Comments on: The letters page

By: Thomas Thurman

Thomas Thurman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:44:53 +0000

@jamesh:

You want LAMPS?

By: James Henstridge

James Henstridge — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:06:07 +0000

Will Metacity ever support colour reactiveness?

By: The answers page - …for the adult in you

The answers page - …for the adult in you — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:47:12 +0000

[...] Feel free to ask more questions, but here are answers to the ones you asked already: [...]

By: Thomas Thurman

Thomas Thurman — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:45:23 +0000

@Andrew Gaul:

Not in the current version of the theme format. It’d certainly be something that could be considered for a version 3, if anyone was interested in raising a bug.

By: Andrew Gaul

Andrew Gaul — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:07:06 +0000

Can metacity move the title bar from the tops of windows to the sides? This would help on small widescreen displays like the Eee PC (1024 x 600). wm2 does this: http://all-day-breakfast.com/wm2/ .

By: » My window theme » as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

» My window theme » as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 15:13:54 +0000

[...] Thurman, champion that he is, took my request for a theme for Metacity that clones the XFCE Prelude theme and went ahead and did it. What a [...]

By: lostson

lostson — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:31:20 +0000

Stuart so your telling me that gnome-terminal, firefox, gedit, and others should all remember their position when I close them ? and then always come back to the same spot ? If this were the case why would one need a window manager. All you really have then is a windowbar with a title on it then because its surely not managing anything then. And why would a application writer, write code into his app for this ? The window manager is supposed to place your apps(aka windows) on the desktop not the application. Now for applications that use a system tray icon yes definitely, when you send the application to the tray and then click on the tray icon to bring them back. That I can see being coded into the application. As far as Devilspie, its just another confusing tool to use that a user is gonna have to install after he finds out Metacity doesn’t do what they need it to do.

Several WM’s have this as a feature Fluxbox, E16, and KDE3 series. It is very helpful as far as I am concerned. For instance I probably open Evolution 15+ times a day and I would to always open in the same spot when I click on my mail-notification icon in the system tray, yet it does not. It always pops up in the left hand top corner. There are just some apps that you want in a certain spot all the time whether the app knows it or not.

By: Ka-Hing Cheung

Ka-Hing Cheung — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:50:01 +0000

Plenty of people will disagree that every single app should have code that remembers window position. Maybe if there’s a way to add to metacity’s context menu devilspie can add something there.

By: Stuart Langridge

Stuart Langridge — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:54:12 +0000

lostson: if an app isn’t remembering window positions then it’s a bug in the app. If the app doesn’t do it then you may want to investigate devilspie, which may do it for you, rather than metacity. I believe that’s the policy.

Screwtape: this is all exceedingly useful information! My plan was to wail enough that someone else built a wysiwyg editor, but hey ;-)

By: Screwtape

Screwtape — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:26:14 +0000

I learned a lot when I sat down and built a metacity theme, but so much of the theme format has no obvious relation to the layman’s intuitive understanding of window management. Once you’ve played with some themes and experimented with metacity-theme-viewer and metacity-window-demo they begin to become clear, but actually sitting down and explaining what’s going on is… daunting. That’s why all seventeen Metacity theme tutorials explain about half the details and then say “…and I’ll get around to explaining the reset later”.

Stuart, the answer to your specific question is that the frame_geometry element is how metacity determines how far the decorations will extend beyond the basic window. If has_title is true, then the ‘top_height’ value is calculated as title_border.bottom+title_height+title_vertical_pad+title_border.top. If has_title is false, then ‘top_height’ is calculated as title_border.bottom + title_border.top (…I think; better check it yourself)

As for drawing button icons, I strongly recommend sticking to draw_ops for the shapes that can be drawn with them because they’re resolution independant and you can change all the colours to fit with the GTK theme (or colour-constants, if you’re using version-2 themes). If there’s a shape you can’t draw with draw_ops, you’ll have to use a PNG file (no point in using SVG files, see bug 561896).

I have a few changes I’d like to see in the Metacity theme format, but I suppose I should be filing wishlist bugs for them instead of complaining on a blog. :)