Removing decorations from a window

Heinrich Rebehn rebehn at ant.uni-bremen.de
Mon Aug 22 17:26:52 CEST 2005


Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> Chris Green wrote:
> 
>>>Further to my previous enquiry about removing decorations from a
>>>window, I seem to be between two opposing camps arguing about how this
>>>should be done but with neither camp giving me the tools to do it!
>>>
>>>Since the decorations are created (and customised) by the Window
>>>Manager it seems to me reasonable that the Window Manager should offer
>>>options which allow one to say that certain windows should have no
>>>decorations.  However the xfce Window manager doesn't seem to offer
>>>this possibility.
> 
> 
> What seems reasonable to you may not seem reasonable to others...  IMO,
> the WM should do what apps tell it to do, and offer minimal, if any,
> "override" functionality.

I have to object at this point. Any software should do what the *user*
tells it to do, and if for some reason i do not want a decoration, i
want a tool to suppress it, be it devilspie or a capable wm. After all
this is easier for me than to edit the app's source.
And, since i definately refuse to edit xml config files by hand, i keep
recommending sawfish wm.

--Heinrich
> 
> 
>>>So I go to the other end and look at the options in Xlib and there all
>>>I find is that, since the decorations are created by the Window
>>>Manager it's non-portable to have functions to remove the decorations
>>>from the client end.
>>>
>>>Grrrr!
> 
> 
> Not sure what you're looking at, but it's probably very old: most modern
> WMs will follow the spec and pay attention to WM hints.  Xfwm4 will, at
> least.
> 
> 
>>>It's surely possible because some of the xfce utilities don't have
>>>decorations, maybe I'll end up having to look at the source code for
>>>them but I fear they go through GTK etc. and I want the basic Xlib
>>>functions to get a window without decorations.
> 
> 
> Well, GTK uses doesn't do anything GTK-specific to remove window
> decorations.  It's uses Xlib as its backend, y'know.  I suggest you
> implement the Xlib way in your app and see if it works, rather than just
> ranting and whining here.  This isn't an Xlib programming help ML, after
> all.  If you still can't figure it out, grab the GTK source and look at
> how GTK does it (hint: start at gtk_window_set_decorated()).
> 
> 
>>>The 'right' solution to my mind is that it should be configurable in
>>>xfwm, is this do-able?
> 
> 
> Doable, sure, but unlikely to be accepted as a patch, unless Olivier has
> a change of heart...
> 
> 	-brian
> 



More information about the Xfce mailing list