[compiz] Re: General compiz questions

[Bjørn Haagensen]

Hi,
        
        1. compiz is a composite *and* a window manager.
        
        >From that perspective I'd like to ask why compiz has to be yet another
        WM. There are lots of good, mature WMs out there and there are some more
        or less powerful composite managers (CM) as well.
        
        I would feel more comfortable, if I could use both a WM and a CM of my
        choice.
        
        So basically my question is: What parts (plugins) of compiz are part of
        the WM and which are "just" the CM? Which of the compiz features,
        i. e. the cube and its rotation, could be handled separately in a CM
        instead of a combined WM/CM?
        
        Are there maybe plans to separate both? In the long run, my wish for a
        less monolithic solution[1] will probably make me abandon compiz.
        
        
Possibly not answering your question at all, but there were some related 
discussions at the time when compiz was first released. These were primarily
set in the context of metacity vs. compiz, but could be worthwhile for you to
have a peak at as they do tell why compiz was made in the first place. The short 
version I think was that the wm and cm could not be separated in practice. Also the 
discussions reflected that extending existing wm's with cm's capabilities was
not optimal. Of course opinions differ and a number of other wms do have/are being
extended with cm-capabilitiesl.   

Anyway, it's a semi-long story. Don't have any links but try google and the 
xorg-list with keywords such
davidr, kristian hoegsberg, metacity, compiz, aiglx, xgl, libcm etc.

If I completely missed the nail, just ignore this mail.

Regards Bjorn