KJavaAppletWidget's usage of KWindowSystem

[Martin Gräßlin]

Hi all,

I hope this mail reaches the right people (I was told this mailing list is 
also for KHTML), if not please let me know where to send to. Please also keep 
me CC-ed, I'm not subscribed.

The class KJavaAppletWidget is using the method KWindowSystem::doNotManage() 
to tell KWin (via DBus) to not manage the applet window.

The method in question is used only by KStart and by the java applet and to be 
honest: I would like to get rid off it in Frameworks 5.

Through lots of git magic I was able to find the commit which added the 
functionality: kdelibs, 0838ff87 on 15th of July, 2000 by Matthias Ettrich 
with the very explaining commit message "do not manage magic". It doesn't help 
me to understand why it is needed :-) The KWin part clearly states that it is 
a HACK only for Java applets.

>From my understanding the method is wrong in general for the following 
reasons:
* works only with KWin
* uses D-Bus instead of X11
* if a window should not be managed by the window manager it should use the 
override redirect hint
* matching windows by title is broken by design
* adds a hack to a window manager to work around a Client (not good)

For me the important question is, whether this is still needed. And that is 
what I cannot test, as:
* I don't know of any web page still using Java Applets
* I have uninstalled Java after one of the recent security nightmares
* I don't want to install Java again due to the security issues

If anyone could enlighten me, I would be very happy :-)

If this functionality is no longer required, I would prepare a commit for 
frameworks 5 to remove it from KDE Frameworks 5 and mark the methods in KWin 
for removal. For KDE 4 life time we will keep the interface there, though I 
honestly don't know whether it's still functional ;-)

If it is still required, I would like to discuss what could be done to not 
need it. Apparently other window managers don't provide the KWin D-Bus 
interface and apparently other browser engines don't need to tell KWin about 
it. So there must be solutions which would not need this method.

Unrelated side-note: the code in KJavaAppletWidget is partially disabled in 
the frameworks branch.

Best Regards
Martin Gräßlin
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