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From: luke@umnstat.uucp (Luke Tierney)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: a question about ICCCM (and dxwm)
Message-ID: <1990Oct12.125837.22738@cs.umn.edu>
Date: 12 Oct 90 12:58:37 GMT
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Reply-To: luke@umnstat.stat.umn.edu (Luke Tierney)
Organization: School of Statistics, University of Minnesota
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[I tried to send this out earlier but am not sure I succeeded. I
apologize if this reaches you twice]

I have been attempting to make an application I am developing ICCCM
compliant. I thought I had more or less managed to do so, but I have
run into a problem when running the application under the DEC dxwm
window manager (ULTRIX 4.0 on a DECstation 3100). I am writing this
note in the hope that someone who understands ICCCM can perhaps point
out where I am going wrong.

The application I am writing can, for present purposes at least, be
thought of a tool for prototyping a graphical user interface. The
program is designed to run as an interpreter in a standard tty window,
such as an xterm. Typing an expression like

	(get-string-dialog "Enter a string")

should pop up a modal dialog with an editable text field, an OK and a
Cancel button. To implement this setup I use the following approach:

	I set up an unmapped window as a group leader in the ICCCM sense.

	I then construct dialogs as transients for the group leader.

This seems to work fine under R4 twm and the olwm in R4. It does not
work under dxwm: the dxwm window manager refuses to allow the
transients to be mapped unless the leader is mapped as well.

The ICCCM does not seem deal explicitly with this setting. It does
state that group leaders do not need to be mapped. I think it allows
window managers to unmap transients for iconified windows, but it
seems to indicate that a window that is never mapped is supposed to be
considered to be withdrawn, not iconified.

So here are my questions:

	1) is the dxwm behavior consistent with ICCCM in this respect?

	2) Is there some other way I should be setting up these dialogs?

One alternative approach that does not work is to use override
redirect and grab the pointer and keyboard. This does not work for two
reasons:

	if you mess up and forget to put a quit button in a dialog
	you freeze your display

	this approach does not guarantee you access to typed text
	directed at text fields (at least not from my reading of the
	ICCCM on this)

I have also tried making the dialogs transients for the root window.
It is not clear to me whether this should work under ICCCM or not.  It
does work with the twm and olwm versions from R4, but not with dxwm.
This may be related to the fact that dxwm seems to use a pseudo-root.

Any help or advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Luke Tierney
luke@umnstat.stat.umn.edu