Top layer windows (widget overlapping)

[Steffen]

Hi hi,

i'm trying to have some windows(containers) that are overlapping others.  This is a popup menu which is drawn over whatever else is on the screen. With this i now have the problem that if the screen content is updated periodically (i.e new line printed to console) the popup menu is not redrawn. The console will just draw over it and make parts of it vanish unless i manually request a redraw.

From what i already gathered the default window manager will only handle overlapping for children widgets of a parent, so in this case the popup window never gets its redraw flag set as it has no parent set. Is there any convenient way to have such toplevel/popup windows with the default window manager or is a custom window manager the only way?

[Joel Bodenmann]

Hello Steffen,

As you mentioned yourself the default window manager doesn't handle overlapping windows at all. However, it's possible to write your own window manager. Our community member @Steffan made a demo once: