community Digest, Vol 156, Issue 27, Ideal screen rotation

Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) raster at rasterman.com
Sat Nov 7 13:57:24 CET 2009


On Sat, 7 Nov 2009 03:41:28 -0600 Jared Maddox <absinthdraco at gmail.com> said:

> > On Fri, 6 Nov 2009 17:22:27 +0000 Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org>
> > said:
> >
> >> On Fri, Nov 06, 2009 at 04:40:04PM +0100, Helge Hafting wrote:
> >> > Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
> >> > > On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 01:55:29PM +0100, Helge Hafting wrote:
> >> > [...]
> >> > >> The software that control rotation need to know if the foreground app
> >> > >> should run in landscape, portrait or auto mode. (And perhaps the
> >> > >> upside-down variants as well.)
> >> > >
> >> > > Or, what I think would be the proper way to do it, the application
> >> > > should broadcast to dbus that it prefers no rotation, or one of the 4
> >> > > possible rotation states and omnewrotate could listen to such requests
> >> > > and not rotate while there is such a message in the bus.
> >> > >
> >> > Well, you cannot expect every app to have such preferences, this device
> >> > runs generic linux apps that aren't made specially for the freerunner.
> >> > Now, of course the app loader can do this, similiar to how we already
> >> > request the cpu/backlight when launching some apps.
> >> >
> >> > But there is a problem. The user may switch between several apps with
> >> > different rotation needs. (xmahjongg needs landscape, tetris needs
> >> > portrait, ...)  How will omnewrotate be notified about this?
> >>
> >> The proper way is to define a set of DBUS signals.
> >>
> >> Of course conflicting signals need to be ignored.
> >
> > no. the proper way is to set properties on your window. this is a display
> > system thing. dbus is orthogonal to it. you set properties. you let the wm
> > figure out what to do with the active window(s) based on their properties.
> 
> Which window property, a 'no resize' flag? Is the property stored by
> X, the window manager, or something else? Is the code that does the
> rotations in the window manager?

properties are stored in x - attached to the window in question. wm's listen
for property changes and fetch these properties on window show and property
changes. the wm may do whatever it wants then. the title of your window is a
property. use "xprop" and click on a window. find out.

-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster at rasterman.com




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