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From: dshr@eng.sun.COM (David Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: running while iconized
Message-ID: <9103162045.AA13908@devnull.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 16 Mar 91 20:33:46 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 32

> 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.
> 
The ICCCM Section 4.1.9 (page 530 of the Digital Press 2nd Edition)
says:

	8.	Clients must not depend on being able to receive input
		events by means of their icon windows.
	.....
	Window managers will differ as to whether they support input events
	to client's icon windows; most will allow the client to receive some
	subset of the keys and buttons.

What this means is that it is OK to have your client do the appropriate
this *if* it receives a keystoke or button press via its icon window,
and thus that it is perfectly OK to select for these events on the icon
window, but it must not be essential to the operation of the client that
it receive such an event.

Note that events may arrive via the icon window at any time.  It is
not a good assumption that the icon window is unmapped when the top-level
window is mapped.  For eample,  some window management styles have an
icon permanently visible irrespective of whether the main window is visible
or not.  Other styles will never make the icon window visible.  So
defensive programming is in order - do not *depend* on the icon doing
anything at all,  but do make it do the right thing if it is visible,
and if it gets events,  and so on.

	David.