X root background instead of DEFAULT_BACKGROUND_COLOR?

[Fernando <ferkiwi gmail com>]

Hello.
First, congratulations. I think that this project is a great idea! I'm
looking forward to see the future of it.
Having a scripting language for the window manager can bring lots of
flexibility which means imaginative and useful enhancements and
customization. Which I think it's something that GNOME would really
benefit from.

My question is... would it be possible to see the actual X root
background instead of the default hard-coded color background
displayed by gnome-shell?

I'm currently using nautilus with the "show_desktop" option disabled,
so it doesn't manage my desktop background.
I prefer this because I dont really like to use desktop icons and I
prefer to have apps like conky instead. I set my background using
xsetroot and related tools.

However.. I'm asking this because I'm not even sure if this is really
possible or worth to do in compositing, since every composite manager
I've tried has always replaced my background with a custom color, or
drawn a "black zone" that is never re-drawn (and thus, lots of
crappyness is displayed).

Thank you so much.