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Re: [wmx] wm2 and GNOME

Michael ROGERS - Fri Apr 09 17:20:22 1999


>>The necessary additions would be X session management, awareness 
>>of MWM window hints (?), and a change to wm2's behaviour so that right mouse 
>>clicks on the root window are passed to the GNOME file manager. Obviously 
>>these changes are well outside wm2's scope, but I thought the tiny wm2/wmx 
>>source would be a good starting point for making something a bit less bloated
>>than E.
>
>Perhaps wmx could have a root menu reflecting the gnome main menu (or
>start button)?

 I was thinking something similar, maybe using GTK+ to draw the menu so it 
looks similar to the GNOME menus. I don't want to duplicate panel features or 
features which appear on the GMC root menu, so I'd like the menu to
contain wm2's window list and the most useful GNOME features - "Run 
Program..." and "Log Out".
 Wm2's "New" option can be used to execute the GNOME "Run Program..." applet 
(gnome-run) without needing any extra code. I think gnome-run is already
session aware, so if we get session management working gnome-run could set up 
session communication between the window manager and child processes like it 
does when launched from the panel.
 The "Exit wm2" option could be replaced by a call to the GNOME "Log Out" 
function, assuming this doesn't require getting involved with ORBit. Also the 
panel may not expect other programs to request a log out. I'll have to look 
into this. 
 These two features would allow you to rescue yourself in the event of a panel 
crash while keeping duplication of GMC/panel features to a minimum.

>Luckily there's source code available for the things you mentioned
>above.

 Very luckily, as I'm not much of a programmer! Do you know where there is any 
information on MWM hints other than the GNOME website?

>I think wmx is a better code base than wm2.

 I've only given the wmx code a cursory look so far, but there is some 
duplication of GNOME features (the root menu, pixmapped menus, undecorated
windows). I'd prefer to start from wm2, and graft on the features from wmx 
which are useful under GNOME (which ones?) as well as new code.

>Do you intend to split out a new branch of wmx, or just separate the
>gnome-related code from the main wmx code with #ifdefs?

 I think this project would definitely constitute a third member of the
wm2/wmx family, particularly if it depends on ORBit or GTK+. I'd like to steal 
code from both wm2 and wmx if possible, so it wouldn't inherit cleanly from 
either one. I'd be interested to know which wmx features people on the list 
find useful and would like to see preserved.

 I have a couple of suggestions for cosmetic changes (comments?):

Right-clicking on the tab button should kill a window, left clicking hides it.

Should the frames of focussed windows be transparent? I like the "floating" 
look of unfocussed window frames, but this would remove the vertical-only and 
horizontal-only resize tabs. Does anyone use these?


 - Michael Rogers


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