[PATCH weston 09/11] shell: Manage toplevel surfaces on all workspaces in one list

[Jonas Ådahl]

On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Bill Spitzak <spitzak at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/26/2013 06:33 AM, Jonas Ådahl wrote:
>>
>> Instead of linking and unlinking per-workspace layers to the output
>> cycle, keep all toplevel surfaces in one per-shell list. Shell surfaces
>> now has a visibility flag, and surfaces that has visibility set to true
>> will be added to a reintroduced toplevel layer.
>>
>> Changing active workspace corresponds to updating the visibility flag
>> and marking the toplevel layer as dirty. Before an output repaint, if
>> the toplevel has been marked as dirty, the shell will repopulate the
>> toplevel surface with visible surfaces.
>>
>> Structuring surfaces this way as the benefit of simple stacking order
>> across outputs.
>>
>> Black surfaces are currently managed as a special case, stacked on the
>> toplevel layer beneath a fullscreen surface in the pre output repaint
>> hook.
>
>
> Could fullscreen be considered a "workspace" rather than using this black
> window? Ie showing a fullscreen window is as though you switched that output
> to a workspace that contains only that window. This would get rid of the
> black surface, instead the desktop surface would be used for this.

Having a "fullscreen workspace" I don't think makes much sense, and it
wouldn't get rid of the black surface as it would still be needed to
hide the desktop background, panel etc just as now.

>
> I personally feel that fullscreen should mean "it goes above the panel" and
> thus transparent areas will still show the panel, other windows, and the
> desktop. If you want full speed of direct mapping then the fullscreen window
> should be opaque (or at least claim to be opaque by setting the opaque
> region to the full size).

A fullscreen surface and its black surface are usually stacked in the
fullscreen layer. When using the alt-tab switcher binding the
fullscreen layer gets "lowered" i.e. the surfaces in it gets stacked
together with toplevel surfaces, which is what the special case was
about. When a fullscreen surface is activated, it gets restacked in
the fullscreen layer.. The fullscreen layer is always above the panel
layer and the toplevel layer.

>
> But if fullscreen is intended to hide everything else, it sure sounds like a
> "workspace" to me.

Workspaces in weston are used to group the surfaces usually are placed
in the toplevel layer of the desktop shell plugin. That is not the
same as fullscreen.

Jonas