[xmonad] override_redirect [was Re: xmonad problem or application stealing keys?]

[Brandon Allbery]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 16:55, Hans Ekbrand <hans at sociologi.cjb.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 09, 2011 at 12:17:49PM -0400, Brandon Allbery wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 05:08, Hans Ekbrand <hans at sociologi.cjb.net>
> wrote:
> > > If I start the application with command line parameters that will make
> > > it try to get fullscreen mode, then:
> >
> > This is symptomatic of a window that is not being managed, i.e. it uses
> > override_redirect.
>
> Is using override_redirect a bug, a bad thing or a feature?
>

Depends on what you're doing.  Environments such as CDE don't support the
newer EWMH-based stuff, plus EWMH doesn't really give you a way to get a
fully immersive experience (completely "replacing" the local machine with
the remote) which many people want.  Ideally rdesktop would support both;
currently, you can use it with EWMH but have to configure the window manager
yourself.

I think, based on the comment about Motif hints, that that code in rdesktop
simply hasn't been updated in a while.

Is it meaningful to file a bug report (severity: whishlist) against
> xpdf?
>

xpdf is a fairly old tool and there are modern alternatives that will play
along with modern window managers better.  Unfortunately, I also know they
don't always work as well; xpdf development has focused on the PDF handling
at the expense of the UI, and while many of the newer ones are based on
xpdf, they are often slow to incorporate improvements in the PDF engine.

> In the case of rdesktop, you should not use -f; try -D -K possibly
> > along with a layout that supports managed fullscreen
> > (XMonad.Layout.Fullscreen in darks XMonadContrib).
>

("darks"?  I need to convince the new Safari to not correct my spelling;
it's usually wrong.)

-- 
brandon s allbery                                      allbery.b at gmail.com
wandering unix systems administrator (available)     (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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