Semi-modal sidebar paradigm

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, November 4, 2013 20:25:44 Marco Martin wrote:
> > Pushing the desktop to the side is definitely nice but due to the lack of
> > input redirection in an X world, we cannot move all the window over a bit,
> > too.(?)
> 
> yeah, that's my concern as well, i would love to have it, but since is
> "semi" modal on X we would lose input for all windows, therefore becoming
> fully modal again.
> unless they are actually moved instead of just translated (don't know how
> smoothly could be done in kwin and most important how much hackish)

i should have wrapped that whole suggestion in <wayland></wayland> tags. it is 
certainly not possible to do in a nice fashion on X11. we could  fake it to 
some extent, but it would never be perfect.

putting that support in kwin would make it a moot point. on x11 these semi-
modal UI bits would just overlap things as they do now in your screenshots, 
but on wayland kwin could have a desktop effect that takes these windows and 
Adds Awesome(tm).

the only reason it makes sense to think about this *now* rather than later is 
that kwin would then need a way to identify such windows.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo