Use-case when positioning a window is necessary

[Sébastien Wilmet]

Hi,

I've seen the discussion this month about positioning windows.

The use-case is something concrete: the Devhelp [1] assistant window.

For some background, Devhelp (and libdevhelp) is implemented flexibly:
it can be used as a standalone app, it can be integrated into GTK IDEs,
the standalone app can be called to search or open a symbol.

And there is the Devhelp assistant window: it is typically used by a
text editor, to ask Devhelp to show a small window with the
documentation for the symbol under the cursor.

And that is where positioning is necessary: to not occlude the line of
text where the cursor is, and to show the documentation at a sensible
place (near the cursor position).

With Wayland, this should be implemented with a subsurface. I may be
wrong, but in this case it's not possible, because it's not the same
app (the same process).

(For example you open a terminal, then open Vim, then you press a key
and it opens the Devhelp assistant window).

So, what would be your suggestion in such a use-case? To still retain
the flexibility of Devhelp.

Thanks,
Sébastien

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Devhelp (an API browser)