Re: desktop effects tab in appearance capplet

["Patrick Niklaus" <marex opencompositing org>]

>
>  Can you outline what these cases are? In Metacity, compositing can be
>  enabled or disabled simply by switching a gconf key.
>

Well the main reason is that e.g. compiz can not run without
compositing enabled. It might be possible in the future when the
corresponding core changes have been made. In most cases this is
worked around with running metacity as a replacement for compiz
non-composited mode. So an implementation of "enable desktop effects"
which needs an already running instance is not a good option at the
moment. What also could be possible is a gconf key that is set and
additional there is a script, command or whatever run when specified.
That would probably fit the needs for booth use cases: Enabling
compositing on an already running instance and starting a new instance
with compositing enabled.

>
>  But please don't get side tracked with issues about compositing. The
>  issue we are talking about is "desktop effects". While compositing may
>  be a requirement for many implementations of "desktop effects", enabling
>  compositing itself does not necessarily mean enabling desktop effects.
>

That is true, however if you want to stay neutral on what composite
manager aka "desktop effect provider" is actually used, I don't think
you can go much deeper there. You need to trust the configuration of
the "desktop effect provider". Effect tweaking itself can not be
implemented itself inside gnome, at least not that easy. It would
probably work if the "desktop effect provider" can pass gnome a module
which can do this tweakings.

Regards,
Patrick