path: root/xembed/spec/xembed-spec.xml

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<article id="index">
  <articleinfo>
    <title>XEmbed Protocol Specification</title>
    <releaseinfo>Version 0.5</releaseinfo>
    <pubdate>15 April 2002</pubdate>
    <authorgroup>
      <author>
	<firstname>Mathias</firstname>
	<surname>Ettrich</surname>
	<affiliation>
	  <address>
	    <email>ettrich@trolltech.com</email>
	  </address>
	</affiliation>
      </author>
      <author>
	<firstname>Owen</firstname>
	<surname>Taylor</surname>
	<affiliation>
	  <address>
	    <email>otaylor@redhat.com</email>
	  </address>
	</affiliation>
      </author>
    </authorgroup>
  </articleinfo>

  <sect1 id="overview">
    <title>Overview</title>
    <para>
      XEmbed is a protocol that uses basic X mechanisms such as client
      messages and reparenting windows to provide embedding of a
      control from one application into another application. Some
      of the goals of the XEmbed design are:
    </para>
    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
	<para>
	  Support for out-of process controls, written in any toolkit
	  or even plain Xlib.
	</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>
	  Support for in-process-controls when mixing different
	  toolkits in one process.
	</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>
	  Smooth integration of the embedding application and embedded client
	  in areas such as input device handling and visual feedback.
	</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>
	  Easy implementation. A full implementation supporting all
	  details correctly may require minor toolkit modifications,
	  but it should be possible to get basic functionality going
	  in less than 1000 lines of code.
	</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
    <para>
      Goal 1 is the most urgent one. A embedding specification allows
      developers to write applets for whatever desktop the user is
      using in whatever toolkit they prefer. Goal 2 is more of
      something to keep in mind than a immediate requirement. While
      there are other ways to mix two or more toolkits, using XEmbed
      might be the easiest and thus most comfortable way. Goal 3
      describes the targeted level of integration. The users should
      not necessarily notice that they work with embedded controls;
      devices like the keyboard and the mouse should work as expected,
      inactive windows should look like they are inactive, and so
      forth. The level of integration may, however, be limited by goal
      4. In order for the protocol to be successful, it's crucial to
      get implementations for the most important toolkits. Thus, the
      implementation should not require too much coding and no or only
      few modifications to the toolkit's kernel.
    </para>
    <para>
      At the time of writing, an implementation of XEmbed is included
      in GTK+-2.0 that mostly conforms to this version of the
      specification. The main area of divergence is in the area of
      accelerators, where a simpler scheme is implemented than the
      XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR, XEMBED_UNREGISTER_ACCELERATOR
      accelerator scheme described here. The KDE libraries (libkdeui)
      include QXEmbed, a mostly-complete implementation for Qt of an
      earlier version of the protocol.
    </para>
  </sect1>
  <sect1 id="definitions">
    <title>Definitions</title>
    <variablelist>
      <varlistentry>
	<term>Active</term>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    A toplevel window is <firstterm>active</firstterm> if it
	    currently is receiving keyboard events. (The window or a
	    descendant has the X keyboard focus.) A widget within the
	    toplevel is active if the toplevel is active, regardless
	    of whether that widget has the input focus within the
	    toplevel.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>
      <varlistentry>
	<term>Client</term>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    In an embedding situation, the <firstterm>client</firstterm> is
	    the window that is embedded into an embedder. Sometimes also
	    called a plug. (Note that the usage here should not be
	    confused with the typical X usage of "client" to mean an application
	    connecting to the X server. That is always referred to as
	    an application in this document) 
	  </para>
	  <remark>
	    [ Should we replace client by some other term in
	    this document to avoid the confusion? ]
	  </remark>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>
      <varlistentry>
	<term>Embedder</term>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    In an embedding situation, the <firstterm>embedder</firstterm>
	    is the graphical location that embeds an external
	    client. Sometimes also called a socket or site.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>
      <varlistentry>
	<term>Focused</term>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    A widget is <firstterm>focused</firstterm> if it receives
	    keyboard events within its toplevel. This is without
	    regard to whether the toplevel is active, and has nothing
	    to do with the X keyboard focus.
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>
    </variablelist>
  </sect1>
  <sect1 id="rationale">
    <title>Rationale and discussion</title>
    <para>
      The basis for handling embedding is that the embedder acts like
      a "window manager" for the client. (The window management
      protocol is defined in the X Inter-Client Communications Manual
      or ICCCM).  The embedder selects with SubstructureRedirectMask
      on its window so that it can intercept, and then the client
      window is reparented (using
      <function>XReparentWindow()</function>)
      as a child of the embedder window. Because of the substructure redirect, the
      embedder is able to intercept calls to move or resize the client
      window, and handle them as appropriate to the location in the
      embedding application. (Map requests are also redirected, but
      XEmbed actually handles map requests separately... see the
      description of the XEMBED_MAPPED flag.)
    </para>
    <para>
      The window management protocol is sufficient to handle the
      basics of visual embedding, but has deficiencies in other areas
      that prevent it from providing natural integration between
      toolkits.  These areas include:
    </para>
    
    <simplelist>
      <member>window activation state</member>
      <member>keyboard focus</member>
      <member>tab focus chain</member>
      <member>keyboard short cuts / accelerators</member>
      <member>modality</member>
      <member>drag and drop (XDND)</member>
    </simplelist>
    
    <para>
      The XEmbed protocol is mainly concerned with communicating
      additional information between embedder and client to handle
      these areas. Communication in XEmbed is done by forwarding
      slightly modified XEvents using
      <function>XSendEvent()</function>,
      by sending special XEmbed messages, and by setting X properties. In addition,
      standard ICCCM features like WMNormalHints are used where
      appropriate.
    </para>
    <para>
      The next sections explain why these problems occur with the
      simple "window management" approach and how XEmbed solves them.
    </para>

