Ideal screen rotation

[Nicola Mfb]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Matthias Huber
<matthias.huber at wollishausen.de> wrote:
[...]
> * is it possible/safe/correct to set a window properties of a
> window/xclient by an external app (e.g. a launcher)?
>
> in my oppinion, it is not necessary, because one has all needed information
> already in
> --> man XSizeHints
> if a window says, for exampe 800x600, and says maybe in the aspect ratios
> 4:3, the rotation preference is quite clear, i think.

Good point! it may be if preferred width>prefferred height then use
landscape else use portrait.
How may we handle the case for apps that are able to auto relayout
according to screen orientation?
An idea may be if ratio is in a 1 +/- x than use autorotate else use
the previous pseudo snippet.

We should gather if generic apps uses xsizehints at all in the proper
way, I guess yes.

> the only thing, i think, we need, is a little patch in the window-manager.
> i don't say it is easy, but this is the only right place.

Agree, and this should be more feasible than other heavy implementation.

> In every case and going a bit ot, is anyway possibile having a generic
> Window ID to retrieve the .desktop file originating the owning app?
> I'm just guessing to retrieve the pid from window properties, retrieve
> the executable (like /proc/pid/exe) and back search in the .desktop
> file definitions.
> But this seems weight as the Exec in .desktop files may be a relative
> path, a link etc, for sure there is a better way, may you explain
> them?
>
> these things are workarrounds for not having to patch the window manager, i
> think.

Exactly! I'm writing a small apps that interact with the window
manager via ewmh and it works well (tested on matchbox), i'm able to
raise, activate, close windows, manage the stacking list and so on, so
the idea is to add randr code to rotate them, in that way should work
with every wm ewmh compliant.

I'm searching for a way to retrieve the .desktop entry of a Window ID
to have a nice app switcher with localized names, nice graphics and so
on, and it seems that the wm class may help me in that, finally we may
use XSizeHint + .destkop custom overrides when necessary?

Oh.... last time I checked Illume about that I found it's not ewmh
compliant, just curious if it is now implemented?

Regards

      Nicola