There's one thing I miss from the *box-wm's in xfce: The slit/harbour/dock that can hold small apps like epplets, Windowmaker Dockapps or gkrellm and show it on demand when in autohide mode. Is it possible to implement something like that in XFCE? Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: http://www.fluxbox.org/docbook/en/html/chap-slit.html
I'd second that request. Take wmcpuload for example. It is compiled against the libdockapp library that just does this: /* Set ClassHint */ classhint = XAllocClassHint(); if (classhint == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "%s: can't allocate memory for wm hints!\n", argv[0]); exit(1); } classhint->res_class = "DockApp"; classhint->res_name = appname; XSetClassHint(display, window, classhint); XSetClassHint(display, icon_window, classhint); XFree(classhint); After that, it assumes to be treated properly as a dockapp: No window decoration, not in task list, etc. Maybe this enhancement request can be moved to xfce4-panel which could sense and auto-swallow these DockApps? I remember there was a specific panel item that would start and swallow dockapps but it is broken from 4.2 to 4.4. and did not hinder them to show up in the task list(s).
> Maybe this enhancement request can be > moved to xfce4-panel which could sense > and auto-swallow these DockApps? Sounds good. Just add a second Panel with this thingy, set it to autohide and position: down-left, and voila: A *box-style slit.
Somebody (read: not me) should write a plugin. It would be a very nice addition for the Xfce Goodies project. It is not a request for the panel, so the general category is fine, I think.
It is already possible in gnome with the swallower-meta-applet. For this time being, you can employ the matroshka priciple by having a Dockapp inside swallower-meta-applet inside XfApplet... However this is a great waste of resources and no match to a real slit. And even then, the applet fails to hide the dockapp from the task-list. Before anyone (read: including me) volunteers to port and surpass this meta-applet, there's the need for new APIs to provide some kind of handshake to the task-list, in the lines of: - register as a task swallower, providing e.g. process-ID of the panel (or, if the plugin needs to be a process, of itself) - hide select PIDs from the task list(s) - panel, window menu etc. - unhide (can be omitted) Thus, the registrar is able to unhide the processes if the panel dies prematurely. Arguably, there is no need for functionality to exclude the dockapps from the session startup mechanism - the slit should start them on its own and kill them when it closes, as long as the session manager shuts down the panel before it saves its list of processes to restart on logon. what do you think?
Is a slit in 2007 still wanted?
*** Bug 6445 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Closing, deskbar is more awesome.