Compiz Blog

Official Announcement of Merge

2007-04-04T22:48:00.000-01:00

There has been a post on the official Compiz Forums announcing that a merge has been agreed upon by the leaders of the two communities: I see this as a great step forward for the composited Linux desktop, and thank and congratulations all those who have been involved in the discussions to make this happen!

From this post

After several weeks of discussion the leaders of Compiz and Beryl have agreed that the two communities shall reunite. This decision is supported by both David and Quinn and represents the majority decision of the administrators and developers in each community. At this early stage not a lot has been decided, but these are the main points of the agreement...

I'll summarise:

Compiz will be run in two separate divisions: the Core and the Extra packages will be run separately

Compiz-Core will be as described here, and will be called 'Compiz'

The Compiz-Extra division (which currently includes plug-ins that are often any or all of more 'interesting', newer, less stable, less tested or just less supported by the Compiz-Core people) and this will temporarily be called 'Composite Community'

The new 'Composite Community' package will consist of the best code from the existing Beryl and Compiz plugins that is not in Compiz-Core.

There will be a 'Code Review Panel' made up of coders from both teams, in charge of ensuring the code released by the 'Composite Community' "meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution in an officially supported package"

Support for existing packages/projects will continue at least until a release of the new composite project

The separate forums and websites will remain until a combined portal/system is up and running. After a new forum is created additional details can be confirmed, a name chosen and release goals clarified.

Summaries are all well and good, but I know a lot of thought and care will have gone into the official words written by imnotpc on the Compiz forums. please read them to get a fuller idea of the what's happening.

Brainshare Video Demo of New Compiz Features

2007-03-23T17:36:00.000-01:00

If you just want to see the video then use this link and skip to the 25 minute mark. If that doesn't work then try here instead.

It has JUST been announced that the Beryl team want to merge with Compiz (details to be confirmed), which should mean these features reach Beryl users too! See details here

While it may have seemed short on high profile, glitzy new plugins recently, the Compiz core has been evolving quietly, speedily and robustly in the background. What is possible in the latest development versions looks capable of bringing an even bigger revolutionary change in the way we use our computers than we saw when XGL/Copmiz was introduced about a year ago.

The video doesn't just show new plug-ins that use the original features of the Compiz core (from which the Beryl core was forked) - we are seeing new tools for developers of plug-ins that haven't been available anywhere until now... For example adding the ability to interact with scaled windows, not just to scale them!

This continues the trend in Compiz development of implementing exciting new technology in the core, and then adding plug-ins to use those features - if necessary, waiting for changes (or making the changes) in the other programs Compiz/XGL depends on (like the xserver!) to be made so that the new solutions are done elegantly and in 'the right way'. The lead developer, of XGL and Compiz, David Reveman, has always been focussed on making the most powerful tools available in the core so that all plug-ins can access efficient code to do useful tasks.

In the Friday seminar at this year's Novell Brainshare conference David Reveman talked Nat Friedman through these new additions

David comes on around the 25 minute mark...

http://www.novell.com/img/flash/load_stream.html?temp=1&id=bs_2007_fri

Among other things, you can see:

Multiple display support (cloning of displays)
Interacting with transformed windows
Applications that use the Compiz core to scale and render images or videos, so that when you use Compiz's zoom function, the resolution of the video or image changes too!
Setting any particular application to render on the top of the cube

This is all very cool!

David used scale in a really interesting way: rather than clicking on any window to interact with it after scaling, he left all the windows scaled and zoomed in on the one he wanted to use - as if they were all laid out on a desk! This shows the potential of this technology to really change how we interact with our applications, media and data.

I was helped to this story by David's post to the Compiz mailing list:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/compiz/2007-March/001720.html

New Blurring

2007-02-07T12:39:00.000-01:00

David has posted to the mailing list to say that he has got his blur plugin to a 'reasonable state':

Some additional options have been added to the decorators which allow
you to make any translucent decorations blur what's behind them.
Applications can also use the hint recognized by the blur plugin to
specify blurred regions.

Which sounds mighty cool

He has made two example plugins at
http://git.compiz.org/

blurset, is similar to transset except that it allow you turn on/off
blur behind translucent parts of any application window.

blurdemo, is just a simple gtk example app that uses the blur support
provided by the blur plugin.

So all the hard work needed for a proper blur plugin should be done now
and the fun and easy part with adding additional filters is left. I only
put the simplest possible filter I could come up with in there for now
and it doesn't do much blurring at all. I'm interested in patches that
add additional filters.

So now we have a really thorough solution!

Application developers, get going!

I'm currently disconnected form my PC - so if anyone wants to mail in or comment with a link to a screenshot of the blurring and the blurdemo then please do!

