Subject: Re: FVWM: pinnable transient windows

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 19:24:54 +0100

On Thu, Jan 27, 2000 at 10:12:19AM -0800, [email-masked] wrote:
> 
> > Anyone figure out a kludge (or write code) to do pinnable transient windows
> > (ala OLWM)?  ie....keeping transients from being so...so....transient.
> 
> < Um, can you explain what you mean with 'pinnable windows'?  I don't
> < have olwm handy right now.  You know, it's a fvwm list ;-)
> 
> You bring up a transient window such as a find/replace window.  Window
> normally goes away when you hit Find. But olwm lets you pin up the Find
> window so that it stays up (by clicking on the push-pin toggle button).
> Otherwise (as in fvwm) i have to reenter the same find string in a new Find
> window.

Now I'm puzzled.  Fvwm doesn't close windows unless you explicitly
ask it to do so.  If your 'find' window goes away, the the application
closed the window itself.  There is no way to prevent this.

The push-pin is usually makes windows sticky, but that doesn't
prevent the application to close them either.  Perhaps your transients
are buried below some other window?

Bye

Dominik ^_^

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---

From: Neil Bird <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 08:35:01 +0000

> are buried below some other window?

  AFAICR, when using the OL API, one can designate a window as transient
(hang on, I'll see if I can find a concrete example ... no, I've had a
look & can't see what makes it think there's a pin. Never mind).

  Anyway, these transients will usually come up with pin 'out', such that
when the app. is done (e.g., completed a find op.), the app. /itself/
closes the window. If the user (via the WM) pins the window in the
meantime, the app. *won't* close the window when it's done, in order to
allow another go. IIRC, the app. doesn't care when the window gets pinned
(it checks at potential close time) but it does receive a 'close' event
from the WM if the window then gets unpinned:

// Called to *really* close window upon WM close event
void close_find_popup(sub_frame)
Frame sub_frame;
{ xv_set( find_frame,
    XV_SHOW,             FALSE,
    FRAME_CMD_PIN_STATE, FRAME_CMD_PIN_OUT,
    NULL );
}

// Called to perform op.
void start_find()  {
  // ... perform op.
  // Now op. done, close window?
  if ( xv_get(find_frame,FRAME_CMD_PUSHPIN_IN) == FALSE )
    xv_set(find_frame,
      XV_SHOW, FALSE,
      NULL );
}

  If I'm correct, what FVWM is missing in it's honouring of OL decor is
the ability to set this 'pin' hint. What that actually *is*, mind, I
couldn't say!

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From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 15:34:47 +0100

> >from the WM if the window then gets unpinned:

That's a weird way of client-user-windowmanager interaction :-)
Anybody who has the spec for this decor handy?

> the ability to set this 'pin' hint.

Sounds correct.  I've already had a look at olwm (and I don't like it ;-))

Bye

Dominik ^_^

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From: Bob Woodside <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 17:07:49 -0500

Dominik Vogt wrote:
> > IIRC, the app. doesn't care when the window gets pinned

	???

> Sounds correct.  I've already had a look at olwm (and I don't like it ;-))

	Sheeeesh! I don't either.

	It looks like OLWM/OLVWM just toggles the _OL_PIN_STATE property. I
suppose we could do this, but it would mean forcing this foreign
property on our windows, which seems inappropriate. This isn't a hint
that the app gives, it's a property forced on the window by OLWM. Also,
the "pinning" is not quite an exact corollary to our Sticky mode. It's
not relevant to OLWM, but in OLVWM you can see that the pinned window
doesn't "stick to the glass" on all the workspaces, it just stays up in
its original workspace. It really is more comparable to the way Motif
tear-off menus work, only it requires assistance from the window
manager.

	To make this work like OLWM, I think we'd have to add a new "Pin"
command that 1) adds the property to a window if it doesn't exist, and
then 2) toggles the property. This could then be bound to a titlebar
button. I'm not sure what you'd do for visually indicating the pinned
state. Using the same titlebar treatment we do for Sticky would be too
confusing, IMO.

	I understand that it's an inconvenience for someone who's using a lot
of openwin apps, but I'm inclined to think that this is further than
we'd want to go in emulating another window manager. Any other opinions?

Cheers,
Bob

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 14:58:07 +0100

On Fri, Jan 28, 2000 at 05:07:49PM -0500, Bob Woodside wrote:
> that the app gives, it's a property forced on the window by OLWM.

Perhaps only for window that use the 'OLDecor' style?

> Also,
 
> state.

Not sure about the visual effect either, but technically it could
work exactly like 'MwmDecorMax'. E.g. OLDecorPin.

> Using the same titlebar treatment we do for Sticky would be too
> confusing, IMO.
> 

Setting and reading the hint itself wouldn't be much work,
but I don't like the idea that we'd have to define a default
title button for the hint, provide it with some default options,
a vector to indicate that the window is pinned, etc.
Perhaps a compromise would be to provide the mechanisms to
configure it in the .fvwm2rc and an answer in the FAQ but
not set ip up by default.

I don't see any of this before 2.4, though.

Bye

Dominik ^_^