    <sect2>
      <title>Window activation state</title>
      <para>
	A widget has to know the activation state of its toplevel
	window. This enables input widgets like a line editor, to display
	a blinking cursor only when the user can actually type into it. In
	addition, certain GUI styles choose to display inactive windows
	differently, typically with a lighter and less contrasting color
	palette.
      </para>
      <para>
	Unfortunately, there are no such messages like WindowActivate
	or WindowDeactivate in the X protocol. Instead, a window knows
	that it is active when it receives keyboard focus (FocusIn
	event with certain modes) or looses it (FocusOut event with certain
	modes). This applies to embedded child windows only, when the
	mouse pointer points onto one of the child's subwindows in the very
	moment the window manager puts the X focus on the toplevel
	window. For that reason, XEmbed requires the embedders to pass
	XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE and XEMBED_WINDOW_DEACTIVATE messages to
	their respective clients whenever they get or loose X keyboard
      </para>
    </sect2>

    <sect2>
      <title>Keyboard focus</title>
      <para>
	The delivery of keyboard events in X is designed in a way that
	does not correspond to the typical operation of modern
	toolkits; instead it seems designed to allow things to allow
	things to work without either a window manager or a focus
	handling in the toolkit. Typically, key events are sent to the
	window which has the X input focus (set with
	XSetInputFocus()). However, if the mouse pointer is inside
	that focus window, the event is sent to the subwindow of the
	focus window that is under the moues pointer. In modern toolkits,
	the X input focus is typically left on the toplevel window and
	a separate logical input focus is implemented within the
	toolkit. The toolkit ignores the window that the key event is
	actually sent to (which might be a scrollbar or other random
	widget within the toplevel, depending on where the mouse
	pointer is), and distributes key events to widget with the
	logical input focus.
      </para>
      <para>
	So, for standard operation, the behavior where key events are sent
	to the window with the mouse pointer is simply ignored. But
	with embedded windows, it causes problems, since, if the
	mouse pointer is within the embedded window, the outer toolkit
	doesn't see any key events, even if the logical keyboard focus
	is elsewhere within the outer toolkits toplevel window.
      </para>
      <para>
	Previous embedding techniques therefore required clients to
	forward any key event they receive (KeyPress and KeyRelease) to
	their respective embedder. In order to support multiple levels of
	embedding, events that stem from a SendEvent request had to be
	forwarded as well. While this is a possible solution, it adds both
	race conditions and inefficiency.
      </para>
      <para>
	The solution proposed by XEmbed is is to beat X11 with its own
	weapons: The topmost toolkit is <emphasis>required</emphasis>
	to keep the X input focus on one of its own windows without
	any embedded children. Keeping the focus on such a window
	ensures that key events are always delivered to the outer
	toolkit and thus can be forwarded easily to any embedded
	window. This also makes it possible to use this part of XEmbed
	with clients that do not support the protocol at all, without
	breaking keyboard input for the embedding application.
      </para>
      <para>
	In detail, the topmost embedder creates a not-visible X Window to
	hold the focus, the focus proxy. (It might be a 1x1 child
	window of toplevel located at -1,-1.) Since the focus proxy isn't
	an ancestor of the client window, the X focus can never move
	into the client window because of the mouse pointer location.
	In other words, whenever the outer window is activated
	(receives the X input focus), it has to put the X focus on the
	FocusProxy by calling <function>XSetInputFocus()</function>.
      </para>
      <para>
	The trouble with this is, that you should not use <function>XSetInputFocus()</function>
	without a proper time stamp from the Server, to avoid race
	conditions. Unfortunately, the FocusIn event does not carry a
	timestamp. The solution to this is, to ask the window manager for
	the WM_TAKE_FOCUS window protocol. Thus, whenever the window is
	activated, it will receive a WM_PROTOCOLS client message with
	data.l[0] being WM_TAKE_FOCUS and data.l[1] being a proper
	timestamp. This timestamp can be used safely for the call to
	<function>XSetInputFocus()</function>.
      </para>
      <para>
	If an embedder widget gets the logical input focus, it sends
	an XEMBED_FOCUS_IN message to its client. The client that
	receives this messages knows that its logical focus is now
	also the logical focus of the application window and will
	react accordingly. If its logical focus lies on the line
	editor control mentioned above, and the window is active, the
	editor will show a blinking cursor after processing this
	message.
      </para>
      <para>
	In a similar fashion, if the embedder looses focus, it sends
	an XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT message.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Tab focus chain</title>
      <para>
	X does not have a concept of a tab focus chain, it is up to the
	toolkit or the application to implement it. Since the concept
	is standard among almost all toolkits, XEmbed supports it. An
	XEmbed client integrates perfectly in the embedder's tab focus
	chain, i.e. the user can tab onto the client, through all its
	widgets and back to the outer world without noticing that they
	traversed an external window.
      </para>
      <para>
	As explained in the previous section, an embedder sends an
	XEMBED_FOCUS_IN message to its client when it gets focus. The
	detail code of this message is per default 0, that is,
	XEMBED_FOCUS_CURRENT. It indicates that the clients keeps its own
	logical focus where it was. To support tabbing, XEmbed provides
	two more detail codes, namely XEMBED_FOCUS_FIRST and
	XEMBED_FOCUS_LAST, that indicate that the client should move
	its focus to the beginning or end of the focus chain.
      </para>
      <para>
	When the user tabs to the very end of a client's tab chain, the
	client follows the request (i.e. it puts its logical focus back to
	the beginning its tab chain) and sends an XEMBED_FOCUS_NEXT
	message to the embedder. If the embedder has siblings that accept
	tab focus, it will do a virtual tab forward. As a result, it will
	loose focus itself and consequently send an XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT
	message to the client. As expected, the client's line edit control
	from the previous example will stop blinking.
      </para>
      <para>
	Backward tabbing is done exactly in the same manner, using the
	XEMBED_FOCUS_PREV message.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Keyboard short cuts / accelerators</title>
      <para>
	XEmbed is designed in such a way, that keyboard events are
	received by the toplevel window, and then sent down the focus
	focus chain. Toolkits will usually check for shortcuts or
	accelerators before sending the event to the focus widget. If
	such a shortcut is defined, the respective action is taken
	rather than passing the event through to the focus
