Protocol for window previews/thumbnails

[adlo]

> On 20 May 2016, at 08:50, Pekka Paalanen <ppaalanen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> You would design a new protocol extension private to Weston, with which
> you deliver to your client the handles for top-level windows as they
> come and go.
> 

This should probably be a separate protocol from the preview protocol. Is it possible to integrate the handle and preview protocol with another protocol, such as xdg-shell, so that the handles are delivered as xdg_surfaces and the preview protocol accepts xdg_surfaces as input?

Is xdg-shell designed to be used by third-party clients for controlling windows in a similar way to libwnck? Does xdg-shell expose the inner workings of the compositor thus making it unsuitable?

Regards

adlo