Input Transformation Work

2007-02-04T15:10:00.000-01:00

The exciting news that David has done some work on allowing input translations (a feature needed to cleanly implement a whole load of interesting and desired features like interacting with scaled windows and potenially having thumbnails of minimised windows) has spurred me on to a post. I hope I can start updating the blog again - but I'm still incredibly pushed for time.

His post to the compiz list can be read here:

His message states "I have a local branch of compiz with
some input transformation hacks, I'll clean it up and push it out in the
next couple of days." - so you'll be able to try it in the next few days.

Glowing Buttons

2006-07-25T12:29:00.000-01:00

Today Cornelius added support for drawing titlebar button images outside the window on hover, which means cool stuff like glowing buttons is now possible... (In fact, it draws two images, the normal button and a glow overlay)

Edit: the forum post with patches is here

He says:

implemented button glow (for the hovered buttons of the active window) in cgwd. Here is the patch. The glow overlay image should consist of 7 images of same size for the 7 button types.
....
To enable glow:
Add this line to the end of the [buttons] section of your theme.ini file (mine is at /.compiz/cgwd):
glow=your-glow-image.png

And here is his screenshot of the glowing buttons

The actual glow.png should look like this

Blurring behind the window borders

2006-07-22T21:17:00.000-01:00

Idon'tknow12 has released a blur plugin that blurs just what is behind the window borders!

So, it looks like there are no compelling reasons to even consider Vista anymore :P

From the original post:

This plugin blurs things underneath the decoration, through a fragment shader [and] currently is using the one found in the Frag plugin to do so

Along with Quinn's latest additions to gwd (note that she is developing cgwd too) it is now possible to have window borders that look ~~exactly like~~ pretty damn similar (Thanks SparX) to Vista's! The developments required to make them identical are on the way!

Idon'tknow12's screenshot:You can get all the information over in thread on the the Compiz Forums
The latest version (at time of writing) is here

A new window decorator

2006-07-22T16:50:00.000-01:00

QuinnStorm has made a new window decorator, ~~catchily~~ named 'custom-generic-window-decorator' and it is now ready for anyone to use. Her post about the release is here and her original announcment is here

Quite how there are already so many themes available when the 'relese' post was only 2 days ago astounds me - here a few to show off the variety

Here you can see Vista-Ish, Community (which looks really cool when you mouseover the cube!), Siro, OSX and Gilouche

From the release post:

I'm tired of not working on anything, and of course will gladly scrap the project should someone come up with a really better solution, but I think its time to start implementing my ideas for a new window-decorator. If this project works, and only once it does, I'll revert the g-w-d distributed with my compiz (and thus the decoration plugin) to their original state.

She has reverted gwd as described so you need cgwd and if you want to use will need to change your compiz start script. cgwd is in Quinn's repo:

From the repo front page

* remove patched g-w-d, in favor of cgwd
* to use cgwd, install packages 'cgwd' and 'gcompizthemer' and if you like,
'gcompizthemer-themes' (cgwd >= 0.1, gcompizthemer >= 0.13,
gcompizthemer-themes >= 0.5)

jesper has added support for all sizes of icons- see his post here

Look Ma, No Shaders!

2006-07-22T16:37:00.000-01:00

Blurry things seem to be coming thick and fast these days!

julio has released a blur plugin that doesn't use Shaders!

You should note that this is very early stages and therea re a number of limitations: read all about them here, specifically, it is still very slow...

More fun with shaders - Copacity

2006-07-07T10:00:00.000-01:00

...Conditional Opacity

This new plugin by Michael Callahan makes parts of the window that are similar to the background colour transparent, leaving things in the foreground as bright as they should be! At the moment it uses black as a background colour, but as the post says, that can change if people like it.

Michael's post explains all very well

Legacy applications don't support transparency. Composition managers work around this by allowing each window to have a global transparency value. However the correct behavior for most windows is to have the background color be translucent and the foreground be opaque so that text is more visible.

The conditional opacity filter works around this by using a fragment shader to only make colors that are close to the background color transparent. The rest of the colors remain opaque. The included screenshot shows a comparison of and emacs window using the copacity filter on the left and normal transparency on the right. The text fade is clearly visible between the two windows.

The plugin is hard coded to use BLACK as the background color pending a review of the usefulness of the plugin and what the user interface should look like. It also doesn't set the transparency of the window but rather preserves the existing value. The current usage is to set a window up with black background and light foreground, then use transset to set the transparency value to the desired amount, then -c to turn on the copacity effect.

And a screenshot (from the original post)

Blurring is here

2006-07-05T11:31:00.000-01:00

3rd time lucky!

Quickee has posted code and a compiled lib for a new plugin to the forums to blur windows! When used with Trailfocus it allows blurring of inactive windows. According to the author, it uses pixel shaders like water and is based on neg:

I created a fragment program (pixel shaders) plugin out of neg and water, which currently supports gaussian bluring of windows. It currently misuses saturation for blur setting so saturation doesn't work. For visible effect set trailfocus plugin minimum_window_saturation_level to 1, maximum_window_saturation_level to 100 and max_trail_count to 2. To enable the plugin press s for the whole screen and w for the current window only.