	widget. This means, accelerators in the outmost window always
	work properly, whereas accelerators defined inside an embedded
	client only work if that client actually has focus. XEmbed
	solves this problem with two messages,
	XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR and XEMBED_UNREGISTER_ACCELERATOR.
	With XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR, a client can reserve a
	certain key/modifier combination as shortcut or
	accelerator. The message is passed through to the topmost
	embedder, where the key combination is stored. An
	XEMBED_UNREGISTER_ACCELERATOR message releases the key again.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Modality</title>
      <para>
	If an application window is shadowed by a modal dialog, no user
	input is supposed to get through. The XEmbed design ensures this
	for keyboard input, because the toplevel window knows about its
	modal state and will not pass key events through. Embedded clients
	thus inherit the modality from the topmost embedder. Mouse input,
	however, is sent directly to the embedded clients by the X-Server,
	unaffected by the modality of the application window. To give
	clients the possibility to behave correctly when being shadowed by
	a modal dialog, an embedder can choose to send an
	XEMBED_MODALITY_ON message to its client when it becomes shadowed,
	and an XEMBED_MODALITY_OFF message when it leaves modality
	again. If the client contains embedders itself, those have to pass
	both messages through to their clients.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Drag and drop (XDND)</title>
      <para>
	XDND drag-and-drop does not work with reparented external
	windows, since messages are exchanged with the toplevel window
	only. This is done for performance reasons. While it is cheap to
	get the window under the mouse pointer, it is very expensive to
	get a window under another window. Unfortunately, this is required
	quite often when dragging objects around, since the pointer
	may overlap the drag icon.
      </para>
      <para>
	Solving the drag-and-drop problem, however, is quite easy,
	since the XDND protocol was carefully designed in a way that
	makes it possible to support embedded windows. Basically, the
	embedder has to operate as drag-and-drop proxy for the client. Any
	XDND messages like XdndEnter, Xdnd,Leave, etc. simply have to be
	passed through. A toolkit's XDND implementation has to take this
	situation in consideration.
      </para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>
  <sect1 id="lifecycle"> 
    <title>Embedding life cycle</title>
    <para>
      The protocol is started by the embedder. The window ID of
      the client window is passed (by unspecified means) to the
      embedding application, and the embedder calls
      <function>XReparentWindow()</function> to reparent the client
      window into the embedder window.
    </para>
    <para>
      Implementations may choose to support an alternate method of
      beginning the protocol where the window ID of the embedder
      is passed to client application and the client creates a window
      within the embedder, or reparents an existing window into
      the embedder's window. Which method of starting XEmbed is
      used a matter up to higher level agreement and outside the
      scope of this specification.
    </para>
    <para>
      In either case the client window must have a property called
      _XEMBED_INFO on it. This property has type _XEMBED_INFO
      and format 32. The contents of the property are:
    </para>
    <table>
      <title>_XEMBED_INFO</title>
      <tgroup cols="3">
	<thead>
	  <row>
	    <entry>Field</entry><entry>Type</entry><entry>Comments</entry>
	  </row>
	</thead>
	<tbody>
	  <row>
	    <entry>version</entry><entry>CARD32</entry><entry>The protocol version</entry>
	  </row>
	  <row>
	    <entry>flags</entry><entry>CARD32</entry><entry>A bitfield of flags</entry>
	  </row>
	</tbody>
      </tgroup>
    </table>
    <para>
      The <structfield>version</structfield> field indicates the
      maximum version of the protocol that the client supports.
      The embedder should retrieve this field and set the data2 field
      of the XEMBED_EMBEDDED_NOTIFY to
      Min (<structfield>version</structfield>, <replaceable>max version supported by embedder</replaceable>).
      The version number corresponding to the current version of the
      protocol is 0. 
      <remark>[Should the version be defined as (Major &lt;&lt; 16 | Minor) ?]</remark>
    </para>
    <para>
      The currently defined bit in the
      <structfield>flags</structfield> field is:
    </para>
    <programlisting><!--
-->/* Flags for _XEMBED_INFO */
#define XEMBED_MAPPED                   (1 &lt;&lt; 0)<!--
 --></programlisting>
    <variablelist>
      <varlistentry>
	<term>XEMBED_MAPPED</term>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    If set the client should be mapped. The embedder must
	    track the flags field by selecting for PropertyNotify
	    events on the client and map and unmap the client
	    appropriately. (The embedder can leave the client unmapped
	    when this bit is set, but should immediately unmap the
	    client upon detecting that the bit has been unset.)
	  </para>
	  <remark>
	    Rationale: the reason for using this bit rather than
	    MapRequest events is so that the client can reliably
	    control it's map state before the inception of the
	    protocol without worry that the client window will
	    become visible as a child of the root window.
	  </remark>
	</listitem>
      </varlistentry>
    </variablelist>
    <para>
      To support future expansion, all fields not currently defined
      must be set to zero. To add proprietary extensions to the
      XEMBED protocol, an application must use a separate property, rather
      than using unused bits in the struct field or extending the
      _XEMBED_INFO property.
    </para>
    <para>
      At the start of the protocol, the embedder first sends an
      XEMBED_EMBEDDED_NOTIFY message, then sends
      XEMBED_FOCUS_IN, XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE, and XEMBED_MODALITY_ON
      messages as necessary to synchronize the state of the
      client with that of the embedder. Before any of these messages
      received, the state of the client is:
      <simplelist>
	<member>Not focused</member>
	<member>Not active</member>
	<member>Modality off</member>
      </simplelist>
    </para>
    <para>
      If the embedder is geometry managed and can change its size, it
      should obey the client's WMNormalHints settings. Note that
      most toolkits will not have equivalents for all the hints in
      the WMNormalHints settings, clients must not assume that the
      requested hints will be obeyed exactly. The
      <structfield>width_inc</structfield>,
      <structfield>height_inc</structfield>,
      <structfield>min_aspect</structfield>, and
      <structfield>max_aspect</structfield> fields are examples of
      fields from WMNormalHints that are unlikely to be supported
      by embedders.
    </para>
    <para>
      The protocol ends in one of three ways:
    </para>
    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
	<para>
	  The embedder can unmap the client and reparent the client
