Re: gnome-session proposal

["Havoc Pennington" <hp pobox com>]

Hi,

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:43 AM, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys pld-linux org> wrote:
>> Metacity's compositor works pretty well here except for slow workspace
>> switching.
>
> That should be addressed separately by switching from many-desktops
> mode to small-viewport-over-a-large-desktop mode. Then you can keep
> other windows' offscreen buffers (and get stuff such as live previews)
> for windows on other desktops.

There may be easier ways to fix it than totally redoing all the
workspace code - instead of unmapping windows for example one could
just stop painting them and set their input region to empty, I would
think. Or just move them off the screen.

(It's a total PITA for apps and pagers if there are two ways to
implement workspaces; until Compiz brought the viewports thing back to
life we were down to only one way that was in use by anything anyone
cared about, unfortunately with Compiz we reverted to the bad old days
of apps and pagers having to deal with two implementations of the same
thing. Yes, one implementation is more convenient sometimes and the
other is more convenient at other times. But having two to worry about
is less convenient *all* the time, and with a compositing manager, I
think the two can both be made to have *exactly* the same user-visible
experience. So there is no inherent requirement to have two
implementations. Maybe metacity should switch implementations, I don't
know, but jeez, it's ridiculous that there are two in EWMH and more
ridiculous that there are two people are actually using. So kill one
of them.)

Havoc