[openbox] usability

Peter Chiocchetti pch at myzel.net
Sun Jun 29 12:51:01 EDT 2003


On Sun, Jun 29, 2003 at 12:08:26AM -0400, Ben Jansens wrote:
> > Theres a bug with the selection of icons for starters in the
> > gnome-panel that kills ob, but only if gnome-session is active.

After cvs-update today, this is no more.

> > Its also quite hard to have gnome-session fully recognise ob,
> > the foot hangs about a minute

Looks like offtopic now: this must be about xconsole (which is
likely not session-aware, at least not gnome-session...)

> In layers and groups. GTK2 currently provides some issues with that. Some
> apps work really nicely, like gimp, and some not as nice, like nautilus,
> since it groups all of an apps windows together no matter what. I'm giong to
> take this up with Owen Taylor shortly.
> 
> I have been replacing the stacking code over the last couple days, and the
> unable-to-lower-behind-a-group-member (phew) bug is gone. Let me know if the
> problem you were experiencing is still there of course, in case im reading
> this wrong.

If I understand fully, layers are set via the titlebar's menu.
Some windows in a layer are grouped, so they raise, lower, but
not iconify together: gnome-terminals eg. herd, while xterms
stay singles.

Since updating, lowering the gimp at the canvas, lowers the
canvas below the dialogues (and all other windows of course).
Being able to drag a window, without raising it, makes working
with the gimp already a lot easier.

<rant>But there is more to it, and the wm cant do it all on
its own, I think.  Compare with the vector drawing app sketch:
its dialogs stay above the canvas, whichever window one raises
or lowers. they dont even show up in the window list. They
have the TRANSIENT_FOR hint set, I guess thats why. This is
how it should be with the gimp too. But the gimp may have
several canvasses at the same time, and it opens with the
tools-palette first. The transients mechanism may be too weak
to support this kind of grouping.  NET_WM has DIALOGs, not all
apps use them though (rox does for bookmarks window, but
sodipodi doesnt, for stroke settings eg.); maybe openbox
should honour dialogues in stacking? maybe it already does,
but the clients set their LEADERS wrong?  all in all this
sounds like graph theory (mathematics, shudder).</rant>

Still a happy user, and whats the preferred format for
documentation?

peter



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