Re: Apple X11 and CodeTek VirtualDesktop
Re: Apple X11 and CodeTek VirtualDesktop
- Subject: Re: Apple X11 and CodeTek VirtualDesktop
- From: Ronald Cohen <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 08:58:30 -0800
Another interim solution (maybe one not too interesting for CodeTek):
use a multiple-desktop
X window manager to give you multiple virtual desktops for X11, and
space.app for virtual workspaces
for Aqua (Mac) windows. Interestingly, these play fairly well
together, at least with the window manager
I have running (xfce) -- the X11 windows behave as if sticky to
space.app. I arrange for an extra X11
workspace in which I keep no x windows (or I can just select "Hide
X11") if I want to not see any X11 windows,
and I can either make an extra space.app workspace with nothing
activated, or "Hide others" with X11 selected,
if I want to only look at X11 windows, and I can do the obvious binary
selections if I want to see certain
Xwindows and certain Aqua windows simultaneously.
-Ron Cohen-
On Friday, February 14, 2003, at 07:22 AM, Matthew Klahn wrote:
Hi, Gary.
It would appear that the following things do not work in CodeTek
VirtualDesktop in regards to Apple X11. (We're communicating with
Apple developers at this point, but it's all just preliminary data
sharing and we haven't come up with any solutions at this point.)
1) Window titles do not show up in the menu bar title
2) Window activation through CTVD doesn't work, which makes
Focus-Follows-Mouse, Menu Bar Tool and pager activation of windows
non-functional
3) Hiding/Showing of windows is not being recognized by X11, which
means that a window that completely 'overlaps' another window on a
different desktop will block input of that window, causing problems.
This is exacerbated by the inability of CTVD to raise a window through
the pager or menu bar tool. Because we can't do either, full screen
X11 windows are problematic, to say the least.
Therefore, until we can get these issues resolved, I would recommend
one of two things:
1) Assign X11 windows to a particular desktop, turn on the
"Unminimized or Unhidden Windows are Restored on their Original
Desktops" option, and use the "Automatically Switch to the Desktop of
the Topmost Window" to take you to X11 when you use the Dock or
alt-tab to switch applications. This _is_ limiting, but is going to
give you the most compatibility, in that you will be able to work on
all your X11 apps with little or no problems since it limits the
amount of reliance you have on CTVD.
2) Don't assign X11 windows to any desktop, and disable the "Do Not
Switch Desktops if a Window...Topmost Window" feature so that you can
switch to the X11 window you wish to switch to through the Dock menu
for X11. Basically, none of the other features will work very well, so
you can't rely on them. But, if you have it so that you switch to the
desktop of the X11 window you select from X11's Dock menu, you can
safely have windows on various desktops without the overlapping window
problem being a real problem. :) That is, because when you select the
window through the X11 Dock menu, it will raise the window you've just
selected, and the new window will be above any of the other windows
_at its window level_. Of course if you have a full-screen window that
floats above all the other ones, it will still block input even if its
on another desktop.
These recommendations are not very happy ones, I'm sorry to say. They
are very limiting and disrupt workflow, rather than increasing
efficiency which is the aim of both CodeTek VirtualDesktop and Apple
X11. However, we're working with Apple and trying to get ideas from
anyone who has them (thanks, Sean Ahern!) to get these applications to
play nicely together. I hope that we can do this to everyone's benefit
soon.
Thanks for your question, and I hope that this helps at least a little.
Matthew Klahn
Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc.
On Thursday, Feb 13, 2003, at 18:59 America/Chicago, Gary Tate wrote:
Mathew et al,
I have just got The CodeTek Virtual desktop and have been trying to
figure out a set of default settings that will work well while
running MAC OS X11.
I have seen numerous mails, each seeming to suggest a different
settings.
Would any one have a definitive list of what is the best defaults
are, given the present problems that are seen.
Gary
Matthew Klahn wrote:
Hi, everyone. Sorry that I haven't been able to respond to these
questions for a couple of days; we were preparing an update for
DockExtender that was taking all my time.
Aamer, your question is a very good one. We are researching this to
see if we can identify what X11 application a particular Apple X11
window belongs to; that is, when you run Apple X11, we see only the
Carbon/Cocoa window that is owned by Apple X11 and NOT the X11R6
application that is the actual owner. While I do notice that the
title of each window seems to be the name of the application (i.e.
"xterm"), these titles can change as each application sees fit and
aren't reliable enough for us to use. Therefore, we'll have to see
what we can do to get information out of the X Server by the Window
ID or some other bit of information so that we can assign the X11
application to a proper Desktop.
Also, the problem that everyone is encountering with the overlapping
windows not working in terms of getting the proper focus is most
likely due to a problem when we 'hide' the windows. I'll be
contacting Haroon directly so that I can tell him how we can fix the
problem. Hopefully it can be incorporated in a future update, maybe
with some help from Adrian Umpleby who has already corrected that
problem in OroborOSX.
Thanks, everyone for your feedback. We'll see about assigning X11
applications to particular desktops and if anyone has any
ideas/suggestions on how to retrieve the application name, I'd be
happy to hear them! :)
Thanks,
--
Matthew S. Klahn
Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc.
On Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003, at 15:20 America/Chicago, Aamer Akhter
wrote:
I agree. Thank-you to both Apple and Codetek for X11 and virtual
desktop. I
use both all day, and it would be hard to get work done with them.
I do have have one request though, and I'm not sure if anything can
be done
about it. Virtualdesktop has a feature where you can assign
applications to
stay in specific desktops. Ie vnc sessions stay in desktop 3 etc.
This doesn't seem to work with applications that are running under
X11. For
example if I run vncviewer it will stay in which ever desktop that
launched
it, and will not be moved to the vnc desktop. I think this is
because
virtualdesktop thinks that the windows is just another X11
application
window and leaves it alone.
Anyway, great job on 0.2!
--
Aamer Akhter / email@hidden
NSITE - cisco Systems
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--
Matthew S. Klahn
Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc.
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Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.