5. Session Management
This section contains some conventions for clients that participate in
session management. See
X Session Management Protocol
for further details. Clients that do not support this protocol cannot
expect their window state (e.g. WM_STATE, position, size and stacking order)
to be preserved across sessions.
5.1. Client Support for Session Management
Each session participant will obtain a unique client identifier (client-ID)
from the session manager. The client must identify one top level window as
the "client leader." This window must be created by the client. It may
be in any state, including the Withdrawn state. The client leader window
must have a SM_CLIENT_ID property, which contains the client-ID obtained
from the session management protocol. That property must:
- be of type STRING;
- be of format 8; and
- contain the client-ID as a string of XPCS characters encoded using ISO
8859-1.
All top-level, non-transient windows created by a client on the same display
as the client leader must have a WM_CLIENT_LEADER property. This property
contains a window ID that identifies the client leader window. The client
leader window must have a WM_CLIENT_LEADER property containing its own
window ID (i.e. the client leader window is pointing to itself). Transient
windows need not have a WM_CLIENT_LEADER property if the client leader can
be determined using the information in the WM_TRANSIENT_FOR property. The
WM_CLIENT_LEADER property must:
- be of type WINDOW;
- be of format 32; and
- contain the window ID of the client leader window.
A client must withdraw all of its top level windows on the same display
before modifiying either the WM_CLIENT_LEADER or the SM_CLIENT_ID property
of its client leader window.
It is necessary that other clients be able to uniquely identify a window
(across sessions) among all windows related to the same client-ID. For
example, a window manager can require this unique ID to restore geometry
information from a previous session, or a workspace manager could use it to
restore information about which windows are in which workspace. A client
may optionally provide a WM_WINDOW_ROLE property to uniquely identify a
window within the scope specified above. The combination of SM_CLIENT_ID
and WM_WINDOW_ROLE can be used by other clients to uniquely identify a
window across sessions.
If the WM_WINDOW_ROLE property is not specified on a top level window, a
client that needs to uniquely identify that window will try to use instead
the values of WM_CLASS and WM_NAME. If a client has multiple windows with
identical WM_CLASS and WM_NAME properties, then it should provide a
WM_WINDOW_ROLE property.
The client must set the WM_WINDOW_ROLE property to a string that uniquely
identifies that window among all windows that have the same client leader
window. The property must:
- be of type STRING;
- be of format 8; and
- contain a string restricted to the XPCS characters, encoded in ISO 8859-1.
5.2. Window Manager Support for Session Management
A window manager supporting session management must register with the
session manager and obtain its own client-ID. The window manager should
save and restore information such as the WM_STATE, the layout of windows on
the screen, and their stacking order, for every client window that has a
valid SM_CLIENT_ID property (on itself, or on the window named by
WM_CLIENT_LEADER) and that can be uniquely identified.
Clients are allowed to change this state during the first phase of the
session checkpoint process. Therefore, window managers should request a
second checkpoint phase and save clients' state only during that phase.
Christophe Tronche, ch@tronche.com