Re: [g-a-devel] D-BUS based magnification API

["Kristian Lyngstøl" <kristian bohemians org>]

On 9/5/07, Carlos Eduardo Rodrigues Diógenes <cerdiogenes yahoo com br> wrote:
> 2007/9/5, Kristian Lyngstøl <kristian bohemians org>:
> <snip>
> > I've been following this thread closely, and I think it's a bit of
> > overkill to start working on a magnifier inside Metacity or doing
> > major work to Metacity at this point to improve gnome-mag. Compiz does
> > require GL, and it is not without problems with regards to drivers,
> > but I do believe that the desktop is moving in the direction of a
> > composited window manager with GL effects, be it Compiz or something
> > else.
> >
> > As such, Metacity should either be turned into something that can
> > provide the same level of effects that Compiz does, or it should be
> > left as-is, as a great window manager in maintenance mode. Otherwise
> > all I see is a lot of work being poured into Metacity that'll be
> > mostly forgotten in a few years, or considered a fall back for the
> > people who still don't have a GL card.
> >
>
> Just FYI, Metacity can do the same effects as Compiz and it's
> Compositor is based upon GL. The biggest problem with Metacity
> Compositor is that it still have bugs to be delivered to the user.
> Although some effects are quite stable.

I stand corrected, I based parts of this mail on assumptions from
using GNOME, not working on the code. However, I still think my
argument applies.

With regards to GL effects, you can't even compare Compiz and
Metacity. In fact, if you are using GL in Metacity to do magnifier
work, I can't see any real benefit of doing it in Metacity over
Compiz. Compiz is definitely less mature, but users want more than
just the magnification they can get in Compiz. By the time the gap in
features is closed, if that is even something we want to consider,
Compiz should've caught up on maturity.

But this is somewhat off topic. There's nothing stopping us from both
developing metacity further and working on Compiz. In fact, given the
original topic of discussion, it is quite natural, and underlines the
need for an (improved?) API.

- Kristian