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From: stripes@eng.umd.edu (Joshua Osborne)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Which window manager is up?
Message-ID: <1991Jul01.033056.27104@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 1 Jul 91 03:30:56 GMT
References: <9106210623.AA06713@lightning.McRCIM.McGill.EDU> <1817@pai.UUCP> <1991Jun28.190237.22565@philabs.philips.com>
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity of Uniland, College Park
Lines: 41

In article <1991Jun28.190237.22565@philabs.philips.com> mrs@warlock.Philips.Com (Mark R. Simpson) writes:
>Why would an application programmer care which wndow manager
>is running?
>
>Well, I found the need to know when I wrote a program 
>using XVIEW that primarily ran under olwm. Unfortunately,
>when users used mwm istead, some of the functionality
>was lost.

What happens when you make mwm send a ICCCM delete to a pinned menu, it goes
away, right?  It does when I make tvtwm do it.

>Specifically,  XVIEW's pushpin facility works under olwm
>      but not under mwm (or twm for taht matter).
>      The pushpin functionality is
>      easily mimiced (in fact, I created a pushpin type
>      functionality using sun's old sunview GUI).
>
>Therefore, if olwm is running I use XVIEW's pushpin
>facility, if another window manager is running I 
>call my own procedures that reproduce the pushpin
>functionality. So teh question still remains, how
>do you determine which window manager is running.

What if I make tvtwm understand (someof) the hints XView apps give olwm,
will I get two push-pins?  No real hardship, but it won't look too good.

Look at the olwm source and see if it has any props that it attaches to the
root window to identify itself (or just use xprop).

However I would also (or only) make it controable by a resource
"foo.WMNoPushPins:  bool" so if a user has a WM that does push-pins but isn't
olwm they don't get 2 push-pins.  (who cares if 90% of your users can't read
the docs, put it there, they sys-admin may read it if users complain, besides
give the last 10%, the computer litterate ones a chance).
-- 
           stripes@eng.umd.edu          "Security for Unix is like
      Josh_Osborne@Real_World,The          Multitasking for MS-DOS"
      "The dyslexic porgramer"                  - Kevin Lockwood
"CNN is the only nuclear capable news network..."
    - lbruck@eng.umd.edu (Lewis Bruck)