RE: X11/Spaces thinks X11 windows are overlapping on differentSpaces
RE: X11/Spaces thinks X11 windows are overlapping on differentSpaces
- Subject: RE: X11/Spaces thinks X11 windows are overlapping on differentSpaces
- From: "Umpleby, Adrian P" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 09:55:30 -0000
- Thread-topic: X11/Spaces thinks X11 windows are overlapping on differentSpaces
Title: RE: X11/Spaces thinks X11 windows are overlapping on differentSpaces
Some discussion from a few days ago...
>>>If anyone is still reading at this point, I'd be happy to answer any
>>>questions.
>>
>>I'll bite. The more serious problems with the current X server have
>>to do with window management. Windows don't get raised, we have
>>problems with spaces, etc. Why isn't the OS X window manager taking
>>care of these things for us? Why are we responsible for so much of
>>our own window management?
>
>I am trying to resolve these issues, but to answer the more general
>question -- it's because Xquartz looks like a single application
>with many subwindows rather than many separate applications, so we
>have "fake" a lot to get it to work correctly.
>
>For example, it looks like the bug where you can't move X11 windows
>to a new Space by dragging them to the edge of the screen is a bug
>in Spaces. The same behavior is seen with Stickies, or anything that
>doesn't have a real titlebar for each window. (Ours are drawn on by
>Xplugin.)
I've been lurking around for the past couple of weeks watching these discussions with much interest, since I've been through so much of this kind of headache myself when I was writing OroborOSX (how long ago that seems now!)
So, I finally thought it worth me adding a bit of noise about the problems of getting X11 onto OSX...
First of all, I'd like to say just how pleased I am to see such activity (finally) with this. When I started OroborOSX those years ago (eek, I'm sounding old!) I had so many plans (nay, dreams) for how to make X11 clients/apps behave as closely as possible to native OSX apps, including such things as mentioned by Nathaniel recently on this list (an embryonic form of X11 window grouping can be seen in the Window & Dock menus of OroborOSX, for example).
When Apple released Xquartz/X11.app for OSX, I was expecting to see some such things take shape over time. The past couple of years, though, I've watched with dismay as Apple's X11 seemed destined to trundle along, remaining simply 'good enough' (which it is, for the most part). I've even considered (dreamed?) on occasion how I might find time to kick-start a new coding spree and get OroborOSX up to scratch, and give Apple a bit of a shake-up with some real competition for X11.app! But current schedules make that wholly unlikely for me. (To do it properly would mean ditching the OroborOSX 'wrapper' app and writing it all into XDarwin itself, thus solving various logistical problems that arise with having this unholy amalgam of code-sprawling Carbon-based app and messy hacked XDarwin app hidden inside.)
However, to see Ben inparticular being so responsive here rekindles my initial optimism.
>>You cannot click on the xterm at any point where the 2 windows
>>overlap (if you transpose the 2 spaces). All events including mouse
>>clicks will go to the currently focused window, regardless of what
>>Space it is on.
>
>This is a good catch. The symptom sounds like the X11 window server
>and the Quartz window server disagree about the window layout.
Regarding window-management... as I mentioned at the start, it really is a headache shoehorning an essentially full Xorg (or XFree86 as it was then) X server code into OSX. On other unix-like platforms, it is the X server itself that expects to have complete control over each and every window (and the cursor), and it keeps track of so much information about them all (including the menus, tooltips, icons, background, etc.) and makes use of this information in many ways.
continued in part 2 (to avoid size limitations)...
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