Subject: FVWM: FvwmTaskBarAutoHide has no clothes

From: Tom Toffoli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 14:47:39 -0500 (EST)

11-19-98

The AutoHide feature of the fvmw2 TaskBar (used, e.g., in AnotherLevel) does
not work well; more bluntly, I'd say it's BROKEN. Can anyone at fvwm2 or
RedHat fix it or tell us how to patch it?

I'm using fvwm2-2.0.46 as it comes with RedHatLinux 5.2.
As far as my experiments can tell, AutoHide behaves differently in the top,
middle, and bottom panes of a desktop (and because of this, it took me a
while to characterize its behavior). For simplicity, assume you have a 1x3
desktop
    -----
    | 1 |
    -----
    | 2 |
    -----
    | 3 |
    -----
(but my comments apply to any vertical number of panes, and in this case
1 stands for the top pane, 3 for the bottom one, and 2 stands for all the panes
in between)

Well, AutoHide works well in pane one, UNTIL you manage to cross, with the
mouse, the boundary between panes 1 and 2; then, when you come back to 1, the
taskbar remains stuck in the hidden position.

In pane 2, the taskbar always remains hidden.

In pane 3 (the bottom pane, or the only pane in a 1x1 desktop), the taskbar
pops up and down all right, but when it pops down it hides only 2/5 of the
way, so that most of it still sticks out.

So, in none of the three cases is the AutoHide feature worth its name.

A working AutoHide would be a very useful features especially with small
screens. The powers that be, please take a look at it and make it work.
If, on the other hand, I'm being extremely dense and the feature can
be made to work, please show me how.
                                                Tom Toffoli          
----------------------------------------------------------------     
        Prof. Tommaso Toffoli         [email-masked] |                    
        ECE Dept.                               | home:              
        Boston University          617/353-9846 | 617/864-8545       
        8 Saint Mary's St.           fax  -6440 | 26 Athens St.      
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---

From: Jui-Hsuan Feng <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 17:27:43 CST

Hi,

> RedHat fix it or tell us how to patch it?

As far as I kown, it's fvwm2's issue. Some of them still remain in the
current fvwm CVS tree. If you have the source code, check the function
RaiseWindow(FvwmWindow *t) in the file fvwm/misc.c: the last line reads

void RaiseWindow(FvwmWindow *t)
{
  ...
  raisePanFrames();
}

The PanFrames are used to eat out all the events when the pointer get to the
edge of the screen. If an application window is bigger than the screen, and
the pointer enters one of these unvisibel PanFrames windows, fvwm will scroll
the screen so other part of that application window can be shown on the screen.
In early days, people tend to use bigger virtual desk top, say 1024x768,
than the actual desk top resolution, say 800x640, this scrolling feature
was pretty good. Or similarly, it can be used to switch to another desk top
without click on the pager. This is the reason why the TaskBar always hides
in the pane 2, because it will never get a chance to be raised up after
those PanFrames.

Another problem is cause by the function move_Loop() in the file fvwm/move.c
(maybe in another procedure). It will adjust those way-out-of-edge windows
back to screen. You can do a simple test by drag any application window
to the edge and hide it as much as you can in pane 3, it will behave the same,
and TaskBar is one of the application windows.

Surely there are workarounds, like rasing those Always-on-top windows after
PanFrames windows. But those workarounds may cause some side effects to
other modules. The fvwm maintainer should be informed.

--
J. Joshua Feng                            (O)608/262-3640
Electrical & Computer Engr., Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison
http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~fengj  [email-masked]
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