Ideal screen rotation

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Sat, 7 Nov 2009 14:33:25 +0000 Neil Jerram <neiljerram at googlemail.com> said:

> 2009/11/7 Nicola Mfb <nicola.mfb at gmail.com>:
> >
> > I agree that window properties is the right way to implement that, but
> > we need a way to get rotation preferences now, while that may be
> > proposed and discussed as a standard for the future.
> 
> Yes, exactly.
> 
> > So a couple of questions:
> >
> > * is it possible/safe/correct to set a window properties of a
> > window/xclient by an external app (e.g. a launcher)?
> 
> I don't know (yet).
> 
> > * supposing the above is possible, we may add a custom configuration
> > entry in .desktop files and delegate the launcher to set window
> > properties
> 
> Yes, that seems like a good option.
> 
> > * if that is not possible the wm or an ewmh app helper (the launcher
> > itself?) may get the active current window and perform the screen
> > rotation as needed
> 
> I don't think the launcher itself can do it, because it doesn't know
> when the app gets mapped to the foreground.  Some apps take so long to
> appear that you can switch to several other screens and write a short
> program while waiting for them :-)  I wouldn't want the launcher to
> spuriously change the orientation of those existing screens.
> 
> What is an ewmh helper?
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Well the .desktop file can have StartupWMClass, and I think the idea
> is that that is sufficient to identify the resulting window.

it isn't actually - it can help, but it's not sufficient. it can be ambiguous.
in fact often is.


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