Looks like it is time for me to get a card with pixel shaders!

The latest version of the lib is here

Themeing the widow borders (sort of)

2006-07-03T22:37:00.000-01:00

In a flurry of activity on the forum Quinn has released a tool to allow us to theme the colours and the transparency of the window decorations, and managers for the themes seem to be spawning all over the place!

It started with this post by kr0n0, which was followed up by Quinn's post:

Just to bump this thread, I'm playing around with this now since theming seems so far away, and working on creating a very-customizable patch to g-w-d (with a bool to switch back to the old behaviour should you wish)

Followed by this

This is going into cvs in just a moment.

The defaults still need some tweaking and there are tons of options to play with.

Make SURE you install new schemas

Turn on /apps/compiz/plugins/decoration/allscreens/options/use_new_decor

The post was 'hidden' in the Q and A forum and I built this CVS without even knowing the option was there :P

Moppsy posted a patch to get rid of the white 'halo' on windows here (which is in the CVS now)

There are a few posts on installing the new schemas here and here for a very useful post by moppsy on how to set the colours and transparency keys from the command line.

But we don't need that anymore :)

It all (seems) to start with this mockup by SparX
More mockups, refinements and code was contributed by Melissa, Chanders and Treviño, who has added settings to gset-compiz (picture).

strash has released a python tool aswell

The picture above is Quinn's tool based on the GUI designs by the above (with her own tweaks)

Quinn's most recent post says she will keep settings in ~/.compiz/themes.

So it looks like Tommie-Lie has a while to finish his complete windec themeing before we get restless again :P

Scale-zoom-scale

2006-06-26T03:28:00.000-01:00

Throughnothing has posted a patch that allows zooming of scaled windows when they are right clicked

From the forum post here

Here is something i made that lets you zoom in on a window during a scale out. Just right click on one of the scaled windows and it will zoom into the center for a better look. Let me know if you guys have any other suggestions/comments 126 This patch also has playerX's code for the organic window palcement in it (but it is disabled by default in case you dont want it) with the gconf option organic to turn on/off.

You will get screenshots ~~tomorrow night when I have actually had time to apply the patch.~~ now, because throughnothing submitted one :)

Note that this patch includes PlayerX's Organic Scale patch

More blurring

2006-06-26T03:21:00.000-01:00

Another partly complete blur plugin has been posted to the forums by pixel (the orignal incomplete blur plugin can be found here)

originally I wanted to develop a blur plugin myself, but unfortunately compiz, xgl, fglrx or my xorg.conf settings are pretty unstable for me so it's not possible right now.

What I got already is a the blur fragment- and vertexshader, so maybe someone will find it useful.
They still have to be tailored and optimized. A ShaderDesigner project file is included too.

iXce has already suggested he'll look at it, so there could be great things to come.Perhaps it could be used as a model for some new cool effects?

Coupled with the information that Tommie-Lie is close to completing his themeable window borders, things could soon get even more exciting!

Switch and Rotate

2006-06-24T13:20:00.000-01:00

Throughnothing has provided a patch that doesn't show the window behind the switcher when using Alt+Tab - it just fades/highlights the windows and rotates the cube to any window on another desktop - by all accounts it looks very cool.

What if, as an option for the switched plugin, we could disable the pop-up window in front that slides the windows around to show you a mini preview of the window. I think it would be cool to have just the windows fade in and out (highlighting the one im switching too). Sometimes i find the bar with the sliding windows gets in the way when im trying to see an app as i alt + tab. Does anyone else think this would be useful?

The patch is here

Throughnothing has released a new version here
Latest version that fixes handling of minimised windows so now you can get a preview of them! (it unminimises them while they are the 'current' window.

Organic Scale

2006-06-24T13:03:00.000-01:00

After an 'open call' for algorithms in the compiz.net forums there PlayerX has posted an 'organic' scale algorithm.

Original version here:

Ok, this is the first version, at the moment this replaces the algorithm for scaling the current screen, scaling the whole thing will also be possible, as for scaling only windows which are "like" the currently selected I think the old method should be kept, because we want those windows to be easily seen.

The latest version is here: , and a Xinerama patch is here

throughnothing has posted a patch to give us the choice of 'organic' or normal

Here is a patch that gives an option in gconf-editor to use organic or not, along with the compiz.schema file. The option is called organic

Here is a swap in lib by throughnothing:

... this one actually has something im working on where right clicking a window while scaled out will zoom in on that window...its not very refined yet but i didnt have an .so without that...

