Window placement

[Bill Spitzak]

On 07/01/2014 12:57 PM, Jasper St. Pierre wrote:
> No, you don't.
>
> You cannot possibly reuse the saved settings on different OSes with
> different output layouts.

You are wrong. We use it all the time. These systems are rebooted, 
generally between OS/X (to use Photoshop) and Linux (to use everything 
else). The software ports between these systems.

> On Windows, there's a taskbar at the bottom
> (yes, it's technically configurable, I know). On OS X, there's a menu
> bar at the top.

Yes, and those systems adjust the window position and size to avoid the 
collision. That is fine.

> You have no idea what windows are around you and where
> they are. You don't know where Firefox is, or where to place your window
> so that it doesn't overlap.

Am not concerned about that. People do lay out their windows so they 
avoid where Firefox is, but they want to avoid this space whether or not 
Firefox is running.

> You don't even know which monitor the cursor
> was on, so if you wanted to pop up your dialog in the middle of the
> screen so that the user didn't have to cross two monitors to get to it,
> you could position it OK.

Popup dialogs are unrelated to this. They will use relative coordinates.

> In isolation, you could get away with things. The user has multiple apps
> open, the desktops have different layouts, the UI conventions are
> different across platforms, and you're not sure where the monitors are.
> You cannot know these things.
>
> The issue with the "the window should be placed here" hint you suggest
> is that you say it's completely valid for me to ignore it, but you will
> complain if my compositor ignores it, because your requirement is "the
> window needs to be placed here". Well, buddy, there's a taskbar in the
> way there. I can't place it there even if you wanted me to. And thus I
> will push your window down, and your toolbox is now overlapping the
> primary window by ten pixels.

You seem to be misunderstanding the point of the position hint. There is 
no problem if the server moves it by a few pixels. There is a problem if 
the video playback does not appear on the big color corrected monitor. 
If the user cannot get it to repeatedly appear on that monitor without 
using some action other than "put the window on that monitor" then the 
software is broken.

> It sounds like you have a highly technical workstation platform that has
> a complex, professional tool involving multiple windows, and you are
> fully aware of your environment. You can keep using X11 for this use
> case if you want.

Did you really just say that?