	  window to the root window. If the client receives an
	  ReparentNotify event, it should check the
	  <structfield>parent</structfield> field of the
	  <structname>XReparentEvent</structname> structure. If this
	  is the root window of the window's screen, then the protocol
	  is finished and there is no further interaction. If it
	  is a window other than the root window, then the protocol
	  continues with the new parent acting as the embedder window.
	</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>
	  The client can reparent its window out of the embedder
	  window. If the embedder receives a ReparentNotify signal
	  with the <structfield>window</structfield> field being the
	  current client and the <structfield>parent</structfield>
	  field being a different window, this indicates the end
	  of the protocol.
	</para>
	<remark>
	  [ GTK+ doesn't currently handle this; but it seems useful
	  to allow the protocol to be ended in a non-destructive
	  fashion from either end. ]
	</remark>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
	<para>
	  The client can destroy its window.
	</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
  </sect1>
  <sect1 id="messages">
    <title>Message Specifications</title>
    <para>
      An XEmbed message is an X11 client message with message type
      "_XEMBED". The format is 32, the first three data longs carry the
      toolkit's X time (l[0]), the message's major opcode (l[1]) and the
      message's detail code (l[2]). If no detail is required, the value
      passed has to be 0. The remaining two data longs (l[3] and l[4])
      are reserved for data1 and data2. Unused bytes of the client
      message are set to 0. The event is sent to the target window with
      no event mask and propagation turned off.
    </para>
    <para>
      The valid XEmbed messages are:
    </para>
    <programlisting><!--
-->/* XEMBED messages */
#define XEMBED_EMBEDDED_NOTIFY		0
#define XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE  	1
#define XEMBED_WINDOW_DEACTIVATE  	2
#define XEMBED_REQUEST_FOCUS	 	3
#define XEMBED_FOCUS_IN 	 	4
#define XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT  		5
#define XEMBED_FOCUS_NEXT 		6
#define XEMBED_FOCUS_PREV 		7
/* 8-9 were used for XEMBED_GRAB_KEY/XEMBED_UNGRAB_KEY */
#define XEMBED_MODALITY_ON 		10
#define XEMBED_MODALITY_OFF 		11
#define XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR     12
#define XEMBED_UNREGISTER_ACCELERATOR   13
#define XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR     14<!--
 --></programlisting>
    <para>
      A detail code is required for XEMBED_FOCUS_IN. The following values
      are valid:
    </para>
    <programlisting><!--
-->/* Details for  XEMBED_FOCUS_IN: */
#define XEMBED_FOCUS_CURRENT		0
#define XEMBED_FOCUS_FIRST 		1
#define XEMBED_FOCUS_LAST		2<!--
 --></programlisting>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_EMBEDDED_NOTIFY</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the embedder to the client on embedding, after
	reparenting and mapping the client's X window. A client that
	receives this messages knows that its window was embedded by an
	XEmbed site and not simply reparented by a window manager. To support toolkits
	that do not keep track of reparenting events, the message carries
	the embedder's window handle as data1:
      </para>
      <table>
	<title>XEMBED_EMBEDDED_NOTIFY</title>
	<tgroup cols="2">
	  <tbody>
	    <row>
	      <entry>data1</entry><entry>The embedder's window handle.</entry>
	    </row>
	    <row>
	      <entry>data2</entry><entry>The protocol version in use
	      (see the description of _XEMBED_INFO).</entry>
	    </row>
	  </tbody>
	</tgroup>
      </table>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE / XEMBED_WINDOW_DEACTIVATE</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the embedder to the client when the window becomes
	active or inactive, i.e. when the window gets or looses the
	keyboard input focus. If the client contains embedders itself,
	those have to pass the message through to their clients.
      </para>
      <para>
	Note that no XEMBED_FOCUS_IN or XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT messages
	should be sent when the toplevel window gains or loses
	focus. The XEMBED_FOCUS_IN and XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT messages
	refer only to focus <firstterm>within</firstterm> the
	toplevel window and are independent of toplevel activation
	state. This independence is necessary so that input focus
	within a toplevel can be moved programmatically when the
	toplevel doesn't have input focus.
      </para>
      <remark>
	[ GTK+ is currently in violation of the preceding note,
	  and sends FOCUS_IN and FOCUS_OUT only when the toplevel
	  is active. See 
	<ulink
	  url="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67943">GNOME bug #67943</ulink> ]
      </remark>
      <para>
	Widgets within the client should typically be displayed with
	the focus only when the client both has focus and is active.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_REQUEST_FOCUS</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the client to the embedder when the client wants
	focus. The most common occasion is when the user clicks into one
	of the client's child widgets, for example a line editor, in order
	to type something in.
      </para>
      <para>
	The message is passed along to the topmost embedder that
	eventually responds with a XEMBED_FOCUS_IN message. The focus in
	message is passed all the way back until it reaches the original
	focus requester. In the end, not only the original client has
	focus, but also all its ancestor embedders.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_FOCUS_IN</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the embedder to the client when it gets focus. The
	detail code determines, where the client shall move its own
	logical focus to. Three possibilities exist:
      </para>
      <variablelist>
	<varlistentry>
	  <term>XEMBED_FOCUS_CURRENT</term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Normal activation, does not move the clients logical
	      focus.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>
	<varlistentry>
	  <term>XEMBED_FOCUS_FIRST</term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Used when the user tabs onto a client. It indicates that
	      the client should put its logical focus onto the widget
	      that comes first in its own tab focus chain.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>
	<varlistentry>
	  <term>XEMBED_FOCUS_LIST</term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Used when the user tabs onto a client. It indicates that
	      the client should put its logical focus onto the widget
	      that comes first in its own tab focus chain.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>
      </variablelist>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the embedder to the client when it looses focus.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_FOCUS_NEXT</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the client to the embedder when it reaches the end of
	its logical tab chain after the user tabbed forward. If the
	embedder has siblings that accept tab focus, it will do a virtual
