[PATCH] [RFC]Shell: Hide panels when compositor has a top fullscreen surface.

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:18:17 +0800
"wuzhiwen" <zhiwen.wu at linux.intel.com> wrote:

> 
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Bill Spitzak [mailto:spitzak at gmail.com]
> >I would expect the panels to remain visible below the fullscreen surface,
> so the
> >user could click on them if there are transparent areas in the fullscreen.
> This
> [Wu, Zhiwen] I think the transparent areas in the fullscreen just make under
> surfaces visible but not let the input event deliver to them.
> So user could not click on the panels even though they are visible.

There are plans to fix this limitation by allowing clients to specify
the input region of a surface one way or another. Areas excluded from
the input region would "click through".

> >scheme means a client can force the panels to vanish by putting up a
> >transparent fullscreen surface.
> [Wu, Zhiwen] Yes, but only when the fullscreen are on top. My concern is
> that do fullscreen surface really need transparent areas to show panels?

Good question. If one wanted panels showing, one would rather maximise
than make fullscreen, I presume. After all, the client would not even
know if and where the panels are, so the whole use case is moot.

However, IMO it would be better to solve all of these
hiding issues by proper mangement of the surface stack order. Then you
automatically get any transparency issues right.

I recall someone working on replacing the current single flat list
with something easier to handle. Personally, I would like to see that
work come in before we add more window management features that touch
window stacking. Window stacking is already a mess with the flat list,
and has some bugs.


Thanks,
pq