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From: rthomson@mesa.dsd.es.com (Rich Thomson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: running while iconized
Message-ID: <1991Mar15.061005.6431@dsd.es.com>
Date: 15 Mar 91 06:10:05 GMT
References: <1991Mar14.232039.1950@unixg.ubc.ca>
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Reply-To: rthomson@dsd.es.com (Rich Thomson)
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In article <1991Mar14.232039.1950@unixg.ubc.ca>
	lindholm@greve.ucs.ubc.ca (George Lindholm) writes:
>What do I have to do so that my program can run while iconized?

I've usually seen the state referred to as "iconified", or "iconic
state".  Anyway, you're program continues to run as usual when you're
application has been iconified by the window manager.  You will get an
unmap event and a property notify event (if you're window manager is
ICCCM compliant you'll get an event notifying you that your WM_STATE
property has changed).  What the window manager does is to unmap the
application window and map (or create and map) the icon window.  Since
your application's window is unmapped, all output to the window will
not appear on the screen.  Your application will continue to run
however; the window manager doesn't do anything to the process that
created the window (and quite possibly couldn't even if it wanted to
-- the process could be running quite literally on another
continent).

Now, if you're asking how to get button events, key presses, etc. when
you're application is iconified, you can get the window ID of the icon
window and select for input on that window like any other window.

Whether or not this is a good idea remains an open question.

						-- Rich
-- 
  ``Read my MIPS -- no new VAXes!!'' -- George Bush after sniffing freon
	    Disclaimer: I speak for myself, except as noted.
UUCP: ...!uunet!dsd.es.com!rthomson		Rich Thomson
ARPA: rthomson@dsd.es.com			PEXt Programmer