paperwm
Keeping modal windows above parent apps
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. When a modal window appear on top of some app, it scrolls along when I'm switching windows and is kept on top of the screen. For example in Gnome Text Editor if I open Document properties. This behavior is a bit annoying and makes it hard to navigate.
Describe the solution you'd like When this type of window is created if should stay displayed on top of it's parent application, and not scroll when I switch to another app.
Here's the secret: it is staying above the parent app... but the parent app isn't where you think it is.
When you scroll an app away it doesn't actually exit the desktop's coordinate system, it stays put on the side and a clone is moved out of view. This is also the reason why PaperWM has to set the wallpaper itself -- to hide windows that are supposed to be off-screen, because Mutter won't actually let us move them that far.
Here's the secret: it is staying above the parent app... but the parent app isn't where you think it is.
When you scroll an app away it doesn't actually exit the desktop's coordinate system, it stays put on the side and a clone is moved out of view. This is also the reason why PaperWM has to set the wallpaper itself -- to hide windows that are supposed to be off-screen, because Mutter won't actually let us move them that far.
Thanks, that's the cool fact :). Although at the end, looking at this from user perspective - would it be possible to make these popups also behave like this?
Thanks, that's the cool fact :). Although at the end, looking at this from user perspective - would it be possible to make these popups also behave like this?
Hard to say, something tells me it would have been done already but this is worth looking at
Maybe there's a way of making all modal windows non-modal? That way popups will behave the same way as any other window, and I think that's a lot less annoying.
I don't think this is desirable, since on Wayland afaict menu dropdowns are also classified as modals. Wine's Wayland driver doesn't use modals and dropdowns are hell to use with PaperWM enabled.