Removing decorations from a window

[Chris Green]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 12:17:19PM -0400, Erik Harrison wrote:
> > 
> > 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!
> 
> Chris, how about I explain the technical situation for you in some
> detail, and you can decide what's best for your needs.
> 
> In essence, Window Managers aren't special in any way to the X server.
> As such, how a window is treated by the WM is a contract between the
> WM and the application.
> 
> The standard way for applications and the WM to communicate is on
> window properties, which is a set of key=value pairs that are
> attatched to the window. You can use the xprop tool to inspect these
> values.
> 
> So, an application sets hints on it's windows, and if the WM
> understands those hints (remember that there is no X enforcement of WM
> policy) then the WM behave accordingly - making the window always on
> top, removing decorations, etc.
> 
OK, what I need to know is how to set the hints from Xlib functions
and some documentation on what the hints are.  I can't find either of
these things, to the extent that it seems like they don't exist.


> If an application needs to have no decorations in order to do it's
> job, it needs to request to have no decorations. You can do this via
> Qt, GTK+. or Xlib. Qt and GTK+ provide convinience functions for
> setting the proper hints. With Xlib you'll need to set the hint
> manually. The EWMH spec is here:
> http://standards.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/wm-spec-1.3.html
> 
Aha, thank you!  That should well help me on the way.

What I couldn't find was anything that would tell me what hints I
needed to set.  I'd found how to manipulate hints from Xlib but
nowhere that told me what to change.

Thanks again.

-- 
Chris Green (chris at areti.co.uk)

    "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."