Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

PieterGen · 2016-04-12 13:10:47

Question about "quasi full screen". I'd like to have some application play "full screen" inside its own window. I have sketched it below.

___________________________________________  ___________________________________________  ___________________________________________
|                    |                    |  |                    |                    |  |                                          |
| (1) Application    |                    |  | (2) Application    |                    |  |                                          |
| plays here         |                    |  | plays here         |                    |  |                                          |
| normally           |                    |  |"quasi full screen" |                    |  |              (3) Application             | 
|                    |                    |  | (so without        |                    |  |                   plays                  |
|                    |                    |  | all the chrome)    |                    |  |             "physical full screen"       |
|_________________________________________|  |_________________________________________|  |                                          |
|                                         |  |                                         |  |                                          |
|_________________________________________|  |_________________________________________|  |__________________________________________|

Depicted are three states:
1. normal
2. "quasi full screen" inside its own window. That is: full screen as defined by the application, which usually means no bars, buttons and other chrome, BUT contained within 1 window.
3. normal full screen (so occupying the complete physical monitor).

My use cases are:
- to play a youtube "quasi full screen" on a large monitor, while keeping free screen estate to do work.
- when giving presentations: make the presentation software work "quasi full screen" (this could also be a SlideShare presentation inside a browser), while keeping some screen for other things that I want to show.

I know this is possible in XMonad and (supposedly) in herbstluftwm. I forgot the details, but it has to do with disabling/ modifying EWMH specifications, per application or event or something.
As per the XMonad documentation about hooks: fullscreenEventHook :: Event -> X AllSource An event hook to handle applications that wish to fullscreen using the _NET_WM_STATE protocol. This includes users of the gtk_window_fullscreen() function, such as Totem, Evince and OpenOffice.org. Note this is not included in ewmh. But, aside Xmonad and (maybe) herbstluft, are there other window managers that can do 'quasi full screen' ?

I'd like to from you, fellow archer linux user :-) if the window manager that you use can do "quasi full screen". Please post your thoughts and advice. Thnx.

WorMzy · 2016-04-12 13:38:21

Openbox has an undecorate option which removes the titlebar. On my system where the bottom and side borders are only 1px wide, this has a similar effect to what you describe.

Docbroke · 2016-04-12 14:57:46

regarding youtube, playing youtube videos in mpv+youtube-dl can match your requirements, +no ads advantage

PieterGen · 2016-04-12 15:14:59

Thanks for the suggestions. To make clear what I am chasing, I tried to mimic it on the Windows box that I am on at the moment (work, locked down corporate IT).

This is normal tiles

This is full screen youtube

This is what I want: quasi full screen within a window

Last edited by PieterGen (2016-04-12 15:28:13)

Mika79 · 2016-04-12 18:56:52

You might take a look at Plasma/->kwin, it has broad customizability. Maybe you can make your stuff fit as you wish with it.

Trilby · 2016-04-12 20:02:52

What you are looking for is for the WM to manage override_redirect windows. But WMs are specifically not supposed to touch override_redirect windows. A WM can try to ignore that protocol rule, but I can tell you from experience, that doing so will have very annoying side-effects: it will do what you want with your fullscreen youtube videos, but it will muck up a bunch of other interface elements you may take for granted and you'll suddenly wonder where all these invisible ghost windows came from.

EDIT: actually I have to take back much of what I said. The above is the case for WMs that are not EWMH compliant. Those that are, however, can received the NET_WM_FULLSCREEN message and most clients will use that instead of override_redirect if the WM will honor it. So then it is up to the WM whether to actually make these windows fullscreen or not. But just the same, you'd be asking the WM to effectively lie to the client programs which can have odd consequences.

PieterGen · 2016-04-13 10:47:10

Trilby wrote:

.....received the NET_WM_FULLSCREEN message and most clients will use that instead of override_redirect if the WM will honor it. So then it is up to the WM whether to actually make these windows fullscreen or not. But just the same, you'd be asking the WM to effectively lie to the client programs which can have odd consequences.

Thanks for clarifying. I will have to really read the Freedesktop ewmh standards. I now think that any decent tiling window manager can be hacked to do "quasi full screen".Regarding the "asking the WM to effectively lie to the client programs": yes that is true. And yes it can lead to problems.

But on the other hand:
- suppose you use two physical monitors, let's say two monitors of 1000 x 1000 pixels. You ask Youtube to play full screen on one of these monitors. Youtube would do that and not touch the other monitor.
- now you replace these monitors by one large monitor of 2000 x 1000 pixels. Again, you ask Youtube to go full screen. Now Youtube will take all of your pixels. That is (in this case) unwanted.

So perhaps the EWMH definition of Full Screen should be made more granular, as a consequence of the larger monitors we now use? I can see several "full screens"- even more than what I need right now:
a) full screen A (the type of screen rendering as defined by the client program) within the current window
b) full screen B (the type of screen rendering as defined by the client program) within a predefined new window. This can be of any size, including the size of the physical monitor. That case would be "classic full screen"
c) full screen C (the type of screen rendering as defined by the client program) within a predefined new window, spanning multiple monitors

Right?

Anyway, until then, I'll have to dive into EWMH standards and hack my wishes into a window manager...

Arch Linux

#1 2016-04-12 13:10:47

Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

#2 2016-04-12 13:38:21

Re: Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

#3 2016-04-12 14:57:46

Re: Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

#4 2016-04-12 15:14:59

Re: Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

#5 2016-04-12 18:56:52

Re: Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

#6 2016-04-12 20:02:52

Re: Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

#7 2016-04-13 10:47:10

Re: Which windowmanager can do "quasi full screen" ?

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