On Sun, Mar 12, 2006 at 11:41:54PM +0100, Dominik Vogt wrote: > A current discussion with the gaim developers about some gaim > mis-feature has made me think about abandoning EWMH support > completely. In my eyes, the only usefull message it has is the > FULLSCREEN stuff. Everything else is just causing trouble. > > Reasoning: > > * Most of the EWMH features are intended to mix applications > written for the different desktop environments (DE), e.g. a KDE > pager with a GNOME taskbar.
Which may also be using fvwm as a window manager. I don't see anything wrong with mixing and matching different parts of DEs to create one that a user feels more comfortable in, tho admittly such mixing is going to be an experimental thing anyways. > * If fvwm is not running under a DE, these features are utterly > useless. I vaguely remember choosing to upgrade to fvwm 2.5.5 just for EWMH support... something to do with FvwmTaskBar. > * If running under a DE, using the DE's pager, taskbar, etc. is > not necessary as fvwm has a rich set of these modules. I think this is a user preference - the person who sets up the DE should get the choice whether to use fvwm's Pager or the DE's native pager, etc. > * An increasing number of applications mis-uses the EWMH hints to > do funny things. This is probably true. I know certain patched versions of qemu that do this. ;) > * Most users have *no* chance to control such appications. For > example, the problem with SkipMapping and gaim that led to the > discussion on the gaim list. It took the user several days to > figure out the problem and had to ask the fvwm developers for > help. Where? A search on gaim-devel @ Sourceforge turned up nothing... The right answer might be to fix the spec (or the implementation of the spec) in order to give the user that chance to control the app - but whether that is possible depends on how broken the spec is in the first place. > > All this leads me to the conclusion that the EWMH spec (at least > the client message part) offers very little benefits but causes a > huge amount of trouble. It is simply not worth the effort. > > I vote for abandoning EWMH support (at least the client messages). > > Opinions? > If the standard is badly broken, then I vote yes. > Ciao > > Dominik ^_^ ^_^ > > -- > Dominik Vogt, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Infinite complexity begets infinite beauty. Infinite precision begets infinite perfection.
