[compiz] Feature Request: Mindows/Miniwin - allow windows to be individually scaled

[Who]

Is this better off in the bugtracker?

****Summary:****

Allow windows to be shrunken to 'mindows' individually and have a
mixed environment of scaled and full sized windows. Mindows would grow
to full size on mouseover rather than being interacted with while
small and would be re-positionable.


I'd love to have the time and ability to contribute more to this idea,
but I can't see that I will at any point in the near future, so I
thought I'd suggest it here in the hope that someone with more of
either of those assets will pick it up :) I know it isn't a new idea,
nor just my idea, in fact a plugin existed to do it (by ddave, details
here http://compiz.blogspot.com/2006/03/miniwin.html) a while ago -
but it seems to have fallen out of disrepair and was never quite
stable ;)

****Details:****

I would love any window to be manually scalable - perhaps by CTRL
clicking and using the resize handle, so that a 'mindiow' is created.
Obviously interacting with this window would be nice, but there is a
_lot_ that could be done with this even if that wasn't the case (for
example, if you want to make 'icons' form windows then you don't WANT
to be able to interact with them) - so I don't think it needs to wait
for input redirection (thugh I don't know the details of detecting
when a scaled window is mouse-overed)

I think a good implementation should then allow the window to return
to 100% size when the mouse moved over it, or when the user clicked on
it anywhere. Dragging a mindow would move it

****Use Cases****

Some cases where I think this would really present a benefit to users:

    * For toolbox windows in The Gimp or Inkscape - make them small in
the corner (or even small and translucent). Move mouse over them to
use them and watch them shrink back to an unobtrusive size when you
move the mouse away. They are there, but not in the way
    * For reading from some sources and writing another (for example,
composing a blog from many forum posts). Have the source page open,
but scaled, and allow the user to read it full size on mouse-over.
They can return to their original document when the mouse leaves the
source
    * For status windows, such as network status or a sound level monitor.
    * To keep track of multiple messenger conversations - scale/hide
them down the bottom and then mouse-over to type, move mouse off to
re-scale (you could conceivably read them while scaled, right?)

****Other possibilities****

When ddave originally implemented this he also made a dock plugin
,which was _very_ popular but never really worked smoothly enough for
everyday use - he believed (and began) exposing the minwin
functionality via DBUS to make this easier.

****Existing Work****
http://compiz.blogspot.com/2006/03/no-code.html - My description
http://compiz.blogspot.com/2006/03/miniwin.html - Details on MiniWin
http://compiz.blogspot.com/2006/06/dock.html - Ddave's dock
http://compiz.biz/viewtopic.php?t=24 - mikidee's updated source tarball

There was more in the old compiz forums, including an early dbus-ised
version - do they still exist anywhere? is there an archive?

If anyone is interested I'd love to know, I think this would be a
_great_ feature

Happy New  Year

Who