Re: RFE: non-full screen window list

Hi;

on Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 10:46:35AM -0800, Rob Spearman wrote:
> 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.
> 

I understand your annoyance, but Im not 100% convinced this is a reliable
solution, my reasoning;

 - It requires you to know the window name before hand;
   - Its not always possible to know this - what if the program uses
     the name of the opened file as window title ?
   - What if the window name is localised ?

   ( we could use the WM_CLASS hint instead of name but I think this
     would have another set of problems .. )
 
 - In the case of Xine what if you have a high res video file thats
   better suited noted a dialog window ? How would you distinguish
   between that and a low res video just on window name ?

 - Its another confusing command line option - things should just work ;-)


A better solution maybe to write some kind of launcher that alters the
launched app window type, though Im not sure how this would work as to
be reliable and/or portable across different OS's ( Im thinking
LD_PRELOAD evil here :/ ). 

> 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.
> 

I dont see why it is too much to expect 'broken' applications to fix
themselves ( its a 2 line patch ). If a window is a dialog it should
advertise the fact!

Also If a window truly isn't a dialog then why should Matchbox treat
it as one ?

> Example applications are: xine (with low resolution video), 

I dont know how valid xine issue is. Xine should scale up / correctly
center if it doesn't get the window size its requests. This is a bug,
Im sure it would be easy to fix - maybe worth reporting to xine-ui
people ?

> Xdialog (The
> author considers it an application, not a dialog)
>

I think the author is smoking crack - it seems 'XDialog' is a very
misleading name.

Mostly what he says is wrong - for example what standard says that
transient windows cant be resized, closed etc ? Also using the more
modern EWMH dialog hint doesn't even require any transient hints
something he doesn't seem to grasp. It would be nice if he just added
a switch to set this property.

If you point me at the source of XDialog your using, I'll patch it and
send it to you and him - maybe I can figure something out with him.
 
> Everything else works great for me.
> 

Cool, hope I havn't sounded too aggressive ;-)

Many thanks

  -- Matthew