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POHow to identify top-level X11 windows using xlib?
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  1. POHow to identify top-level X11 windows using xlib?
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    copied!<p>I'm trying to get a list of all top level desktop windows in an X11 session. Basically, I want to get a list of all windows that are shown in the window managers application-switching UI (commonly opened when the user presses ALT+TAB).</p> <p>I've never done any X11 programming before, but so far I've managed to enumerate through the entire window list, with code that looks something like this:</p> <pre><code>void CSoftwareInfoLinux::enumerateWindows(Display *display, Window rootWindow) { Window parent; Window *children; Window *child; quint32 nNumChildren; XTextProperty wmName; XTextProperty wmCommand; int status = XGetWMName(display, rootWindow, &amp;wmName); if (status &amp;&amp; wmName.value &amp;&amp; wmName.nitems) { int i; char **list; status = XmbTextPropertyToTextList(display, &amp;wmName, &amp;list, &amp;i); if (status &gt;= Success &amp;&amp; i &amp;&amp; *list) { qDebug() &lt;&lt; "Found window with name:" &lt;&lt; (char*) *list; } status = XGetCommand(display, rootWindow, &amp;list, &amp;i); if (status &gt;= Success &amp;&amp; i &amp;&amp; *list) { qDebug() &lt;&lt; "... and Command:" &lt;&lt; i &lt;&lt; (char*) *list; } Window tf; status = XGetTransientForHint(display, rootWindow, &amp;tf); if (status &gt;= Success &amp;&amp; tf) { qDebug() &lt;&lt; "TF set!"; } XWMHints *pHints = XGetWMHints(display, rootWindow); if (pHints) { qDebug() &lt;&lt; "Flags:" &lt;&lt; pHints-&gt;flags &lt;&lt; "Window group:" &lt;&lt; pHints-&gt;window_group; } } status = XQueryTree(display, rootWindow, &amp;rootWindow, &amp;parent, &amp;children, &amp;nNumChildren); if (status == 0) { // Could not query window tree further, aborting return; } if (nNumChildren == 0) { // No more children found. Aborting return; } for (int i = 0; i &lt; nNumChildren; i++) { enumerateWindows(display, children[i]); } XFree((char*) children); } </code></pre> <p><code>enumerateWindows()</code> is called initially with the root window.</p> <p>This works, in so far as it prints out information about hundreds of windows - what I need, is to work out which property I can interrogate to determine if a given <code>Window</code> is a top-level Desktop application window (not sure what the official terminology is), or not.</p> <p>Can anyone shed some light on this? All the reference documentation I've found for X11 programming has been terribly dry and hard to understand. Perhaps someone could point be to a better resource?</p>
 

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