Re: desktop as a separate window (fwd)

["J.W. Bizzaro" <bizzaro geoserve net>]

Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> This will replace _part_ of the file manager. The big question that has to
> be answered from the start is whether to continue with each icon as a
> toplevel window, as it is now, or to create one giant window that covers
> the root window.

Ah, I asked about the 'giant window that covers the root' a while back, but
didn't get any bites.  Loci (my project, which I have mentioned here before)
is a graphical shell and scripting language (it has been listed as a science
app, but that will be through extensions).  It will work very much like a
desktop, with icons and all that.  Here's an overview:

    http://theopenlab.uml.edu/loci/documentation/overview.php3

> Some advantages of the giant-window-covering-root approach:
>  - it can be a big canvas; so you can have crazy transparency

The Gnome canvas would make a beautifully flexible and easy desktop to work
with.  This is why I once requested that the canvas support pixmap tiling: so
you can have a tiled desktop!  Loci uses the Gnome canvas.

>    effects and things (at least once the AA canvas supports text
>    properly)
>  - avoid shaped windows, which are some kind of efficiency hit
>  - no need to grab the server to do rubberbanding
>  - easier to embed Bonobo objects in the desktop
>  - quite a bit easier to program

Agreed!

Havoc, if you do go the route of using a canvas for the background, maybe we
can work Loci into the whole thing (Loci is LGPL and uses vanilla gnome
libs)...or at least allow Loci to be an alternative desktop if you have
something else in mind.

You know, I just read at Slashdot an interview with the KDE developers, and
they said they were thinking about a graphical shell (connect icons, etc.) as
a future project...just like Loci!


Jeff