Re: [Ayatana] Fwd: Open Letter: The issues with client-side-window-decorations

[Sam Spilsbury <smspillaz@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Ted Gould <ted@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 15:01 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>> Without CSD there is nothing to fix.  I'd prefer not breaking things in the
>> first place and that's one small point.  I still don't know what you want out
>> of CSD the merits all the work to patch apps back into the consistency we
>> already have.
>
> I think that for sure we're making some problems that have already been
> fixed, but I think that is also descriptive of the current situation
> that we have.  It's a local maxima.  I think every direction is down
> hill, but there's another mountain for us to climb that is higher than
> where we are now.
>
> On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 18:41 +0200, Martin Gräßlin wrote:
>> As mentioned in my open letter: I want to help you. I am willing to spend my
>> time and expertise on this issue to ensure that we don't end with an utterly
>> broken CSD library in GTK 3.
>
> Cool, that is great!  But, I'm worried that we're approaching this from
> different assumptions.  My reaction there is "let's figure out how to
> make CSD work" while yours seems to be "let's figure out how to get
> window decorations to work."  So, I guess my question is: If we assume
> that the window manager isn't going to draw decorations, how can we make
> that works as good as possible with KWin?
>
> On Wed, 2010-06-09 at 10:18 +0800, Sam Spilsbury wrote:
>> As far as I know, with martin's NETWM idea to have the decorator paint
>> the "behind" of the window, this basically means that the window can
>> be reparented at 0x0 in the decoration, rather than the offset of the
>> decoration. This means that they are free to draw whatever they want
>> on top of the decoration (tabs, particles, etc) and have it all blend.
>>
>> Developers would be nice though *cough*.
>
> First, Sam thanks for explaining this.  I was confused on the NETWM
> idea.  And I guess that I still am a little.  If the application can
> draw over the decorations, what gain in consistency is there by not
> having the application theme draw the decorations themselves?  It seems
> like having two theme engines just for fun at that point.

It allows for consistency of decorations while allowing consistency
between the application and the decoration. The whole idea is to have
a NETWM (or EWMH as it goes by) spec which the application sets when
only painting it's decoration on a window with an alpha channel (and
then not painting the usual grey or cream colored background). With
this setup, you'll get a consistent background look to all the
applications and a consistent background look between the decoration
and the window, whilst retaining the benefits of having the window
manager reparent the window into a decoration and have a consistent
control for all the windows.

Compare Martin's screenshot of rekonq with such a setup and, for
example, windows explorer on windows aero.

Yes, I'm aware that you can do all of this with decorations on the
client side. However, doing such is a bit of a "cheap" way of doing
things, since you drop reparenting into window manager controls.

>
>                --Ted
>
>



-- 
Sam Spilsbury