Removing decorations from a window

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2005 at 10:32:10AM +0530, Biju Chacko wrote:
> Heinrich Rebehn wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> The point is that the user shouldn't have to care about things like 
> window managers -- what the heck are they anyway? If they want a 
> particular application to behave in a certain way, they should ask the 
> *application* not the window manager.
> 
But that's simply not true!   All of the decorations, button
placements, frame width, etc. are determined by the *Window Manager*
and WMs give the user all sorts of nice tools to play with these skins
etc.  

I'm not asking the *application* to behave in a certain way, I'm
asking the WM to behave in a certain way (i.e. not to put decorations
on my application).


> We periodically have this discussion on this mailing list and the answer 
> is always the same: we will not add cruft to the WM to unbreak applications.
> 
I actually want the WM not to do something, hardly extra 'cruft'. :-)

> There are applications that specifically do this: devilspie and wmctrl 
> which we recommend to users who need to do this.
> 
They *aren't* applications, they're extra utilities that are needed to
get the application/WM to do what one wants.

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

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