[compiz] Problem with decorator and edges

[René Seindal]

Hi,

I've just started using Compiz.  I'm running Debian testing on a 
HP/Compaq nc4400 laptop, and I've installed Compiz from the exprimental 
repository, 0.3.6 I believe, since the 0.2.2 in testing was rather old.

In general I have very few problems, besides having to change my ways of 
working due to a radically different interface :-)

I did run into one thing I don't quite understand.

I have setup right and left edge to turn the cube and if I use the mouse 
wheel at the bottom of the screen the switcher is activated.

At some point the edges stopped working where a windows was snapped to 
the edge of the display, and with the default behaviour of compiz 
windows do tend to stick to the edges. If I was on one side of the cube 
I couldn't turn it left by touching the edge, because there was another 
window on the other side, but not visible on the active side.

It struck me that it might be because the window decorator had died on 
me earlier, and I had just restarted it from a terminal. It seemed to 
work, but somehow it broke edge triggers where they coincided with 
windows borders.

I logged out and back in, and behaviour was back to normal, but I hate 
logging out :-)

Why did that happen?  I can understand that the decorator can crash, 
stuff happens, but why did it take over display edges where they 
coincided with windows borders?  I use edges and corners quite a bit, 
for the cube, the switcher and corners for scale/expose. Its rather 
frustrating when it stops working like that.

As for the gtk-window-decorator crash, I think it happened when I 
maximised and unmaximised a window several times in quick succession 
because I wanted to view the effect.

As for usage habits, I used sawfish before and had 10-12 desktops with 
only a few windows each.  I has one desktop per active task, and kept 
them uncluttered by having many. I guess it was because windows 
switching was a bit difficult if there were too many windows.

With compiz I only have four desktops, but the switcher and especially 
the scale plugin with edge and corner triggers make it quite easy to 
find and switch windows, even when there are many.

I just discovered another weird thing.  If I shade a window to get to 
the desktop below, I cannot drag anything to the area where the shaded 
window was.  Its like there's still something there obscuring the 
desktop window below.

And yet another thing, is there a way to get the scale plugin to show 
shaded and minimised windows too?  The switcher can do that, why not the 
scale plugin.

-- 
René Seindal (rene at seindal.dk)