Quoted Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au>:
I know the white rectangle issue is not slated for 2.3.2; this is just some more data to help characterise the issue.
My GF is running 2.3.1 in rootless mode using icewm.
If she leaves her machine she uses fast user switching to go to the login window. On return there are large while rectangles positioned where some former apps used to be. They behave like the X11 root window; her X11 root window context menus function in these areas.
Restarting the window manager gets rid of most of these white rectangles; the ones that remain appear (loosely) to be associated with things like the mozilla/seamonkey URL bar and the URL completion drop down etc.
Those sound to me like windows with the override_redirect attribute set to True. In which case the problem is probably not with quartz-wm, but rather with the X11 server, or Xplugin that the X11 server uses.
I am speculating that these are the window frames used by the WM for reparenting (in the case of apps) and merely "withdrawn" windows in the case of the ones that look like the location bar drop down.
A traditional WM should just ignore the override_redirect windows, and not reparent them. In fact reparenting some override_redirect windows results in apps failing. I learned this during an experimental project...
Perhaps half the time the "white window" is not white, but has a full seamonkey app image in it. (Usually seamonkey, anyway, when this happens.) It is still "root window" context. If she switches _icewm_ desktops (not Spaces) to where seamonkey is active, seamonkey works. Leave that icewm desktop and it's a plain "root" context rectangle again. I'm guessing here backing store and the apps being iconified/deiconified on desktop switch, but the top level apple land rectangle staying in place. Again, an icewm restart cleans up this "seamonkey image" remnant rectangle.
Finally, if she uses Expose's "All windows" function all the white rectangles are represented. Iconified/withdrawn X11 apps are not.
This is helpful information. I think this will help us track it down. Thus far I've not been able to duplicate the problem, and it sounds like Jeremy hasn't either from what I recall. Thank you George -- http://people.freedesktop.org/~gstaplin/