XLIB Programming Manual, Rel. 5, Third Edition

4.4 Information from the XWindowAttributes Structure

We have been describing the programmable window attributes stored in the XSetWindowAttributes structure. Many of the other window characteristics described in Chapter 2 including the window configuration, are also stored with the window attributes by the server but are not programmable using XChangeWindowAttributes(). For example, depth, class, and visual are assigned at window creation and cannot be changed. The window size, position, and border width are changed with a separate mechanism, because for top-level windows there must be cooperation from the window manager.

The current state of most of the programmable attributes, the read-only attributes, and the window configuration can be read with XGetWindowAttributes(). All this information is returned in an XWindowAttributes structure (not an XSetWindowAttributes structure).

Example 4-4 shows the fields of the XWindowAttributes structure that are not present in XSetWindowAttributes.

Example 4-4. Read-only XWindowAttributes members

typedef struct { /* Members writable with XChangeWindowAttributes omitted */ . . . /* Window geometry -- set by window configuration functions * in cooperation with window manager */ int x, y; /* Location of window */ int width, height; /* Width and height of window */ int border_width; /* Border width of window */ /* This is the event_mask attribute set by XSelectInput */ long your_event_mask; /* My event mask */ /* Set when the window is created, not ...