[12053] in Athena Bugs
rsaix 7.6H: Dash
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (cfields@MIT.EDU)
Mon May 16 12:28:17 1994
From: cfields@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 16 May 94 12:27:56 EDT
To: Michael L. Jacknis <mjacknis@MIT.EDU>
Cc: bugs@MIT.EDU
Hi, thank you for your bug report. You reported:
> What were you trying to do?
> Raise another window on top of Dash.
>
> What's wrong:
> Dash's menubar remains on top of the other window, even though
> the other window is seen to raise itself.
> IT HAPPENS ONLY WITH MWM, NOT TWM.
The behavior you are seeing is caused by the fact that dash uses
override-redirect windows to display its menus. Window managers are
supposed to completely ignore override-redirect windows in anything
they do. You may have noticed that you cannot apply any window manager
functions to the dash menus - you can't move them, you can't iconify
them, you can't raise or lower them, they aren't decorated, etc.
The main reason dash does this as I recall was so that it could avoid
undesirable interaction with window managers (probably mwm specifically)
and this was, at the time (and perhaps still), the only way to do it.
Unfortunately, as sometimes it seems with all things Motif, mwm interacts
undesirably with this in spite of any efforts to the contrary.
It's unclear to me, as I have not read the ICCCM (Inter-Client Communication
Conventions Manual) recently, which behavior, mwm's or twm's, is correct
in this respect (if the correct behavior is defined at all).
In short, I'm not sure if there's a bug here in any one program, and if
there is, which program(s) actually have a bug. The real problem is that
with the ICCC defined in '90 when dash was written, there was no way to
do this _right_. It might be fixable with the most recent Conventions,
but it isn't going to happen real soon, especially given how minor this
bug is.
In the meantime, have you noticed the "Lower menu bar" option on the
Dash menu? And twm is a much nicer window manager anyway. ;-)
Craig Fields
IS/DCNS Development
cfields@mit.edu
