Set splashscreen hint for desktopcover window

[Mathias Brodala]

Using the desktopcover plugin on a composited desktop can lead to undesired behaviour. I for myself did specify that inactive windows should not be fully opaque, but this also includes the desktop cover window. Thus, the cover art is harder to see.

My proposal is to set the splashscreen hint for the desktopcover window which in turn would tell the window manager to ignore this window regarding all kind of interaction (as it currently is forced to) and compositing settings. I tried it and it works just fine for me.

Any objections?

[Adam Olsen (arolsen)]

Do you have a patch I can give a try? I have a few machines I can test it on, some running compiz, some not.

[Johannes Sasongko (sjohannes)]

> My proposal is to set the splashscreen hint for the desktopcover window
> which in turn would tell the window manager to ignore this window
> regarding all kind of interaction (as it currently is forced to) and
> compositing settings. I tried it and it works just fine for me.

This was tried before, and had some bad effect on KWin (KDE's WM) so I
removed it. KWin did something special on windows marked as splash
screens, but I can't remember what; I'll see if it's mentioned in the
commit log. Might be worth trying with a new KWin version.

[Mathias Brodala (mathbr)]

> Do you have a patch I can give a try? I have a few machines I can test
> it on, some running compiz, some not.

Check out the new attachment.

> This was tried before, and had some bad effect on KWin (KDE's WM) so I
> removed it. KWin did something special on windows marked as splash
> screens, but I can't remember what; I'll see if it's mentioned in the
> commit log. Might be worth trying with a new KWin version.

I’m also curious to find out what Kwin does here.

[Mathias Brodala (mathbr)]

> > This was tried before, and had some bad effect on KWin (KDE's WM) so I
> > removed it. KWin did something special on windows marked as splash
> > screens, but I can't remember what; I'll see if it's mentioned in the
> > commit log. Might be worth trying with a new KWin version.
>
> I’m also curious to find out what Kwin does here.

Now I know: Kwin just displays splashscreen always centered on the desktop (bad) and makes them closable via mouseclick (really bad). So setting the splashscreen hint is no option.

However, making the window a popup works just fine at least with xfwm4 and kwin. Thoughts?

(New patch attached.)

[Mathias Brodala (mathbr)]

Hm, I just noticed that the cover art is now not below all the other windows anymore. I’ll look into that…

[Mathias Brodala (mathbr)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi.

Mathias Brodala, 19.05.2008 00:14:
> Hm, I just noticed that the cover art is now not below all the other
> windows anymore. I’ll look into that…

No good. Neither option works well.

What do you think? Is presenting this much internal stuff to the user as
an option already too much? Something like "[ ] Cover window as
splashscreen"?

Or does anyone know of a way to get the WM id? This way Kwin could just
get the code as is without any hints or something like this.

Regards, Mathias

- --
debian/rules
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkhcNR8ACgkQYfUFJ3ewsJgVNgCfeV7PbrT0RvlirKLg24PDdgnB
KekAnjL9QXkC/YEdh+42QWIpC8CieFYu
=KRVM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Mathias Brodala (mathbr)]

I don't use the desktopcover anymore.