200, Tor Lillqvist wrote:
> Tor Lillqvist writes:
>  > if that's what the same application code does with a correctly
>  > functioning window manager on X11
> 
> By the way, what window managers are known to implement the ICCC and
> (extended) window manager hints specs *correctly* on X11? Is there
> some minimal reference window manager that doesn't bother with eye
> candy or user tweakability at all, but follows all applicable specs to
> the letter?
> 
> (Hopefully it should also give warning messages if an application
> tries to do things in a way that is against some spec, instead of just
> silently ignoring the problem, or doing a "bug compatibility" dance.)
> 
> It's quite frustrating to try to fix problems in the GTK+ Win32
> backend when it turns out people gets wildly varying behaviour when
> they test trivialish sample programs on X11 depending on whether they
> use GNOME (metacity) or KDE.
> 
> (Nobody would use such a window manager for their normal desktop,
> presumably, but only for reference inside Xnest etc.)

Remember, many of hints in the NET WM spec and to a lesser extent in
the ICCCM are semantic ... they, for example, say that the application
is wants a window to be treated as a "utility window" but they don't
define what the behavior should be such for windows. 

So the search for a standard behavior that you can emulate exactly
may be elusive.

Plus, for such semantic hints the appropriate behavior is the standard
*Windows* behavior for that situation, not an emulation of what
happens on X11.

Not to be discouraging...
					- Owen