faq  flatforty  contribute  subscribe  configure  search  rdf  main  parent	Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by Robert Knight on Sunday 25/Mar/2007, @18:36 I should draw your attention to the relevant commit log: "The window-burning-down effect (gee), except that there's no actual flame, since I'm lame at graphics. Should be easy to add anyway." In other words - the basic changes in the core are there, help from people who like coding pretty 3D effects would be appreciated.	Related Links  ·   Articles on Developer  ·   Also by Robert Knight  ·   Contact author Thread Threshold: 10 comments 20 comments 30 comments 40 comments 50 comments 60 comments 70 comments 80 comments 90 comments 100 comments 110 comments 120 comments 130 comments 140 comments 150 comments 160 comments 170 comments 180 comments 190 comments 200 comments 300 comments 400 comments 500 comments 1000 comments
	The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. ( Reply ) Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by Philip Falkner on Sunday 25/Mar/2007, @21:01 Yes. Right now the core is powerful enough that we can manipulate windows in all sorts of ways; we have windows that twist, windows that explode (shaders!), windows drawn multiple times to make them look all fuzzy, etc. But there aren't many of us working on it, so anyone wanting to pitch in is more than welcome! kwin@kde.org [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by D on Sunday 25/Mar/2007, @22:20 How much can you take from beryl/compiz? I admit I know next to nothing about this sort of thing, but there seems to be some NIH going on. The effects are all done in X AFAIK, and they already have aquamarine, which allows them to use kwin decorations. To me, it seems like taking beryl and integrating it with KDE with a qt configuration dialog and using aquamarine by default would do the trick. Again, i dont understand this very much, but is this a case like khtml, where alternatives exist but the code you are working on will benefit non-kwin parts of KDE 4? [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by Morty on Sunday 25/Mar/2007, @23:41 It's simple I think. KWin is a full fetured and mature windowmanager, while Beryl/Compiz despite all their glitz are not. Last I tried it did not even have vertical maximize, like MMB does on KWin. And how well do they follow the ICCCM standards? And when you start a new windowmanager rather than join one of the myriad existing efforts, it sounds more like NIH. Add some more functionality to your already existing one is not. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by directlink on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @00:03 It does have vertical maximize now. Even per default on the right distro. Boot the newest Knoppix. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by superstoned on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @01:17 Still, they have a lot of work to do. The most features are there, sure, but they have to clean up the pathetic mess that are their configuration tools/dialog, and they have to find and fix all the corner cases in window management - pretty much years off work. Also, if I understand the kwin dev's, they don't have a proper plugin system, but just expose their internals to the plugins - making backwards compatibility or sharing plugins with other windowmanagers very hard (impossible). [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by Matt on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @07:31 Beryl still has some focus issues with their "focus stealing prevention" thing. It doesn't work with kxdocker and yakuake to name a couple, and it just doesn't work nearly as well as kwin's focus stealing prevention. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by suy on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @01:25 You should read the following post: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2172 My personal opinion, is that just using compiz/beryl because of the cool effects, is a mistake. KWin does an amazing job with window placement, and window focus stealing prevention. When I used compiz, it took me only a day or two to get bored and start missing KWin. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flam by reihal on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @04:09 Is there any use at all for this juvenile 3D noise? All I want is an extra quick change of desktop, does Beryl/Compiz give this? (I haven't tried it yet) [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flam by Carlo on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @06:38 There isn't, of course. That doesn't stop the kids begging for eye candy, though. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flam by Sutoka on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @08:21 Actually a lot of the things that the GL compositors allow will be useful for increasing usability as well as making things more visually pleasing (not talking about eye candy). Real time previews of the windows in the panel and task switcher is useful for seeing what window 'Konqueror <14>' is. Also switching desktops/restoring windows won't have to slowly (as in noticeable) repaint themselves (right now I just moved this Konqueror window around on my desktop and if I kept moving the window slowly it would take about 5 seconds for Konqueror and Amarok to repaint themselves!). GL compositing aren't just about wobbly windows (which can increase usability if used correctly!) and spinning cubes (which helps people