Re: window contents while dragging

[Antonio Bravo <tonio freeshell org>]

thanks for your answer Bart. It just got me a fast solution to the 
dragging problem. Searching in Google shows easily the reference of 
Calum Benson to the Solaris patch:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-list/2003-June/msg00016.html

and we have a page of Haw-Bin Chai with a Metacity patched source:
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/03/chai/comp/wireframe.html
(patch file only:  
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/03/chai/comp/metacity.patch )

one needs to use the gconftool-2 manually and it works fine.

But that said I'm still somewhat very surprised the feature is not 
standart in Metacity. And the pacth not integrated.

The problem went to me trough friends who are windoze users running 
pentium2 @ 233/266/300 Mhz + 256 ram. I convinced them after much time 
(and the help of the increasing number of virii they get ) to switch to 
unix.I promised them they didn't need to learn C or divorce to get time 
to learn about kernels, shells , API's, TCP/IP, X, and so on.I installed 
them Gnome-2 and they came back crying "your Gnome sucks, it's slower 
than win2k !". Indeed; in w2k they right-click on the desktop > 
Properties > Effects  and un-select "show window contents while 
dragging". ( and I do myself almost the same in my HP 9000 under CDE 
...), then the desktop runs better. (on low hardware).

Now, excuse me if I get verbose but the README in Metacity archive is a 
jewel of philosophy:

From the README Metacity-2.4.xx source:

"Q: Why no wireframe move/resize?

A: Because it has low usability, and is a pain to implement, and there's 
no reason opaque move/resize should be a problem on any setup that can 
run a modern desktop worth a darn to begin with.
Read these and the bugzilla stuff before asking/commenting :
http://pobox.com/~hp/free-software-ui.html
http://pobox.com/~hp/features.html "

well maybe Gnome-2 should be stamped "minimum requirements: 1 Ghz cpu 
with 512 ram else not worth a darn to begin with".

Believe it or not: after my win lusers friends complaining about 
"trailing" windows on their desktop and me being surprised not finding a 
parameter for that (as in sawfish/gnome-1.4) I faced some dilemn: use 
KDE or not. I really dislike KDE because the guys decided to build upon 
Qt, that was not opensource.The fact it became free after a while 
doesn't change its genetically tainted nature.And the whole necesary 
libs qt+kde take so much space.And the desktop is too rich-featured, 
somewhat confusing for end users.But by now it's more responsive than 
gnome-2 on low hardware. So I was thinking: man, kde is not an option 
for you, why not use Motif or any other wm ?. Programmatically Motif 
keeps straight consistent with Xlibs.To had much stuff, like gimp, one 
doesn't need gnome, just the Gtk api.So I putted together the last 
themable Mwm with an iconbox and clean and nice menus, icons and some 
light backgrounds, and my win lusers liked it better than Gnome-2 !  
WindowMaker or Fvwm, with a well tuned config makes end users happy 
too.So no need for "desktops"...
As Havoc Pennington writes in the README > METACITY FEATURES:

"does not expose the concept of "window manager" to the user.The user 
doesn't need to know."

I agree: the user doesn't need to know.He does need to use. And he has 
"no reason" to have a problem with opaque move/resize window.

By the way I remember some discussions on the net a couple of years ago 
about gnome(1) beeing more usable for the big bunch of  people living in 
the "third" world, because it was less resource hungry than kde and thus 
could run on lower/older hardware.Well , to enjoy gnome-2 one seems to 
need at least a Pentium 3...arghh those silly morons who can't "run a 
modern desktop worth a darn to begin with."...:-))...
I consider myself very lucky as I live in Norway...

All in all I feel guilty  to comment, because I haven't certainly not 
read good enough pobox.com/~hp/features.html , etc.  :-)