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…menu bar -[NSScreen visibleFrame] took the whole screen and subtracted the menu bar, so it ignored whatever else reserves space on the screen: an application that placed a window in the visible frame put it under the Dock. GSDisplayServer now answers -workAreaForScreen: with the area the display server leaves to application windows, which the X11 backend takes from _NET_WORKAREA, and the visible frame starts from that area. A display server that knows of no such area answers an empty rect and the visible frame is what it was, so nothing that lacks the backend side changes behaviour or raises. Submitted upstream as gnustep/libs-gui#953.
-[NSScreen visibleFrame] took the whole screen and subtracted the menu bar, so it ignored the space a panel or a dock reserves. An application placing a window in the visible frame put it under whatever else is on the screen. GSDisplayServer answers -workAreaForScreen: with the area left to application windows, an empty rect when it knows of none, and -visibleFrame starts from that area instead of the whole screen. A display server that does not implement the method behaves as before. A reservation is counted once: where the area is already shorter than the screen at the top, that much is taken off the menu bar height rather than subtracted a second time, so a menu bar that reserves its own strip with the window manager does not cost twice its height. On X11 the area comes from _NET_WORKAREA, which the backend already reads. With a work area of 0 128 800 450 on an 800x600 screen and a 22 high menu bar standing in the reserved strip, -visibleFrame was 0 0 800 578 and is now 0 128 800 450.
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The frame of a screen was replaced by _NET_WORKAREA whenever there was a single monitor, so NSScreen described what the window manager leaves over rather than the display. An application could not learn the geometry of the monitor, and one that reserves space itself, a menu bar or a dock, could not place itself in the strip it had just reserved, since that strip lies outside every frame it can see. The frame is the monitor again, the work area is kept beside it, and -workAreaForScreen: answers it. The other servers answer their whole screen, which is what they reserve nothing of. This is the backend half of the pair discussed in gnustep#217; the gui half, which builds -[NSScreen visibleFrame] from the new method, is gnustep/libs-gui#953. It sits on top of gnustep#226, whose flip of the _NET_WORKAREA origin and count of monitors rather than outputs it needs and does not repeat.
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The patch that built the visible frame from the work area went on to subtract the menu bar height from it, so where the window manager had already reserved the menu bar's strip, as it does when the menu bar is a window of its own, those pixels were taken off twice and applications were told the screen was shorter than it is. Only as much of the menu bar height as the work area has not already been reduced by is taken off now. Measured on an 800x600 screen with a 22 pixel menu bar at the top and a dock at the bottom: the visible frame was 0 128 800 428 and is now 0 128 800 450, which is the work area itself. Reviewers of gnustep/libs-gui#953 asked for exactly this; the pull request carries the same change.
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This is the libs-gui half of the paired change discussed in gnustep/libs-back#217: the backend reports the area the window manager leaves to application windows, and
-[NSScreen visibleFrame]is built from it.-visibleFrametakes the whole screen and subtracts the menu bar, so it ignores the space a panel or a dock reserves, and an application that places a window in the visible frame puts it under whatever else is on the screen.GSDisplayServer -workAreaForScreen:answers that area, an empty rect when the server knows of none, in which case-visibleFramebehaves exactly as before. A reservation is counted once, as @rfm asked for in #217: where the area is already shorter than the screen at the top, that much is taken off the menu bar height rather than subtracted again, so a menu bar that reserves its own strip with the window manager does not cost twice its height.On an 800x600 screen whose window manager reserves the lower 128 pixels and a 22 pixel strip at the top for the menu bar (
_NET_WORKAREA=0, 22, 800, 450, which the X11 backend already reads):With nothing reserved (
_NET_WORKAREAequal to the screen) both builds give0 0 800 578, the menu bar height coming off as before.The test skips itself where the display server reserves nothing, so a bare server without a window manager is not asked to produce a work area.
The backend half is gnustep/libs-back#217, which needs gnustep/libs-back#226 under it; the two can be merged together.
cc @pkgdemon