	tab forward. As a result, it will loose focus itself and
	consequently send an XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT message to the client
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_FOCUS_PREV</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the client to the embedder when it reaches the
	beginning of its logical tab chain after the user tabbed
	backward. If the embedder has siblings that accept tab focus, it
	will do a virtual tab backward. As a result, it will loose focus
	itself and consequently send an XEMBED_FOCUS_OUT message to the
	client
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR / XEMBED_UNREGISTER_ACCELERATOR</title>
      <para>
	A client that needs to reserve a certain key/modifier
	combination as shortcut or accelerators, sends a XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR
	message to its embedder. As long as the embedder itself is a child
	of a client, the accelerator will be propagated up to the toplevel.
      </para>
      <table>
	<title>XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR</title>
	<tgroup cols="2">
	  <tbody>
	    <row>
	      <entry>detail</entry><entry>accelerator_id</entry>
	    </row>
	    <row>
	      <entry>data1</entry><entry>X key symbol</entry>
	    </row>
	    <row>
	      <entry>data2</entry><entry>bit field of modifier values</entry>
	    </row>
	  </tbody>
	</tgroup>
      </table>
      <para>
	The accelerator_id is used to identify the accelerator when
	activating the accelerator. The reason for using an
	accelerator ID instead of identifying accelerators simply by
	key symbol and modifiers is to allow the correct handling of
	overloaded accelerators with embedded widgets. (An accelerator
	is overloaded if there multiple accelerators on the same key,
	usually because of accidental collisions.) When an overloaded
	accelerator is pressed repeatedly, the toplevel activates
	accelerators on that key in round-robin fashion. If this
	round-robin behavior is not supported by the embedding
	toolkit, picking an arbitrary accelerator for the key and
	activating it is acceptable. Well designed applications should
	avoid collisions in any case.
      </para>
      <note>
	<para>
	  Ordering the round-robin of conflicting accelerators
	  in a predictable (geometric or in focus chain) order
	  is desirable. This can be achieved if the toplevel sorts
	  the conflicting accelerators as if they applied to the
	  client instead of widgets within the client and then
	  each client does the same sort on the subset of conflicting
	  accelerators within it. To get this to work properly
	  if there are conflicting accelerators within a client, say widget
	  A and B both have the same mnemonic, then instead of
	  registering one accelerator for widget A and one for
	  widget B, the client should register two accelerators that
	  corresponds to both A and B, and then when
	  XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR is received for either
	  accelerator, implement round robin between A and B
	  with the correct sorting.
	</para>
      </note>
      <para>
	The modified bit field is a bitwise OR of values indicating
	various modifiers; these indicate logical accelerator
	keys rather than corresponding directly to the bits in
	the XKeyEvent state field.
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->/* Modifiers field for XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR */
#define XEMBED_MODIFIER_SHIFT    (1 &lt;&lt; 0)
#define XEMBED_MODIFIER_CONTROL  (1 &lt;&lt; 1)
#define XEMBED_MODIFIER_ALT      (1 &lt;&lt; 2)
#define XEMBED_MODIFIER_SUPER    (1 &lt;&lt; 3)
#define XEMBED_MODIFIER_HYPER    (1 &lt;&lt; 4)<!--
   --></programlisting>
      <para>
	(Meta is intentionally left out here because if you try to separate
	Alt and Meta, a large fraction of users will experience problems
	with their keyboard setups... there is no reliably standard
	of which one is the primary modifier key and on the Alt key.)
      </para>
      <para>
	On activation, the topmost embedder will send
	XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR to its client; if the
	accelerator was registered by an embedder inside that
	client, the embedder will send XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR
	to its client and so forth.
      </para>
      <para>
	Note that the assignment of ID's is private for each pair
	of client and embedder and when accelerators are being
	propagated through multiple client/embedder pairs, a
	different accelerator ID may be used for each pair.
      </para>
      <para>
	The XEMBED_UNREGISTER_ACCELERATOR message releases the key
	combination again.
      </para>
      <table>
	<title>XEMBED_UNREGISTER_ACCELERATOR</title>
	<tgroup cols="2">
	  <tbody>
	    <row>
	      <entry>detail</entry><entry>integer ID passed
		to XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR</entry>
	    </row>
	  </tbody>
	</tgroup>
      </table>
      <para>
	Hint to implementors: It is the responsibility of the
	embedder to keep track of all forwarded accelerators
	and to remove them when the client window dies.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR</title>
      <para>
	The XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR message is sent when a
	accelerator previously registered with
	XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR is activated on the toplevel
	containing the embedder. 
      </para>
      <table>
	<title>XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR</title>
	<tgroup cols="2">
	  <tbody>
	    <row>
	      <entry>detail</entry><entry>integer ID passed
		when registering the accelerator</entry>
	    </row>
	    <row>
	      <entry>data1</entry><entry>flags.</entry>
	    </row>
	  </tbody>
	</tgroup>
      </table>
      <para>
	The following bit is defined for the flags field; all
	other bits must be zero.
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->/* Flags for XEMBED_ACTIVATE_ACCELERATOR */
#define XEMBED_ACCELERATOR_OVERLOADED (1 &lt;&lt; 0)<!--
	-->
      </programlisting>
      <variablelist>
	<varlistentry>
	  <term>XEMBED_ACCELERATOR_OVERLOADED</term>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      This flag indicates that multiple accelerators exist for
	      the key combination within the toplevel. The toolkit
	      may modify the behavior of the accelerator based on
	      this value. For instance, if the accelerator is a
	      mnemonic for a button, it might activate the the button
	      immediately if the accelerator is not overloaded, but
	      when overloaded, it would only focus the button.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	</varlistentry>
      </variablelist>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>XEMBED_MODALITY_ON / XEMBED_MODALITY_OFF</title>
      <para>
	Sent from the embedder to the client when the window becomes
	shadowed by a modal dialog, or when it is released again. If the
	client contains embedders itself, those have to pass the message
	through to their clients. An embedded control should ignore
	mouse input while modality is active. Note that that keyboard
	input is blocked anyway by XEmbed, since the topmost embedder will
	not pass keyboard events through in modal state.
      </para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="techniques">
    <title>Techniques</title>

