Greetings everyone especially authors, maintainers, developers and other 
contributors!


I can't promise a short message but I'll do my best. :-)

I have been using Windowmaker almost from the day of it's first release.
For many years a version 0.80.2 covered all my windowmanaging needs
but recently I had to try 0.9x.x version again because 0.80.2 doesn't
work very well with multiple monitors and xinerama support.

Windowmaker 0.95.x on the other hand supports xinerama pretty well
although it's a bit buggy in that area as well but this is not the point
now.

The reason I kept using the 0.80.2 version for so long was the fact that 
0.90.x made quite a few, big changes and improvements compared to 0.80.2
and as it is often a case with any improvement, there were also some 
terribly annoying bugs or design decisions.

So, I am now checking on the newest Windowmaker 0.95.5 in order to see
if anything changed. I can see a lot of improvements including a native
wmdrawer support, code cleanup and many bugfixes.

However, a single particularly annoying bug which makes the miniwindows
(icons) covered by dock still remains.

I have checked on the net and people who used to use older versions of
Windowmaker have for a long time asked how to fix this behavior of new 
versions of Windowmaker and it's probably the time for this issue to be 
addressed.

The 0.80.2 and older versions allowed the miniwindows to lay down in
parallel with wmdock (if one wanted it that way) but newer Windowmaker
versions could only partially simulate such behavior and that includes
to either setting an option NoWindowOverDock to yes or to manually set
the dock to "Keep on Top".

I didn't go too deep into the 0.9x.x code but I am guessing that although
they look different, both options might do the similar action internally.

It seems to me that there is no iconyard (a part of the screen where
miniwindows/icons would be contained) but rather a position calculated
for every icon placement.

While looking trough the code I have found that when a wmdock gets set
to "Keep on Top", a usable space gets recalculated and shrink thus making
miniwindows get out of the wmdock cover (they shouldn't be covered anyway).
Similarly when a wmdock is unset from "Keep on Top", a usable area of the 
screen becomes again the same as totalArea of the screen and icons get 
covered under the wmdock and vice versa.

I am not using the clip, I don't set wmdock to "Keep on Top" and I
don't prefer to use options that would prevent other windows from covering
the dock or the icons while maximized. In such setup with older Windomaker
versions miniwindows would just go along with the dock no matter where
it is placed. On the other hand in a newer Windowmaker versions this is
unfortunately not the case and this is why I am sending this message
to this list.

I am hoping that someone better versed in the Windowmaker code could
take some time and try to fix this "dock covers icons" issue because
I don't see an easy way to do it and it might require a better understanding
of Windowmaker internals in order to get properly fixed.

Currently I have fixed it for myself in a really ugly fashion by modifying
src/actions.c and changing a line:
  vars[head].xo = vars[head].sx2 - isize;
to:
  vars[head].xo = vars[head].sx2 - isize * 2;

but this is only a quick and dirty solution for my particular setup
and it would be nice if it could be properly fixed, probably by taking
care of the way how and under what conditions icons should get aware
that a usable screen area have changed.

Whoever came all the way to here reading the complete message, thank
you very much for you patience. I hope that someone could help fixing
this issue because Windowmaker is a very good windowmanager and it would
be a shame to see some lame bugs left behind for years.


-- 
Josip Deanovic


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