MPX window managers?

[Peter Hutterer]

On Sun, Dec 07, 2008 at 01:18:02PM -0500, Chris Ball wrote:
>    > mpwm is dead, and it's for the better.  compiz has recently been
>    > picked up and improved:
> 
> Thanks for the reply.  This is disappointing; the compiz work is an
> unreviewed patchset against unspecified versions of compiz and Xorg,
> with Xorg patches that the author doesn't plan on submitting upstream.
> Can we come up with a plan for a more supportable way to use MPX?

MPX support is a bit iffy at the moment, the API is not stable. All the events
are in the process of being replaced, so writing a WM is a moving target.
It may be best to wait until the protocol has settled, but that'll take a bit
longer. The little that is there already can be found on the xi2 branch on
git://people.freedesktop.org/~whot/inputproto 

> I had a look at the ways in which the metacity branch was failing to
> compile, and tried to find out what their current alternatives are:
> 
>    * XQueryDevicePointer -- remove "shared" parameter

correct, 'shared' became obsolete with the MD/SD hierarchy.

>    * XExtendedUngrabDevice -- gone, use XUngrabDevice, add CurrentTime

correct.

>    * XGetPairedPointer -- gone, use attached field of ListInputDevices

correct.

>    * XAllowDeviceEvents -- gone¹, ?

Doh! XAllowDeviceEvents shouldn't have been removed. Reverted and pushed.

>    * XQueryWindowAccess -- gone¹, ?
>    * X{Grab,Ungrab}AccessControl -- gone², ?

ignore them, they weren't really useful.

> Any ideas on how to replace these?  Do you think picking up metacity is
> a sensible thing to do?

Generally - yes. metacity is one of the most popular window managers, so
anything that improves on it is a good thing. 

Cheers,
  Peter