Xfwm4: single pixel resize borders are unusable, may trigger bug in specific (older) Xorgs

[achadwick]

Single pixel resize borders look ugly (subjective opinion ahoy!), but in addition they cannot be used with the mouse without - by definition - pixel precise mouse pointer placement by the user. The lack of forgiveness here is an objective usability problem.

The problem is worse with a graphics tablet - those frequently have a lot of subpixel jitter due to hand movement. Frequently, pen input user also cannot use the Alt key to resize windows either.

The problem is worse in Xfwm than in other WMs and DEs because Xfwm does not currently offer additional "magic" border resize space outside the window when the window has focus (examples: Unity, Gnome, Cinnamon). I would be fine with Numix looking slightly different across different WMs, because each WM has different features and drawbacks. I would expect a theme to respect that.

(Also, aesthetically, I prefer it to resemble Chromium window borders... but that probably is just me)

There's also an older technical problem with single-pixel XPM borders with certain Xorg software:
https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9246
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54168
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/1043575
shimmerproject/Greybird@a58210a
shimmerproject/Greybird@a58210a
which may or may not still be relevant.

[achadwick]

For what it's worth, it looks as if Greybird don't consider the Xorg thing to be a technical problem any more:

shimmerproject/Greybird#50

[ochosi]

I really don't feel like diving into the 1px border discussion again, because we had it a longer while ago @Xubuntu. Instead, I'd like to refer you to the blog-post I wrote at the time about window-resizing in Xfce/Xubuntu: http://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce/

And yes, falling back to a 2px border around 12.10 or 13.04 was solely due to an xorg-bug, not due to a revision of the design decision.

[achadwick]

It's still basically a live issue to me as an Xfce user.

It's an awful lot of fumbling around, in my experience, trying to use anything other than a resize border for resizing a window. For all of the methods enumerated in the link, there are circumstances when that method cannot be used, or just has drawbacks.

1. The resize grip is not present in terminals, or in Gtk2 applications (common in Xfce)
2. Alt-click is not possible if you don't have a keyboard, or don't know about this relatively obscure feature
3. There is no keyboard shortcut for entering resize mode enabled by default. In addition, not possible if you don't have a physical keyboard (or you're not using one right now for some reason)
4. Is just obscure, and encourages the user to click around near the close button with many layouts.
5. Some users prefer to turn off the window menu.

I note that other projects with a focus on minimalism an aesthetics still retain easily grasped window resize borders. I think this is a design decision which needs to be reversed until Xfwm adopts magic resize edges like Gnome/Unity/Cinnamon's. Aesthetics should not trump basic usability.

[ochosi]

All your arguments boil down to the fact that you don't have/use a keyboard, i.e. are using a touch interface/device? In fact I'm not sure whether

1. Xfce is a good choice for that
2. you should really complain about Xfwm4 themes not being great to use with it by default, cause no part of Xfce is optimized (or even tweaked) for touch at all

Just create an Xfwm4 theme specifically for touch (bigger buttons, fat borders), it makes sense for your scenario.

[satya164]

@ochosi In Gnome, to be specific in CSD, and also in the new Unity decorations, it allows the theme to configure the grip area around the window manager. And I think this should be done in Xfwm too, and I think it's the logical solution.

[ochosi]

Well I'd be a fan of the larger grip area as well, but it's more difficult to implement than to just "add an option" I'm afraid. I'll see though whether I can get things moving forward in this respect...

[satya164]

@ochosi I think basic things like this should be implemented, no matter how difficult.

[achadwick]

@ochosi I'm not a tablet-only user myself, but working on MyPaint does tend to clue you in about the capabilities and limitations of even high-end arty tablets. They're precise in a rather imprecise way, if that makes sense: device resolution on these things is great, but positioning always suffers from the imperceptible hand micro-motions everyone makes which makes putting the nib down on a single screen pixel a matter of luck. Wider effect areas benefit everyone, IMO.

Xfce is a pretty decent choice for artists and programmers alike, in my experience, but not if theme developers ignore the limitations of what's available.

Anyway, there is a need to move this thing on and no reason not to address the problem on two fronts. It will take Xfce a while to adopt this change, and even Debian unstable may be slow at adopting it. One thing Numix could do in the meantime would be to create a Numix-Easy variant of the theme for just Xfwm's benefit - adopting the convention used by the Shiki-Colors-Easy-Metacity theme from way back when. Would you guys be amenable to making such a thing part of shimmerproject proper?

[ochosi]

@achadwick I can only speak for Greybird, but if you think that there's such a big need for an Xfwm4 theme with a 3px border, feel free to draw it up and I'll see whether we can include it in Greybird as extra.

[satya164]

For Numix, you already have a modified version. I would rather prefer to get it fixed in Xfwm rather than changing design decisions for Numix.

[joolswills]

@ochosi - your blog post is useful, but it misses another problematic case, where you have 1 pixel borders within an application between areas/groups (such as in the editor geany where you can have a file list on the left, and a status/terminal area at the bottom). It is very difficult to manage with this theme to resize areas within an application.

[ochosi]

@joolswills Those are completely different widgets which are handled by Gtk, so it's really a different issue.
(In Gtk3 I think those resize-panes can also be larger than they appear.)

[joolswills]

My apologies.