Re: Metacity Compositor

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 00:36 +0200, Daniel Borgmann wrote:
> On 10/3/06, Rob Adams <readams readams net> wrote:
> > Realistically, compiz is unlikely
> > ever to be accepted by either project, because it's a chimera.  So why
> > are we dumping so much effort into it?
> 
> Why is it a chimera, because the GNOME dependent modules are optional?
> That makes no sense to me. I rather see this as Compiz' biggest
> strength, since it encourages code sharing and cooperation (as well as
> experimentation). Is there really any objective reason why Compiz
> shouldn't be at least considered as a potential successor to Metacity?

1) Metacity has, over the years, accumulated a lot of details about
how windows are managed.  These were designed to address our users'
and developers' needs.  Any replacement would have to dedicate quite
a lot of time to get these details right.

2) Metacity's theme format is stable.  Dropping in a replacement that
can't use existing themes creates massive churn.

3) Even if all other things were compatible, having a different binary
name creates some churn that we have yet to solve well.  (See the recent
difficulties with changing Gnopernicus to Orca, and how we didn't really
get it right despite a lot of discussion.)

Why don't we just add the required features to Metacity?

--
Shaun