Re: desktop effects tab in appearance capplet



Adding to the first idea, I think it is important to consider how big of
an impact the window manager has on the software's appearance.
Implementing that first idea would be beneficial in terms of abstracting
certain common effects like drop shadows. For example, I can have a
stunning GNOME desktop if I use a Metacity theme without window borders.
However, this is only possible because I have drop shadows to
differentiate between windows! As a result, it would be impossible to
package this as an official theme in a distribution since it only works
with desktop effects, which are a separate thing altogether. (Besides
which, Desktop Effects does not mean "windows have drop shadows").
It would be nice if I could say "this theme recommends drop shadows" in
the same way I can have a theme recommend a wallpaper.

I think the ideal solution is really to move drop shadows to the window
theme instead of being an arbitrary hack in the window manager, but
until then, I think it would work to have themes recommend certain flags
for desktop effects which could be interpreted quietly by the
distribution at hand. GNOME themes are presumably meant to work for all
things GNOME (to a reasonable extent), so no distribution would want to
(or should) implement such features on its own. It definitely has to be
implemented in standard GNOME.

Bye,
-Dylan

On Thu, 2008-04-10 at 21:58 +0100, Thomas Wood wrote:
> This discussion seems to have died down a bit, I think because of an
> unresolvable conflict between two different ideas about what the option
> should do. These are that:
> 
> 1) "Desktop Effects" should turn on and off various effects in the
> current window manager (usually Metacity, since this is the default for
> GNOME).
> 
> OR
> 
> 2) "Desktop Effects" should swap the window manager between Compiz and
> Metacity. When Desktop Effects is enabled, Compiz should run with
> various options available. When Desktop Effects is disabled, Metacity
> should run without a compositing manager.
> 
> 
> Personally I prefer the first option and I think it is the only option
> the GNOME project can adopt for the reasons I've outlined in previous
> e-mails.
> 
> Obviously several distributions would like to implement the second
> option, for their own various reasons.
> 
> 
> I think the only way to resolve this is to implement both solutions and
> add a configure switch called "--enable-compiz-switcher" which would
> enable the second option.
> 
> 
> I hope this is acceptable to everyone and we can move forward and
> implement this feature for GNOME 2.24.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Thomas
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gnomecc-list mailing list
> gnomecc-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnomecc-list

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