If I wanted to write my own window manager for OS X (please dont respond with "whats the point"??), what APIs should I be looking at?
A:
At the hardware level, write your own APIs.
Otherwise, there are various graphics architectures in which to plug in your window manager:
Mark Stock
2009-04-28 23:15:51
ok cool, i was pretty sure quartz is what i wanted to look at. thanks for confirmation
2009-04-28 23:19:15
+1
A:
There is no such thing as a "window manager" in OS X, and no public interface to implement one. The functions that an X11 window manager would perform are split between the GUI toolkit (Carbon/Cocoa), the Dock application and the window server.
Your only real choice if you want to change OS X's windowing behavior is to patch individual applications, the Dock (which has a privileged connection to the window server) and/or the window server. It'd involve a great deal of reverse engineering and almost certainly break in 10.6, but it's certainly possible.
Nicholas Riley
2009-04-29 19:06:17
Clearly this is possible, given the existence of commercial tools like http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/. What are the window server APIs like?
Glyph
2009-10-18 21:09:34
SizeUp works by using a combination of accessibility and scripting interfaces. It doesn't modify existing windowing behavior.
Nicholas Riley
2009-10-19 01:04:08