RFE: non-full screen window list

I keep running into applications that I need to run centered on screen
like a dialog, but they aren't true dialog windows.

It would be a lot easier if matchbox could take a configuration list of
window names (initial substring to match) that should be centered in their
natural size.

It's just too much to expect to be able to modify an application to get 
this behavior, since they aren't actual dialog windows in the first place.

Example applications are: xine (with low resolution video), Xdialog (The
author considers it an application, not a dialog)

Everything else works great for me.


What do you think?

-- 

Rob Spearman

President

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 11:47:26 +0100
From: Thierry Godefroy <[email protected]>
To: Rob Spearman <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: wm not recognizing xdialog as dialog window

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003 12:09:01 -0800 (PST), Rob Spearman wrote:

> I'm running the window manager "matchbox", designed for alternate devices.  
> It resizes all windows to full screen, unless they are dialog windows.
> 
> It is not figuring out that Xdialog is a dialog window!

Xdialog is a stand alone GTK+ -application-, so it uses managed top-level
windows (not transients ones). Even if it were possible (see below) to
patch Xdialog so that it would use only transient windows, I would never
do this, for it would mean that it would be impossible to resize it,
maximize/minimize it, close it (with the wm close button, generally absent
on transient windows) or even move it, depending on the window manager in
use...

> I'm not sure where the issue is.  The matchbox author says a dialog 
> should be:
> 
> > Setting the TRANSIENT_FOR property to the root window or set the EWMH
> > hint to be of type _NET_WM_TYPE_DIALOG. ( If this all sounds a bit 
> > confusing, look in the matchbox src at tests/winspew.c this test utility
> > creates all different kinds of dummy windows )
>  
> Or do you think the wm should be doing something else?

I think that the wm should leave an option so that given applications (user
defined list) don't get their windows automatically maximized... I see your
problem as a big design flaw in that particular WM.

> I haven't used gtk before, so I haven't been able to figure out how to get
> the root window in order to try the gtk_window_set_transient_for call.

Any GTK+ application -must- define a top-level window before being able to
setup transient windows, so you would not be able to make a GTK+ application
without at least one top-level window. (the windows are organized in a tree
structure, the first top-level window being the root of the tree).

Regards,

Thierry Godefroy.