`borderWidth = 0` breaks workspaces with full-screen applications. about xmonad HOT 3 OPEN

I don't have this problem with VMware, and suspect it's a bug with Steam and non-reparenting window managers; they may incorrectly assume that a nonzero border width means there's no window frame. (Steam and a number of other cross-platform UI toolkits need to translate coordinates for their canvases between X11/Wayland-style and Windows-style, which means they need to account for window frames.)

from xmonad.

Reparenting is taking a new window and making it a child of a frame window. Most other window management systems, notably including Windows, make the frame and titllebar part of the client GUI toolkit; X11 gives it to the window manager.

Why this is relevant is that X11 also does window-relative addressing, while most others (again notably including Windows) use screen-relative. So when writing a cross-platform toolkit you need to translate between the two, which on X11 means you also need to account for the frame window, especially in the case of canvas widgets. Java, Mono, and Steam have all had problems with not identifying frame windows or their absence properly, leading to clients looping due to IMO poor coding practices.

from xmonad.

@geekosaur that's interesting. Would you be able to explain to me what 'reparenting' means in this context? Furthermore, could you suggest any other Xorg window managers I could test to see if the issue is truly with Steam?

Last night (after posting the initial report) I found out that applying noBorders myLayoutHook causes the same, unwanted behaviour but smartBorders . noBorders $ myLayoutHook works fine.

from xmonad.