[compiz] Thumbnail plugin

[David Reveman]

On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 15:26 +0100, Dennis Kasprzyk wrote:
> > On Wed, 2007-01-24 at 10:19 +0100, Stjepan Glavina wrote:
> > > > Sounds good, lets add it.
> > > >
> > > > Follow the instructions here to get an fdo account:
> > > >
> > > > http://freedesktop.org/wiki/AccountRequests
> > > >
> > > > you can go ahead and add the plugin once you have an account.
> > > >
> > > > - David
> > >
> > > Thank you.
> > >
> > > Beryl has support for getting thumbnails of windows when they're
> > > unmapped. When a window is unmapped, the pixmap is saved. Look at the
> > > code: http://glug.grm.hia.no/beryl/trunk/beryl-core/src/window.c
> > > (search for 'thumbTexture' and 'thumbPixmap').
> > > Do you have any plans to add support for this in Compiz core too?
> >
> > I don't know, showing a saved pixmap isn't good enough. You want live
> > updating thumbnails even for minimized windows and we need input
> > transformation support to do that properly. So I'd rather wait but it's
> > your plugin so it's really up to you.
> >
> > Before you start sending patches to kde and gnome maintainers I suggest
> > that we discuss the interface that will be provided by the thumbnail
> > plugin. What does it currently look like?
> >
> > - David
> >
> 
> Leaving windows open because we want a live thumbnail of them, has the 
> disadvantage that is wastes memory. Vista also only supports a non live 
> pixmap for most of the applications. But If you want to have live thumbnails 
> there are more possibilities to prevent input to a window. I know that input 
> redirection would be the cleanest solution, but this can take some time until 
> it's ready. One solution for that problem, would be to move the window behind 
> the desktop window and not paint it, if no desktop window is available a 
> Input prevention window could be created. The other solution would be to move 
> the window outside of the visible area of the screen, and prevent movements 
> on this window. I know that both of my proposals are "clean solution" but 
> both could be realized now.

I assume you mean NOT "clean solutions", right? The least ugly thing
would probably be to move the window behind the desktop window and not
update client list properties but it would need some special cases in
the window stacking code. I'll spend my time implementing input
transformations in the server rather than hacking on something like
this.

- David