understand and visualize the concept of virtual desktops), those are just the sexy features that attracts new developers and testers. So again, the 'juvenile 3D noise' is what actually attracts the developers and testers (if compiz simply did what you wanted most likely beryl would have never been started, and there would be little interest in compiz/Xgl/AIGLX). [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flam by MamiyaOtaru on Tuesday 27/Mar/2007, @02:03 "Real time previews of the windows in the panel and task switcher is useful for seeing what window 'Konqueror <14>' is." Not really. Previews are small enough that most app windows all look like white backgrounds with vague dashes of black text. Some konqueror windows will be at a site with a different colored background, so that helps. Multiple windows at one site won't, of course. The whole preview thing turned out to be less than useful for me with Beryl. Windows with the same toolkit/style often end up looking too much alike from a distance. Differentiating by icons still wins IMHO. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flam by reihal on Tuesday 27/Mar/2007, @04:31 (I have to study this subject) So if KWin used the "GL compositors" it would speed things up if you have an 128MB graphics card without the "juvenile 3D noise"? [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by S. on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @01:42 > I admit I know next to nothing about this sort of thing, but there seems to > be some NIH going on. Hi, This is a valid concern, but in this case, I think, unjustified. First of all, KWin does a HELL of a lot more than Beryl -- other posters in this thread have touched on it a little. It would theorically be possible to patch up Beryl until it could do all that KWin can, but that would probably require more KDE integration than the Beryl guys would allow. Secondly, Lubos Lunak, KWin developper extraordinaire, did look into making KWin compatible with Beryl plugins. As it turns out, however, the implementation of Beryl's plugins might... possibly not be as modular as one might want, and they go poke into the depths of Beryl too much to make compatibility with KWin an option. So at this point, it boils down to either using Beryl (and abandoning all that makes KWin nifty), which you can already do, mind; or prettifying KWin up to Beryl-ish standards. However... I wonder to what extent it would be possible to split the functionality -- window /management/ and window /effects/ -- between Beryl and KWin. Lubos, in case you're reading this -- hi! -- would it be possible to have the effects part of Beryl stripped down to a DBus server, that would be able to process such requests as 'do THIS_OPERATION on THAT_LIST_OF_WINDOW_IDS'? That way, KWin could still manage WHAT is being done to windows, which it is awesome at, while Beryl would see about HOW to do it. Is that a pipe dream? [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by Matt on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @07:49 I believe that is how Compiz and Beryl already work. Each has a window manager (compiz and beryl respectively), and each has a window decorator (e.g. gnome-window-decorator and kde-window-decorator for compiz; emerald, aquamarine, and some other gnome one for beryl). Although, that is the opposite of what you would want because the window decorators they use are most likely very dependent on their respective window managers in the first place. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by Sutoka on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @08:25 Thats not exactly what he was asking about. The window decorator ONLY decorates the windows (draws the border). It doesn't actually do any managing. And before compiz the development was happening in GLcompmgr (I believe that was the name), which was independent of the window manager (mostly what S. was asking for), but apparently the developers agreed that it wasn't practical (too slow) to have them separate programs that communicated via IPC. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flam by Anon on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @02:44 There probably is a little bit of NIH going on, but if you look at how tiny each effect is, you'll see that the duplication of effort is minimal; e.g. the explosion effect http://websvn.kde.org/branches/work/kwin_composite/effects/explosioneffect.cpp?revision=646315&view=markup is a puny < 200 lines of code, a lot of which is whitespace, comments, and boiler-plate. Personally, I think Lubos has made a good decision here. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by James Smith on Sunday 25/Mar/2007, @22:50 Would it be possible to wrapper Beryl plugins to do the magic? It seems to me that this would seriously save on duplication of effort in the long run. Given the fact that no options showed up the Beryl panel when the plugins were not reinstalled upon an upgrade I did, it seems that most of the gruntwork is done within the plugins themselves. [ Reply To This | View ] Re: Before anyone asks for screenshots of the Flame... by superstoned on Monday 26/Mar/2007, @01:18 If I understand the kwin dev's properly, they don't have a proper plugin system, but just expose their internals to the plugins - making backwards compatibility or sharing plugins with other windowmanagers very hard (impossible). [ Reply To This | View ]   The Fine Print: The previous comments are owned by whomever posted them. ( Reply )

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