Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!phigate!ehviea!leo From: leo@ehviea.ine.philips.nl (Leo de Wit) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Window topper (for lack of a better name) Message-ID: <896@ehviea.ine.philips.nl> Date: 7 Oct 90 19:31:27 GMT References: <1990Sep29.015829.520@ecst.csuchico.edu> <895@ehviea.ine.philips.nl> Reply-To: leo@ehviea.UUCP (Leo de Wit) Organization: Philips I&E Eindhoven Lines: 38 In article ripley@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Hans-Ch. Eckert) writes: |In article <895@ehviea.ine.philips.nl> leo@ehviea.ine.philips.nl (Leo de Wit) writes: | This seems rather surprising behaviour; it would annoy me as a user. |As it seems, you have never used X-Windows with the MWM Windowmanager. |I you want, you can install such behaviour. Sorry, I don't follow your logic; even if you know a piece of software doesn't mean you will not find anything in its behaviour surprising. I was only recently again surprised that GEM always tops windows; that does not mean that I don't know GEM, or the fact that it tops windows. | | The unability of GEM to work with other windows than the top one, | or to top hidden windows is rather a drawback. |Surely, nobody would claim that there is nothing that can be |added to GEM :-) |Finally, all that depends on your application. Nobody keeps you from |adding such features. It might even be possible to add this into |the system by writing a TSR that spits out appropriate WM_TOPPED Messages |upon hitting the hot-key. Sure, I think it can be done. But look at the other side: compatibility, standards. For instance, if a program for some reason uses the fact that a completely hidden window can't be topped - which it is allowed to - it (or you) will be in for a surprise if you top such a hidden window by means of a TSR. Also, when application programmers just hard-code this behaviour in their programs, we get GEM programs that can handle hidden windows, and GEM programs that can't; this is confusing for users (what I would call surprising behaviour). Even in GEM there are some rules about how you present stuff to the user (the book Programmer's guide to GEM by P. Balma and W. Fitler gives excellent directions about do's and dont's); one of the basic rules I think is that you use a consistent interface. We thank you for your attention ;-) Leo.