client side decorations

[Russell Shaw]

On 10/05/11 07:29, Daniel wrote:
> El dg 08 de 05 de 2011 a les 09:47 -0700, en/na Bill Spitzak va
> escriure:
>>
>> Though it is possible, I don't like the idea of clients sending hints
>> about what areas are the close box or window border, since it implies
>> there are such concepts as "title bar" and "close box". The compositor
>> can just have clicks anywhere raise and move the non-responsive
>> window, and lots of clicks (indicating user frustration) pop up a box
>> offering to kill the program. On Linux, since it is standard,
>> compositors can also have Alt+click always raise/move windows, and alt
>> +right click pop up a menu of compositor-side window actions.
>>
>
> This would be actually a good way to handle it. Use an special mode or
> tool, a la xkill, to deal with stuck applications. It can take the form
> of an special key/mouse combination, gestures, or as I said before, an
> external tool like xkill. Note that it needs not be limited to killing,
> but could do any other thing, like minimizing, sending to another
> virtual desktop, etc.

Keeping track of dead clients could be done like this:

A client program opens a socket connection to the window server,
and the window server determines the PID of the client via a
means that the client has no control over (some kind of kernel
call that can determine the client using that socket).

The client also sends the window server the title bar area
that contains the maximize/minimize/close buttons.

All clients must handle an "is_alive" probe event from the window
server at any time, replying with something unspecified to confirm
it is not dead.

Whenever the mouse is clicked in the title bar, the window server
can expect the client to send it an "is_alive" notification within
say 1 second. If it doesn't, the window server can send the client an
"is_alive" probe event. If there's no response after a certain time,
the window server can kill the client. Alternatively, it could pop up
a gui task manager window for the user to manually kill stuff.