GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 151591
proposal for gimp to minimize parent windows on toolbox minimize
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
the way gimp works right now in conjuntion with metacity is by far better as before, yet theres one thing to be missed. as at the moment, the user has the possibility to set the toolbox window and dock windows window hints to either "application" or "utility-window" in the preferences window. i'd propose to remove these settings for the sake of "sane-defaults", that would be: * the toolbox with the window hint set to application window (with minimize,close etc.) * docks with the whint set to utility windows and somehow add the functionality to minimize all parents (docks, documents) on minimizing the toolbox window, which would be rather logical. as it is now only the toolbox that minimizes. cheers markus hammer
We introduced these settings because metacity has *insane* behavior. Metacity should be fixed to honor the hints correctly. And what is the "parent window" anyway??? Suggest closing as NOTABUG.
There are no sane defaults because the spec doesn't clearly specify how to interpret the window manager hints. So every window manager treats them differently. Minimizing the GIMP windows is not GIMP's job. A sane window manager treats the GIMP windows as a group and minimizes/maximizes them together. If you WM cannot be configured to do that, I suggest that you use a different one then.
I suggest deciding first what the right taskbar behavior should be. Suppose you have one gimp instance, with two pictures open, plus the toolbox and the layer window. Currently the taskbar shows four windows 1. gimp - file1.png 2. gimp - file2.png 3. gimp - toolbox 4. gimp - layers IMHO this is a wrong behavior, because nobody would ever use the taskbar to select (3) or (4). These are meant to be clicked directly. the correct behavior is 1. show only the pictures in the taskbar (so only the first two items) 2. when the user selects one of these pictures from the taskbar, the picture window should be brought on top, and ALL THE TOOL WINDOWS should be brought on top as well (i.e. 3 windows are brought on top with a single click). Now, this exact behavior happens when you configure gimp to use "Utility windows" instead of "normal windows". So IMO that should be the gimp default.
The GIMP can run on many different platforms and window managers. For some of them, "utility windows" do not have any title bar and/or are always placed on top of the image windows. This can be rather frustrating for the users of these WMs and we got a lot of feedback about that.
First, I always use the taskbar to bring up one of my gimp docks that are obscured by other windows, how can you say nobody would ever do this? Second, the behavior you observe is the behavior of *your* window manager. As Sven pointed out, neither the spec nor the spec-implemeting WMs have a clear idea of what the hints mean. We provide configurability because both the spec and all WMs are broken. There is no way this will change until this spec/WM crap is fixed.
> First, I always use the taskbar to bring up one of my gimp docks that are > obscured by other windows, how can you say nobody would ever do this? Because it's much easier to click on the picture file in the taskbar, which brings the picture AND the docks on top. Well, unless you don't have overlapping docks... but that is madness.(Ok, now someone will come up and say it's the usual way of working). > Second, the behavior you observe is the behavior of *your* window > manager. Metacity. Shouldn't gimp favour metacity? > As Sven pointed out, neither the spec nor the spec-implemeting > WMs have a clear idea of what the hints mean. This is irrelevant. All that was asked is a default that favours gnome/metacity. A perfectly reasonable request. Those who use other window managers can change the setting.
Metacity is IMHO the worst of them all. They traded configurability for adherence to "sane defaults" that are highly questionable. I don't see a reason to favor it.
> This is irrelevant. All that was asked is a default that favours > gnome/metacity. A perfectly reasonable request. Your original request was to "remove these settings for the sake of 'sane-defaults'", not simply change the defaults. So your original request was far from reasonable.
> Your original request was to "remove these settings for the sake of > 'sane-defaults'", not simply change the defaults. So your original request > was far from reasonable. The request was not mine. I apologize for misquoting it. That said, I believe people that really have at heart the future of free software should favour gnome and kde, regardless of how much metacity (allegedly) sucks. By simply changing that default you would improve the desktop experience of gnome users and soon kde users --- in fact, there is a discussion to make the kde taskbar behave like gnome, and an alternative kde taskbar that behaves like that is already available at cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/logicaldesktop co windowlist
Last but not least: since the semantics of those windows IS different, it is logical and reasonable for gimp to give window hints that clearly state that difference. If there are window managers (which ones?) that misinterpret those hints, it's their problem and they should be fixed.
As stated earlier by Sven, the specs for how a WM should behave are unfortunately a bit vague. And they have changed over time (the extended hints are new), so deciding which ones "misinterpret" the hints is not so easy. I am sure that someone playing the devil's advocate could find a way to prove that metacity is wrong, and therefore metacity should be fixed. I use metacity myself on my Linux box, but I also use other WMs on other machines and I think that it would be a mistake to set the default in a way that would work better in metacity but would cause problems for almost all other WMs that I use.