    <sect2>
      <title>Handling errors</title>
      <para>
	Implementors of the XEmbed protocol should handle the other
	party disappearing at any point. For this reason X errors
	must be trapped when performing any operation with a window
	not created by the application. This is done by using
	<function>XSetErrorHandler()</function>.
	A sample implementation of trapping errors in C looks like:
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->#include &lt;X11/Xlib.h&gt;

static int trapped_error_code = 0;
static int (*old_error_handler) (Display *, XErrorEvent *);

static int
error_handler(Display     *display,
	      XErrorEvent *error)
{
    trapped_error_code = error->error_code;
    return 0;
}

void
trap_errors(void)
{
    trapped_error_code = 0;
    old_error_handler = XSetErrorHandler(error_handler);
}

int
untrap_errors(void)
{
    XSetErrorHandler(old_error_handler);
    return trapped_error_code;
}<!--
 --></programlisting>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Forwarding X Events</title>
      <para>
	An XEmbed embedder has to forward key-press and key-release
	events to its respective client.
      </para>
      <para>
	Key events are forwarded by changing the event's window field
	to the window handle of the client and sending the modified
	message via <function>XSendEvent()</function> to the embedder,
	with no event mask and propagation turned off.
      </para>
      <para>
	Note: XEmbed requires toolkits to handle key-events that come
	from a SendEvent request. That means, if somebody can access
	your X-Server, it's possible to fake keyboard input. Given
	that most toolkits accept sent key events today anyway and the
	X Server is typically protected through magic cookie
	authorization, this is not considered to be an
	issue. Applications with higher security requirements may
	choose not to use embedded components, though, and to filter
	out any events coming from <function>XSendEvent()</function>.
      </para>
      <para>
	Given that Window client is the client's window handle,
	here is a piece of code of an imaginary event-loop in C that does
	the forwarding.
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->#include &lt;X11/Xlib.h&gt;

void handle_event(
	Display* dpy, /* display */
	XEvent* ev /* event */
){
    if ( ev->type == KeyPress || ev->type == KeyRelease ) {
            ev->xkey.window = client;
	    trap_errors();
            XSendEvent( dpy, client, False, NoEventMask, ev );
	    XSync( dpy, False );
	    if (untrap_errors()) {
	       /* Handle failure */
	    }
	    
            return;
    }
    ... /* normal event handling */
}<!--
  --></programlisting>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Sending XEmbed messages</title>
      <para>
	Given that Time x_time contains the timestamp from the event
	currently being processed. (CurrentTime is generally the best
	choice if no event is being processed), here is a valid
	implementation in C of sending an XEMBED message:
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->#include &lt;X11/Xlib.h&gt;

