Re: Metacity Compositor

[Rob Adams <readams readams net>]

On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 00:36 +0200, Daniel Borgmann wrote:
> 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?

The effort required to add eye candy effects to metacity is much
smaller, in my opinion, than the effort required to make compiz a good,
usable window manager.  Most of the effects code is likely to be
reusable in metacity and KWin; compiz makes for a good experimental
platform, but in the end, that's all it is.  In that regard, it is
perhaps similar to the luminosity project.  It's a great technology
demonstrator.  It shows us what is possible with this new architecture,
and we can afford to add crack to it and see how it well it plays out
without making our end-users the subjects of any misguided experiments
along the way.

Whether it makes sense to add compiz-style plugins to metacity remains
to be seen, though at least in the case of accessibility tools it seems
that there are advantages to this approach.  Certainly the incredibly
bewildering adventure that is getting compiz running and configured
isn't what we want as far as a GNOME window manager experience goes,
though compiz's problems aren't limited to configuration.

-Rob