WINDOW_TYPE_HINT_UTILITY windows are hard to find

[Chris Moore]

On 4/5/07, Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at xfce.org> wrote:

> As stated in the spec, the application may set the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR hint
> indicating the main application window. If it does, then the windows will be
> raised and kept on top of its parent window.

There can be multiple canvas windows open at a time, and we would want
the dialog windows to be 'transient for' all of them.  ie. whichever
of the canvases is clicked on, we want the dialog window(s) to be
brought to the front as well.  Is it possible for a dialog window to
be 'transient for' more than one window at a time?

> One improvement could be to ignore the UTILITY type of windows unless the
> WM_TRANSIENT_FOR is set.

But then all the dialog windows would appear in the task bar wouldn't
they?  What I'm wanting is for them to not take up space in the task
bar (for they are pretty much useless without a canvas window also
being shown), but for them to pop up whenever any of the canvas
windows is clicked on.  This is exactly what metacity is doing, by the
way.

> That would definitely help with such applications. Can you open an terminal,
> run "xprop|grep TRANSIENT" and click on one of the utility windows and check
> if the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR is set?

It isn't.

$ xprop|grep -i -e transient -e window_type
_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE(ATOM) = _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_UTILITY

Chris.