[pixelat3d]

in GTK when you instantiate the window you pass what is called the "transient for" property (https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/method.NativeDialog.set_transient_...). That informs the dialog what it belongs to. If you were to re-engineer this to make the file picker its own process, then you would have to fundamentally change the way it functions, sadly.

Edit: And I think Wayland would make this impossible? Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but don't you lose basically all inter-window introspection with it? There may be some negotiation process, but I don't know how you would go about accessing an entirely separate application's context under that pipeline.

[no_time]

I bet this info isnt written down explicitly except in this comment.

The freedesktop.org community really needs it's own Raymond Chen pass down all the accumulated arcane knowledge.

[mlyle]

> I bet this info isnt written down explicitly except in this comment.

The comment links to the documentation, which says it explicitly...

And then, many other places in the documentation, e.g. https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/method.Window.set_modal.html

> Modal windows prevent interaction with other windows in the same application. To keep modal dialogs on top of main application windows, use gtk_window_set_transient_for() to make the dialog transient for the parent; most window managers will then disallow lowering the dialog below the parent.

[My100thaccount]

> inter-window introspection

This oxymoron is a pet peeve of mine. If it's inter-window, then it's just inspection. Introspection is when something inspects itself, but people seem to think it just means inspecting anything technical.

Great post though, I just needed to get that off my chest

[OJFord]

Mine too! (Perhaps we should introspect each other to determine why we feel this way....)

I find it particularly ironic or confusing because introspection seems so much less likely/more rarely to occur in anything technical; so why does it get that association? Because you're right, people do seem to use it as though it means 'highly technical inspection' or something.

[account42]

Technically its still the computer inspecting itself.