Re: [wmii] Full Screen Firefox

On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 05:30:04PM +0100, Mark Gibbens wrote:
> What policy does wmii have for applications that want to go "full
> screen" - i.e. borderless and taking up the entire screen space?
>
> Are there "correct" and "broken" ways for X clients to go into full-screen
> mode?

The traditional way to hint that you want to be fullscreen is to unmap
your window, request that it become the size of the screen, and remap
it. Opera does this, but it doesn't work, for some reason. MPlayer and
Firefox also do it, but successfully. Opera also throws a curveball and
add Motif WM hints to hide the border and titlebar, which is
nonstandard, but irrelevant (wmii supports them, but only in the -test
branch).

The new way is to specify an EWMH hint, but wmii does not support them
yet. It will soon, but it needs to have fairly complete support because,
once you advertise that you're an EWMH compliant WM, apps change their
behaviors.

> I use Opera which can't go full-screen in wmii - or at least, Opera
> turns off all its toolbars, but remains within a managed workspace. I
> think some conflict takes place between Opera and wmii, but wmii seems
> to "win" and Opera is forced to behave and accept a managed window
> model.

There's no kind of conflict, and there's no winner, wmii just doesn't
understand Opera's hints properly.

> I don't have any problem with this, but am just interested in what
> wmii's policy is, if it allows any kind of full-screen option for X
> clients, and if it should (theoretically) work.

It should work. I'm not quite sure why it doesn't, but the code related
to fullscreen mode will be overhauled soon, and the EWMH hints, at
least, are concrete enough that such problems shouldn't occur once it's
implemented.

-- 
Kris Maglione
Real programmers don't write specs -- users should
consider themselves lucky to get any programs at all and
take what they get.