Pieter Hulshoff writes:

Hello all,

Does anyone know how windows are prevented from maximizing over the KDE kicker? In time I'd like to replace kicker with something a little bit fancier, but would like to prevent windows from maximizing over this launchbar. Any thoughts?

This is because the window manager selects SubstructureRedirectMask on all windows under its control. This is a special event mask which causes certain X11 requests by the window's application not to be executed, but to generate CirculateRequest, ConfigureRequest, or MapRequest events for the window manager, who then decides what to do with the request. This redirect of requests can be overridden if the application sets the override_redirect property in the XSetWindowAttributes structure for the window. (This is usually done only for pop-up windows.) I suggest that you install the sources for kde and X11. The documentation for X11 is in: /usr/src/packages/BUILD/xc/doc/hardcopy/X11/xlib.PS.gz With a very useful index in: /usr/src/packages/BUILD/xc/doc/hardcopy/X11/xlib.idx.PS.gz This should help explain the mechanism involved.