Re: Login time

[Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com>]

El vie, 06-04-2007 a las 18:34 +1000, Andrew Cowie escribi� On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 16:09 +0100, Iain * wrote:
> > The desktop is just another window, but a special cased one with no
> > toolbars, statusbars etc.
> 
> Once upon a time X had the notion of a root window and an image or
> pattern could be placed upon it. Does nautilus [not] use this?

Advantages of using the root window:

- It's just there.

Disadvantages of using the root window:

- Multi-visual X servers (especially ancient ones from Sun, HP, SGI,
etc.) like to use an 8-bit pseudocolor visual for the root window.  GTK+
prefers to run in 24-bit truecolor if available.  Having to manage
different visuals is painful and error-prone, and you don't want ugly
8-bit dithering on your desktop background anyway.

- You can't easily have different backgrounds on each screen or virtual
desktop.

- It's harder for Nautilus to hang GTK+ widgets from the root window; it
prefers a normal toplevel.

- The Window Manager Spec already has provisions for such
desktop-background windows, so window managers know how to handle them.
If a window manager [particularly Enlightenment] wants to have its own
concept of a "virtual root window", it can accomodate Nautilus easily.

  Federico