Summary of NWI -- the page

[Matthew Woehlke]

Maciej Pilichowski wrote:
> On Tuesday 19 May 2009 23:38:23 Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> 
>> I hate to say it, but... I think leaving ctrl-w as an application
>> shortcut might be best.
> 
> Ok. If it is settled, then you can skip the bottom of the mail.

Well... after considerable private discussion, here is what seems to be
the state of things.

First: close-window will close the window. The only configuration I
think is reasonable here, if any, is to disallow closing the last window
in a container (requiring the container to be closed instead). As far as
the GUI (not keyboard shortcuts), this is only allowed if the child's
'close' button is also hidden (which makes sense, since closing the
child would close the container... though this makes me want to
reconsider allowing empty containers).

The "x" button in the WM decoration activates close-window. This button 
may not be available e.g. when the window does not have a title bar. The 
close-window action is also available via WM context menu. The 
close-window action is generally /not/ accessible via the application's 
interfaces. (Of course, the application is always permitted to close its 
window(s).)

Second: close document (default: ctrl-w) is implemented at application
level.

- Some applications won't implement it.

- Some applications (e.g. kopete, KMail's mail composition windows) will
*always* close the window.

- Some applications (e.g. kwrite, possibly okular) will *never* close
the window; they'll close the document and either change to a blank
document or an "initial state".

- Some applications will ask the window manager if there are other
instances of themselves in the container, and decide to close the window
or not based on that information. Currently my thought is to not offer
any configuration here (or at least, leave it up to app writers if they
want any configuration, which would be at application level rather than
shared globally). I'm more generally opposed to allowing an instance to
close itself if it has /any/ siblings, though that would be possible.

A "close document" action may be present in e.g. a toolbar; in general I 
would prefer trying to have close-document activated from a widget in 
the WM decoration.

Please let me know if you agree and I will update the wiki accordingly.


As for other ctrl-<letter> shortcuts; I still want to avoid them as
globals. (Since 'new tab' and 'new window' I think need to be initiated
at the application level anyway, this shouldn't be a huge problem;
they'll still be handled at the application level, but they'll be
cooperating with NWI. We just need to push for well-integrated apps to
support those. Note that /global/ shortcuts are different from
/standard/ shortcuts which we already use; you'll still be able to
change the default bindings at a global level, but applications that
need to - i.e. Konsole - can override that.)


On a semi-related note, we noted that closure of a window should in 
general shift focus to the next-in-line in the historic bookkeeping. 
This is current behavior with non-nested WM and is often used in TDI. 
For TAI this could be optional (prev-historic or prev-spatial) but I 
prefer not offering this until/unless we get requests for it.

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
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