KWin Basics - Part 1.2.1 - Advanced Window Management - Window identification

Yesterday we looked at the basic "Keep Above" and "Keep Below" options within KWin. This allows you to keep your programs 'on top' of all your other programs, so that they're never hidden (until they're closed).

Today lets get a bit more technical -- permanent identification. When you right-click on that title bar and select Advanced, you get the options:



Keep Above
Keep Below
Full screen
No Border
Window Shortcut
Special Window Settings
Special Application Settings





Now if you start poking around in the last two, you'll notice that they're identical. It turns out that although the options are identical (as far as I can tell!), the Special Windows Settings has predefined properties on the first tab [Window], which make it much more specific for that one window type:
For example, Special Application Settings can allow for a permanent Always-On-Top for all of Kopete (the KDE Chat program which I use to connect to Google Chat, MSN, Yahoo!, and work chat -- all with one application and one interface). If I use Special Window Settings, I can make a permanent Always On Top for just the Kopete Chat window, not the whole application.

The smart part about this is, even if you're not really sure what to fill in those fields in the [Window] tab, there is a [Detect] button. This turns your mouse into a + crosshairs; clicking on the window which you want to manipulate will help you to fill in these fields in this first tab.

If you want to be more specific or more general, you can change all types of identifying information here. Using the dropdowns, you can have your settings match an Exact Match:
Kopete - only matched "Kopete"
or a Substring Match:
Kopete - matches "Kopete"
Kopete - matches "Kopete Chat"
Kopete - matches "Kopete Plugins"
Kopete - matches "KopeteLog Viewer"
or a Regular Expression -- which I cannot really help you with, its a programming-type thing. For the newbies, its not important, but for the advanced programming users, I would imagine its very helpful, some time.