WM managed MDI (was Re: Three different tab implementations)

[Neil Stevens]

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On Monday February 03, 2003 07:34, Lubos Lunak wrote:
>  If you want to get MDI support from the WM, not just the fluxbox-like
> ability to group some windows together, you need to tell the WM more
> than just 'this is a window'. If you don't, you'll just have a bunch of
> unrelated windows which you'll have to manually manage yourself.

I agree.  I think we need the ability to tell KWin that a group of document 
windows is related.  Then people who want MDI can flick a KWin switch and 
get it.

How does kstart work (You've said that your thoughts are affected by 
knowing the window manager side of things, well, my thoughts are hindered 
by *not* knowing X window management).  KStart seems to manage to tell 
KWin that the app it launches should go on Desktop N.  Could something 
similar tell the window manager that App X is one of KDevelop's Documents?

>  BTW, I personally don't find just placing the windows in the "right"
> positions to be the way it should be done, and I don't think I'd want to
> play that game. First of all, that's avoiding the WM, and if you want to
> abuse things, you can as well do completely without the WM. Second, it
> simply won't work, for example just move some window, and the "right"
> positions will be suddenly wrong.

Yes.

> > Oh, tabs *don't* place windows.  They completely gives up the notion
> > of window placement, and destroy the ability to see more than one
> > document simultaneously.  So how can that be better than what KWin can
> > do now?
> >
> > Do you believe that KWin is hopeless for document management?
>
>  I'm not sure what you mean exactly with this. I think KWin could handle
> MDI instead of the apps. The question is, how good job it will do,
> compared to apps taking care of it themselves. See the description of a
> MDI library http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=104404380507514&w=2
> , and tell me what the WM could do better than such lib would do. I can
> think of some advantages, like focus follows mouse working the same for
> everything, but right now I can't come up with something really
> convincing, especially given the disadvantages (WM supporting it is
> needed, etc.).

The convincing thing, the reason that convinces me, should be that we'll 
never get an MDI and an SDI version of every app.  A big reason being 
we'll always have developers like Falk or I that have a strong preference 
one way or the other.

- -- 
Neil Stevens - neil at qualityassistant.com
"Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and insidious that a
state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not allow
them in any public sphere." -- Thurgood Marshall
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