Re: MC and the desktop

[raster redhat com]

On 19 May, Miguel de Icaza shouted:
->  
->  > I'm wondering if there's another way to do this. Perhaps draw the icons on
->  > the root window direct? A lot of people like having lots of icons on their
->  > desktop, and if this is such a CPU hog then it will bring even a powerful
->  > system to its knees calculating say 50+ shaped windows. 
->  
->  It also depends on your X server.  For instance, IRIX 6.2 X server is
->  performing not very well compared to a recent XFree which does know
->  that computing shaped differences on a lowerd window is a waste of
->  time.

its also prbably a combination of window manager - if the window
manager creates the "decorateing" frames that abecome parents of the
client child windows with the "saveunder" flag on - the Xserver will
attempt to preserves the framebuffer under the window rather than
instituting a redraw. the slowness form shaped windows underneath woudl
also be for example the Xserver having to redraw the root window below
the icon using the root pixmap (or color) which requires clipping to
the above window (the icon window) and its shape

->  Drawing on the root window poses several other problems:  the icons
->  can be overwritten by any applications and colors can be replaced
->  under you as well.

you can alloc them. :) the main problem are having to keep handlign
redraw on expose sont eh rot window whihc is probably THE most exposed
window of any on your display, the other option could be to use nat's
wonderfl propertis on the root window that contain the pixmap id of the
root pixmap - take that pixmap.. set it as a bg pixmap for a "square"
icon window, (accounting for icon window position relative to its parent
and ofsetting the pixmap appropriately), then pasting the icon ontop
and redrawing on exposes - probelms come that when you move the icon it
will be square when it floats above everyhting when being moved (uck -
ugly) if somehting goes below it the thing below is masked out by an
ugly square.. etc.. so back to square one.. oh no.. that was a bad
pun.. i apologize for it... :(

->  The wm hints + a recent X server would fix this problem.

WM hints are really goign to be needed - to keep the icons "on the
bottom" so the WM wont lower stuff below them. E 0.14 already supports
an expansive range of extended hints. Code is there. will be out in
about 2 weeks. :)

->  Also, you can choose not to use shaped windows by editing ~/.mc/ini
->  file.
->  
->  cheers,
->  Miguel.
->  
->  

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