Migration of windows between displays

[Jim Gettys]

Perry,

Phil Blundell has done this on the iPAQ (migrating from a small screen
to a workstation).

The big issue is making sure applications can't be easily hijacked; some
sort of authentication mechanism is required to ensure that doesn't
happen.

So yes, we need a standard in this area, and we also need to worry about
the security consequences.

There is other implementation work to fully flesh out this vision:
	a) right now, gtk can't quite remove itself entirely from the
	   display; some more work is needed there.
	b) Xlib needs some work to allow applications to be notified if
	   their display connection fails.  I did some work here a year
	   ago, but haven't had time to complete it since, due to all
	   the XFree86/X.org upheavals and subsequent transition.
	c) we need to deal with the security issues that this
	   capability raises.

			Regards,
				- Jim Gettys

On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 17:50 +1300, Perry Lorier wrote:
> Hi![1]
> 
> Gtk has an API function gtk_window_set_screen() that lets you move a 
> window from one screen/display to another.  This is easily demonstrated 
> by the gtk-demo applications "Change Display" example.  I've written a 
> patch against gtk that listens for a _GTK_CHANGE_DISPLAY xproperty 
> notification and when recieved calls the gtk function mentioned above to 
> move the windows display.  This provides a foundation for more 
> interesting applications that can be written, such as providing 
> migration of user sessions between computers, "detaching" applications 
> by moving them onto an Xvnc server, making x2x style programs more 
> versitile, "dragging" windows between non-xinerama multihead displays etc.
> 
> It's been suggested that I post here to discuss coming up with a common 
> specification so that other toolkits can provide the same 
> functionality.  Also it was suggested that instead of using property 
> notification I use a ClientMessage to trigger the movement instead.
> 
> The bugzilla entry is available here: 
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153351
> 
> What are peoples comments on this idea?
> 
> ----
> [1]: I'm kinda new to gnome/x11 coding, my humblest apologies in advance 
> for any mistakes I might make.
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