void send_xembed_message(
     Display* dpy, /* display */
     Window w, /* receiver */
     long message, /* message opcode */
     long detail  /* message detail */
     long data1  /* message data 1 */
     long data2  /* message data 2 */
){
    XEvent ev;
    memset(&amp;ev, 0, sizeof(ev));
    ev.xclient.type = ClientMessage;
    ev.xclient.window = w;
    ev.xclient.message_type = XInternAtom( dpy, "_XEMBED", False );
    ev.xclient.format = 32;
    ev.xclient.data.l[0] = x_time;
    ev.xclient.data.l[1] = message;
    ev.xclient.data.l[2] = detail;
    ev.xclient.data.l[3] = data1;
    ev.xclient.data.l[4] = data2;
    trap_errors();
    XSendEvent(dpy, w, False, NoEventMask, &amp;ev);
    XSync(dpy, False);
    if (untrap_errors()) {
	/* Handle failure */
    }
}<!--
    --></programlisting>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>
  <sect1 id="issues">
    <title>Issues</title>
    <sect2>
      <title>Implementation of modality</title>
      <para>
	The protocol could be simplified by removing the
	XEMBED_MODALITY_ON and XEMBED_MODALITY_OFF messages in favor
	of requiring the embedder to map an input-only window over
	it's child when it beings shadowed by a modal grab.
      </para>
      <para>
	One possible reason for the current protocol is that a toolkit
	might want to have elements such as scrollbars that remain
	active even when grab shadowed. (I know of no toolkit that
	actually implements this.)
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Clarify function of timestamps</title>
      <para>
	The function of the timestamp arguments needs to be clarified,
	as well as the requirements for what should be passed
	in the field. The original draft of the specification
	contained the text about the determining the timestamp.
      </para>
      <blockquote>
	<para>
	  The x time is to be updated whenever the toolkit receives an
	  event from the server that carries a timestamp. XEmbed client
	  messages qualify for that.
	</para>
	<para>
	  Hint to implementors: Check that the xembed time stamp
	  is actually later than your current x time. While this cannot
	  happen with ordinary XEvents, delayed client messages may have
	  this effect. Be prepared that evil implementations may even
	  pass CurrentTime sometimes.
	</para>
      </blockquote>
      <para>
	But I [OWT] wouldn't agree with this advice. The point
	of a timestamp is to make sure that when events are processed
	out of order, the event generated last by the user wins
	for shared resources such as input focus, selections, and
	grabs. An example of where this can matter is if you have
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->     Toplevel Window
       Embedder
         Client
	   Text Entry 1
       Embedder
         Client
	   Text Entry 2<!--
   --></programlisting>
      <para>
	If the entries are set to select the text on focus in, and the
	user hits TAB in quick succession, then the timestamps on the
	FOCUS_IN events are what makes sure that Entry 2 actually ends
	up owning the PRIMARY selection, instead of it being a race
	between the two clients. But in situations like this having
	the correct timestamp only matters if a user action triggers
	the behavior.
      </para>
      <para>
	Hence the advice that the timestamp should be the time from
	the event currently being processed.
      </para>
      <para>
	If no explicit user action is involved, then the
	best thing to do is to use CurrentTime; using the timestamp
	from the last X event received can cause problems if the
	ultimate trigger of the behavior is a timeout or network
	and the last X event happened some time in the distant past.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Complexity of accelerator handling</title>
      <para>
	The current specification for accelerator handling is a little
	complex. Most of the complexity (the accelerator IDs) comes
	from the need to handle conflicting accelerators.
	GTK+ currently implements a simpler scheme where grabs are
	identified only by key symbol and modifier and conflicting
	mnemonic resolution doesn't work across embedder/client
	interfaces.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Infinite loops in focusing</title>
      <para>
	There is the potential for infinite loops of focusing -
	Consider the case:
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->     Toplevel Window
       Embedder
         Client<!--
   --></programlisting>
      <para>
	Where there are no focusable sites in the client or in the
	toplevel window. Then if <keysym>Tab</keysym> is pressed, the embedder
	will send: FOCUS_IN/FOCUS_FIRST to the client, the client will
	send FOCUS_NEXT to the embedder, the toplevel window will
	wrap the focus around and send FOCUS_IN/FOCUS_FIRST to the
	client...
      </para>
      <para>
	The minimum mechanism that seems necessary to prevent this
	loop is a serial number in the FOCUS_IN/FOCUS_FIRST message
	that is repeated in a resulting FOCUS_NEXT message.
      </para>
      <para>
	A possibly better way of handling this could be to make FOCUS_IN have
	an explicit response; that, is, add a XEMBED_FOCUS_IN_RESPONSE
	that the client must send to the embedder after receipt
	of a FOCUS_IN message.
      </para>

