AW: Re: [compiz] [PATCH] minimize doesn't respect "no core instance" flag

[David Reveman]

On Sat, 2007-03-10 at 21:15 +0200, Roi Cohen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think the problem is that a window should still be considered as a
> core instance even if its transformed during the minimizing animation.
> The minimize plugin breaks the core instance drawing with the
> NO_CORE_INSTANCE mask, and draws its own instance of the window
> instead with drawWindow (which skips the NO_CORE_INSTANCE check of
> core).
> I think a better solution will be painting the animated window as a
> transformed version of the core instance.

We've done this before and the problem with this is that there might be
conflicts with other plugins. What if some other plugin also wants to
transform the core instance? Having plugins animate a separate instance
of the window instead of the core instance gives us a well defined
behavior in all situations. If plugins are animating the core instance,
then you have an infinite number of possible states that the core
instance could be in as it's defined by the state of all loaded plugins.

When writing a plugin, it's always a good idea to consider the case
where two instances of the plugin is loaded. That's of course not
something that has to be supported but if the behavior when having two
instances loaded is well defined, you're off to a good start. 

- David