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From: ellis@cadillac.siemens.COM (Ellis Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  window manager property semantics
Message-ID: <8710122245.AA09090@audi.siemens.com>
Date: Mon, 12-Oct-87 18:45:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: audi.8710122245.AA09090
Posted: Mon Oct 12 18:45:41 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Oct-87 04:59:38 EDT
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decvax!gancarz@ucbvax.berkeley.edu  (Mike Gancarz) writes

> There is no guarantee that a window manager will be present.  Suppose
> the window manager only runs when the user initiates some action?  One
> of those already exists under X10 and is used by most people here. (At
> least the ones still running X10!)  I could imagine a window manager run
> by a clock, too.  X is a system that encourages people to change user
> interfaces to suit the task at hand.  Those interfaces won't necessarily
> reflect your view of the world.

In X10, there was no redirection of events.  Consequently, every
application had to include support for moving, resizing, and iconizing
windows.  This was seen to be a bad thing.

In X11, the model generally assumes that applications will no longer do
these things, and that a window manager will do them instead.  This is
indeed true of the rewritten applications that come on the release tape.

In other words, if you want to be able to move, resize, or iconize windows,
you will need to have a window manager running.  Now, I can believe that
specialized applications will take over the entire screen and explicitly
map and reconfigure windows itself, but in the ordinary case, with
independent clients, there will be a window manager present!

> Since there are likely to be far more applications around than window
> managers, application writers are going to do whatever suits them.  The
> most effective window managers will be those that are flexible enough to
> be used with the greatest number of applications.  And remember that, as
> use of X becomes more widespread, not all applications writers will be
> X-perts.  The most useful window managers will be the ones that are the
> most forgiving.

I agree, but ...
The real problem is that X11 is young, and just doesn't have a user manual
yet.  I know of no window manager in which writing window applications
is trivial.  All of them come with manuals that show a sample application
which initializes the window and waits for events.  When X comes of age,
and there is a manual which has such an example, this will not be a problem.

Perhaps the problem is also that there is (legitimate) disagreement about
how hints should be used.  As others have noted, it was more important to get
X11 out than to solve all of its problems, and HINTS were certainly an area
that needed and still need more work.  In time...