[openbox] how to kill an application by pointing at it?

[Anthony Thyssen]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2014 17:28:11 -0500
Dana Jansens <danakj at orodu.net> wrote:
| On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:26 PM, Diego Jose Torrealba Bravo <
| diegoxter1006 at gmail.com> wrote:
| 
| > Xkill, think it comes with xorg-apps or xorg-utils. Just create an entry
| > in the root menu.
| >
| 
| That one closes the connection.
| 
| Alternatively:
| 
| kill $(xprop|grep PID|cut -d= -f2)
| 
| This one sends a SIGTERM.
| 
| 

The two methiods TWM used were 
   Close Window
   Destroy Window

The first asks the application to 'close' that specific window.  In
those day not all applications did this, but these days pretty well
all applcations do this.  The normal 'close' button (typically a 'x')
is the same thing.

The Delete window is the one that is often not provided by todays
X window managers.  It basically tells the X server to remove the
window from its display and memory without notifying the application.
This is equivalent to using 'xkill' on a window.

Most applications will suddenly get a communications (resource missing)
type error, which it typically takes to mean the X server has closed or
is closing down.   By default this will just case the application to crash
without chance of cleanup.

However it does not actually close the X server communication, just
destroy the resource.  I myself (back in TWM days) have written
applications that can recover, or at least clean itself up and shutdown
cleanly, when the window gets destroyed expectantly.  


If you want to do this type of thing with mouse selection, have a look
at various window manager utilities such as....

   xkill  (a core X window utility)
   xclosedown  - send 'close' to everything, wait a bit, then 'kill'
                 everything.  This is a great tool to attempt to nicely
                 shutdown a X login (or not if launch from session
                 manager script) in a very clean way.

   xwit        - the classic window manager utility
   wmctrl      - an alternative can do some thinsg xwit can't (and visa versa)
   wmiface     - old KDE3 window manager utility
   xdotool     - active developed, ALL featured with some 'event handling'
                 window managed utility


For my list of X window utilities (started in 1988!), see
     http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/anthony/info/X/progs.summary 





  Anthony Thyssen ( System Programmer )    <A.Thyssen at griffith.edu.au>
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
   My girlfriend's just an object to me.  Unfortunately, there is some
   information hiding, but thankfully, she's fairly encapsulated, nicely
   modular, and has a very well defined interface!     -- Frank
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Anthony's Castle     http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/anthony/