Re: Superswitcher 0.3 and libwnck

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

On 4/17/06, Nigel Tao <nigel tao myrealbox com> wrote:

(I probably should have responded off list after seeing this in the
moderation queue, but oh well...)

> Currently, this is implemented somewhat hackily by first moving
> windows D, E and F to their respective new workspaces, and then
> setting the number of workspaces to 3.  This is not atomic, however,
> which might lead to subtle bugs.
>
> My first question is - if I converted my application code to a libwnck
> patch (that declares new API), would the libwnck maintainers be
> interested at all in this?

I don't think you can make it atomic in libwnck either, as libwnck has
to send a bunch of separate messages to the window manager (who does
the real work of actually moving the windows and changing the number
of workspaces).  You'd need to probably get an extension into the EWMH
on wm-spec-list.  And then, if everyone thought it was worthwhile
enough to include, wait for all the relevant window managers to
implement it...

> My second question is - in order to move windows from one Xinerama
> screen to the next, I have to find out the x/y/width/height of
> metacity's framing window (sorry but I don't know the right name to
> call it - the surrounding window that the window manager adds that has
> e.g. the titlebar), but libwnck doesn't give me that, since my
> understanding is that libwnck is window-manager agnostic.

libwnck is supposed to be, but it turns out to be irrelevant in this
case.  There's already a _NET_FRAME_EXTENTS property which provides
this information (try running 'xprop' and then clicking on some
window; then look for this and other properties).  It looks like
libwnck doesn't monitor this, but you could always get the property
yourself.

Also, I don't see why you need that information.  At most, you should
only need to specify a different gravity.