[squeak-dev] full-screen mode - Linux

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Tue Jul 5 19:51:20 UTC 2011


Does anyone like full-screen mode besides me?  Years ago, when I used
Windows, I would always run my Squeak images full-screen because there
is something zen-like about being totally immersed into the image
environment - it can be nicer experience than running with OS window
and the start-bar cruft showing.

But now I'm using Linux and, under that VM, full-screen mode does not
allow any other windows to be displayed over full-screen Squeak.  For
example, I can't press Alt+Tab to bring my command-window to the top,
it appears for a split second but then Squeak paints right back over
it, but without keyboard focus!  The only way to access any other
program is to bring Squeak out of full-screen mode.

Which is why the button to go full-screen was recently put to the
upper-right corner - to facilitate the constant switching needed to be
able to run full-screen.

However, there is a danger with going full-screen.  Cog is not very
friendly to being interrupted - doing so often seems to lock the image
- and this is a bad situation in full-screen mode since you can't get
to any other windows to kill the process.  The only option is a
hard-power off - an ungraceful shutdown - losing all unsaved data in
all applications - ouch!

Would it be difficult for the Linux VM to behave similarly to the
Windows VM w.r.t. full-screen mode?

 - Chris



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