Re: How to retrieve the current desktop background

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 22:15 +0100, Hans Oischinger wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm the author of Kompose[1], a fullscreen taskmanager for KDE, quite similar 
> to Apple's Expose but without the fancy zooming effects.
> Kompose also works quite well on the Gnome desktop, there is however one 
> quirk:
> The routine I use to retrieve the current desktop background (a shared pixmap 
> in KDE) does not work for Gnome.
> Is there a way to do the same in gnome? And if yes: Is there also a way to get 
> notified when the desktop background changes?
> 
> I hope to fix this long-standing bug as I often get requests from gnome users 
> wanting to use Kompose as it seems to be the most comfortable (in UI terms) 
> of all fullscreen takswitchers. Would be great to make them happy, too.
> 
> Can anyone at least point me to the right direction?

We use the really old _XROOTPMAP_ID standard. I'm not sure where you can
find a specification for it, but all window managers have used this
since ages. Just take a look at the code from any terminal that do
"background transparency".

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an uncontrollable one-eyed firefighter on the wrong side of the law. 
She's a blind gypsy single mother from a different time and place. They fight 
crime!