Use-case when positioning a window is necessary

[Benoît Gschwind]

Hello,

After a quick reading of your DevHelp case, I think the issue belong
devhelp and your app that using it. DevHelp have to provide an API to
be embeded in another application and Wayland protocol should not be
involved. Maybe d-bus can be used as pipe between DevHelp and others
applications.

Best Regards

Le lundi 08 août 2022 à 14:12 +0200, Sébastien Wilmet a écrit :
> 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)