      <table>
	<title>XEMBED_FOCUS_IN_RESPONSE</title>
	<tgroup cols="2">
	  <tbody>
	    <row>
	      <entry>detail</entry><entry>1 if the client accepted the focus, 0 otherwise</entry>
	    </row>
	    <row>
	      <entry>data1</entry><entry>serial number from XEMBED_FOCUS_IN</entry>
	    </row>
	  </tbody>
	</tgroup>
      </table>
      <para>
	The main problem with requiring a response here is that caller
	needs to wait for the return event, and to handle cases like
	parent (client 1) => child (client 2) => grandchild (client 1),
	it probably needs to process all sorts of incoming events at
	this point. If the user hits <keysym>Tab</keysym><keysym>Tab</keysym>
	in quick succession things could get very complicated.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Robustness</title>
      <para>	
	The protocol, as currently constituted, is not robust against
	the embedder crashing. This will result in the embedder
	window being destroyed by the X server, and, as a consequence
	client's window being unexpectedly destroyed, which will likely cause the
	client to die with a BadWindow error.
      </para>
      <para>
	To fix this requires an X protocol extension which extends
	the functionality of <function>XChangeSaveSet()</function> in
	two areas:
      </para>
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Allow it to be specified that the saved window should be
	    reparented to the root window rather than to the nearest
	    parent. (The nearest parent typically being the window
	    manager's frame window, reparenting to the nearest
	    parent only saves the client until the window manager
	    cleans up and destroys the frame window.)
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    Allow it to be specified that the saved window should be
	    unmapped rather than then mapped. (Without this capability
	    the client will mapped as a child of the root window,
	    which will be confusing to the user.)
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Sensitivity</title>
      <para>
	Toolkits such as Qt and GTK+ have a concept of disabled
	widgets. This notion is typically hierarchical, so if 
	the embedder or a ancestry of the embedder becomes
	insensitive, widgets inside the client should be displayed as,
	and act insensitive as well.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Directional focusing</title>
      <para>
	Some toolkits, such as GTK+, support, along with the standard
	concept of a focus chain, the idea of <firstterm>directional
	focusing</firstterm>; it's possible in some cases to navigate
	focus using the arrow keys. To do this perfectly, you need
	to have information about the coordinates of the original
	focus window, which is hard to do in an embedding context,
	but a good approximation is to, when focusing into a
	container, provide the side of the container where focus
	is coming from and to focus the "middle widget" on this side.
      </para>
      <para>
	This could be supported by adding an extra data field to
	to the XEMBED_FOCUS_FIRST/XEMBED_FOCUS_LAST subtypes
	of XEMBED_FOCUS_IN and to XEMBED_FOCUS_NEXT and
	XEMBED_FOCUS_PREV, which would contain:
      </para>
      <programlisting><!--
-->/* Directions for focusing */
#define XEMBED_DIRECTION_DEFAULT    0
#define XEMBED_DIRECTION_UP_DOWN    1
#define XEMBED_DIRECTION_LEFT_RIGHT 2<!--
   --></programlisting>
      <para>
	Applications supporting only normal tab focusing would always
	pass XEMBED_DIRECTION_DEFAULT and treat all received
	directions as XEMBED_DIRECTION_DEFAULT.
      </para>
      <para>
	The argument against supporting this is that it's a rather
	confusing feature to start with (many widgets eat arrow keys
	for other purposes), and becomes more confusing if you have
	a application containing widgets from different toolkits,
	some of which support it, some of which don't.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Modal dialogs</title>
      <para>
	The specification doesn't have any provisions for handling the
	case where an embedded client wants to put up a dialog. Such a
	dialog should be transient-for the real toplevel window, and,
	if modal, should block the entire toplevel window. To fully
	implement this, you would need some concept of an application
	that spanned multiple toplevel windows in multiple clients.
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Propagation of key presses</title>
      <para>
	It's frequently useful to have key bindings that trigger on
	a widget if the focus is on a child of that widget. For
	instance, <keysym>Control</keysym><keysym>PageUp</keysym>
	and <keysym>Control</keysym><keysym>PageUp</keysym> switch
	pages in a notebook widget when the focus is on a child
	of the notebook. The XEmbed spec currently has no handling
	of this situation.
      </para>
      <para>
	The simplest solution would be to specify that if the client
	widget doesn't handle a key press sent to it, it then sends
	the event back to the embedder. Some care would be required
	in the embedder handle infinite loops, but it shouldn't
	be that bad. 
      </para>
    </sect2>
    <sect2>
      <title>Handling of toplevel modes</title>
      <para>
	GTK+-2.0 contains a feature for key navigation of tooltips
	where Control-F1 toggles a "tooltips keyboard mode" where
	the tooltip for the currently focused window is displayed.
	There is no way of propagating this across XEMBED.
	This feature could clearly be implemented the same
	way as XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE, but adding a pair of
	messages for every feature of this type seems excessive.
      </para>
      <para>
	A possible alternate idea would be to add a _XEMBED_STATE
	property that the embedder sets on the client window which
	is a list of atoms. This could actually be used to
	replace XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE, and XEMBED_MODALITY_ON,
	simplifying the protocol.
      </para>
      <para>
	There are some race conditions in maintaining this property
	if the client is allowed to reparent itself out of the
	embedder that would have to be considered.
      </para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>
  <appendix id="changes">
    <title>Change history</title>
    <formalpara>
      <title>"Version 1.0 DRAFT 1", 22 April 2000, Matthias Ettrich</title>
      <para>
      </para>
    </formalpara>
    <formalpara>
      <title>"Version 1.0 DRAFT 2", 15 August 2000, Matthias Ettrich</title>
      <para>
      </para>
    </formalpara>
    <formalpara>
      <title>Version 0.5, 19 April 2002, Owen Taylor</title>    
      <para>
	<itemizedlist>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Add the life-cycle chapter, including _XEMBED_INFO
	      property, and the XEMBED_MAPPED flags.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Define the data2 for XEMBED_EMBEDDED_NOTIFY to be the
	      protocol version in use.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Replaced XEMBED_GRAB_KEY scheme for handling accelerators
	      with XEMBED_REGISTER_ACCELERATOR.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Removed text "This also means that the client has to
	      prepare for becoming visible anytime without filing a map
	      request itself" from the description of
	      XEMBED_EMBEDDED_NOTIFY".
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Added text about the independence of FOCUS_IN/OUT and
	      ACTIVATE/DEACTIVATE to the description of
	      XEMBED_WINDOW_ACTIVATE / XEMBED_WINDOW_DEACTIVATE.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Added note about fields in WMNormalHints not necessarily
	      being obeyed by embedders.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Removed mention of XEMBED_PROCESS_NEXT_EVENT, which is
	      no longer part of the protocol.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Added definitions of "Active" and "Focused" to the
	      definitions section.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Added issues and change history sections.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Lots of textual editing for clarity, style consistency.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	  <listitem>
	    <para>
	      Converted to docbook format.
	    </para>
	  </listitem>
	</itemizedlist>
      </para>
    </formalpara>
  </appendix>
</article>