[sugar] Supporting desktop applications, extending the EWMH spec

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

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Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
| On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 11:34 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
| <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
|> In summary, I believe we can safely move to a lightly patched Metacity
|> while tagging our windows purely according to the EWMH.
|
| That would mean to make Sugar impossible to use on a standard distribution.

You mean because it would make Sugar depend on a nonstandard branch of
Metacity?  I can understand why distributions might be reluctant to carry
such a thing.

Let's keep thinking about this.  For example, I wonder what Metacity does
to a window that is both  _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN and
_NET_WM_STATE_BELOW?  Does it stack it below the Frame, if the Frame is
_NET_WM_TYPE_DOCK and _NET_WM_STATE_ABOVE?  If not, could we convince the
Metacity developers that this is a good idea?

What about making Activities run as _NET_WM_TYPE_DESKTOP? How does
Metacity handle multiple DESKTOP windows? (It probably isn't happy about
them...)

EWMH specifies a _NET_RESTACK_WINDOW message.  Could Sugar, acting as a
pager, send this message to Metacity at appropriate times to raise the
Frame to the top, above FULLSCREEN windows?

It may be that we can find a way to make this work under stock Metacity if
we're creative.  If not, Metacity is under very active development.
Perhaps we can find a small change that resolves our problem and is
satisfying to upstream Metacity.

- --Ben
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