Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.1002020558480.10850@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Date: 2010-02-02T06:11:52Z
From: Brian Ripley
Subject: R's X11 Device Properties
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.64.1002011757140.9670@tadpole.ccbr.umn.edu>
On Mon, 1 Feb 2010, Erik Iverson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This is an issue that is at the interface of R, X, and my window manager
> (either icewm or openbox, both latest versions). I am running R 2.10.1 on
> Ubuntu 9.10.
>
> My goal: When an X11 device is started in R (e.g., by simply calling plot), I
> would like for the resulting window to be in the "always on top" state, and
> for focus not to switch to it.
>
> Configuring this behavior is handled through the window manager, but both of
> the above referenced window managers require that the first element of
> window's WM_CLASS property, second element of window's WM_CLASS property, or
> the window's WM_WINDOW_ROLE property be set so that the right window can be
> matched.
>
> If I start R, type
>
>> plot(1,1)
>
> and then run "xprop" (command line program to inspect X window properties) on
> the resulting X11 window, none of these properties show up in the resulting
> output.
>
> Is there any hope for this to change? I did notice in ?X11 that "The
> standard X11 resource geometry can be used to specify the window position
> and/or size, but will be overridden by values specified as arguments or
> non-NA defaults set in X11.options. The class looked for is R_x11."
But the WM_CLASS is not set.
http://tronche.com/gui/x/xlib/ICC/client-to-window-manager/wm-class.html
shows how you could prepare a patch. As so often with window manager
issues, we need someone who uses that WM and wants the feature to try
it out.
> This "R_x11" class works fine for setting the geometry in .Xresources, but it
> does not seem to be the same "class" as WM_CLASS referenced above.
It is not.
> Unfortunately, this is about as far as my knowledge of X goes, so hopefully
> this makes sense. If anyone has any pointers, they would be welcome. Thank
> you!
>
> Best Regards,
> Erik Iverson
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
--
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595