The Client conceptΒΆ
Like in most window managers, a foreign top-level window is internally represented by a kind of wrapper class. In samurai-x2, that’s the samuraix.client.Client.
Because we wanted to be able to use samurai-x2 with or without a window decoration plugin, we decided to use an ‘actor’: A client has two attributes containing windows, window and actor. The former is always the foreign window, the latter is the decoration window: the actor. If there is no decoration plugin activated, the actor window is the same as the foreign window. So it is possible to develop plugins without having to know if there is a decoration plugin enabled or not, you just have to take care of using the correct window for each action.
Decoration plugins should just react to the Screen’s on_new_client event and set client.actor to the desired window. The foreign window has to be reparented to the actor window; so if you move the actor window, the foreign window will also move because it’s a child of the actor window.
When the foreign window was destroyed, the client will also be removed from the samurai-x2 system. The decoration plugin that injected the actor window also has to take care of destroying it properly. That is most likely done in a Screen’s on_unmanage_client event handler.
You see, you will have to decide if you have to use the actor or the foreign window: If your plugin has to resize the displayed window, you should use client.actor.configure. The decoration should take care of applying the new size to the window, too. If your plugin has to read properties of the foreign window, you should use client.window.get_property (of course).