Finally, here are some screenshots to allow you to compare the old and new versions
Organic

And Normal

More DBus

2006-06-15T12:03:00.000-01:00

PlayerX and iXce have been doing some more DBus magic

RotateUp and RotateDown cube bindings for cube plugin (iXce) can be found here

And PlayerX's bindings for the zoom plugin here

Here they are, bindings for zoom, 3 methods at the moment:
- zoomIn and zoomOut
- zoomTerminate

Calling them is similar to the previous ones,
dbus-send --dest=org.compiz.dbus --type=method_call /org/compiz/dbus/screen0 org.compiz.rotate.zoomIn dbus-send --dest=org.compiz.dbus --type=method_call /org/compiz/dbus/screen0 org.compiz.zoom.zoomOut dbus-send --dest=org.compiz.dbus --type=method_call /org/compiz/dbus/screen0 org.compiz.zoom.zoomTerminate
It should now be easier to write a bash/whatever script which rotates the cube when as a screensaver or something like that, please do so and post it

A screensaver that zooms and rotates! now would be cool :)

It was also put forward that there could be a visualisation (I.E for Totem or Xmms, etc) written that manipulates the cube. It wouldn't make working easy - but if the cube zoomed to the bass, I wouldn't mind :P

Enable KB and Mouse while zoomed

2006-06-15T11:57:00.000-01:00

This "quick and dirty hack" by moppsy allows the user to interact with windows while zoomed in. I must confess I haven't tried it - so if I have misdescribed it I'd like to know :)

From Moppsy's post:

It still has all the same quirks.
You need to zoom in a little before you can zoom out, and you need to be grabbed to cancel it.
So when your zoomed, in or out, grab the cube as to rotate it and press ESC.
Initiating the switcher also adds a grab, so while it's displaying you can drag the cube around, ESC works here too.
Initiating scale is another way to drag the cube and ESC cancel.

The code and whole post can be found here. Be sure to note the instructions on configuring it

On DBUS

2006-06-09T11:29:00.000-01:00

From http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

D-BUS is a message bus system, a simple way for applications to talk to one another.

And now, thanks to iXce, they can talk to Compiz too.

http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=1173

Gives the details of what he has done.

There are now patches to allow calling of methods from

Cube (from iXce, original post)
Scale (PlayerX, here, and an update here)
More Cube (PlayerX) here
Water (PlayerX) here
One to activate a window: here (PlayerX again!)
And finally one for replace by iXce:

There are other patches in that thread, it is best you read it to get their context and purpose

See the wiki for a dbus howto:

Window Menu

2006-06-09T10:57:00.000-01:00

DavidR patched libwnck to allow Compiz to have a proper window menu

We now have such things as ‘move to viewport’ and ‘always visible’!

Note that these patches are not to compiz, so if you need to get a special version of libwnck, Reggaemanu and Quinn can do that for you...

Quinn posted them to the forum aswell as putting them in her repo:

Widgets!

2006-06-09T10:23:00.000-01:00

David R implemented widgets, an application can be set as a ‘widget’ and that makes it hideable/showable by pressing F9.

QuinnStorm made a patch for Cairoclock (by MacSlow) to turn it into a widget – as an example of how it ought to be done. Her patch is here:

ToDo on the Cube

2006-06-09T10:19:00.000-01:00

This tool, by mattdev121, allows a to-do list to be displayed on the top of the cube:
from http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=793:

You need to store template.svg somewhere in $RUNPATH, and make sure the settings are set properly (as you can see, i used .xgl/todo in my home directory and pico as my editor )

It should work fine on most systems, you just need gconf-tool2 (and a compiz that reads from gconf), plus rsvg-convert that comes with any svg-enabled system

Get the code here:

Centre Window

2006-06-09T10:17:00.000-01:00

Moppsy strikes again!

A little patch to centre a window
http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=733

Compiz Without Borders

2006-06-09T10:13:00.000-01:00

Moppsy has a plugin to remove the border from a window:

I found myself wanting a way to remove the frame window from an application, so I created this.
Here is is for anyone that might find this useful.

Get it here: http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=721

The Dock

2006-06-09T10:10:00.000-01:00

Miniwin got split into two plugins – dock and miniwin. Still doing all the fantastical stuff as before, but now you can have one without the other:

As people have been requesting them, here is a screenshot:
You can see all my windows, plus a 'group' of Nautilus windows that is 'expanded'. You can see the Gimp as an unexpanded group

There is a thread discussing it here

there are many ideas dealing with what one can do with mindows, and the first realised was the dock/taskbar/panel thing you might know.
I've extracted the dock code and decided to make it a new plugin itself, the dock plugin.
As the latest versions of miniwin were rather stable, I recently added some animation and eye candy.
changes from miniwin-0.1.0 alpha to dock-0.1.0-rc1:
- code cleaning
- sane defaults
- animation fixes
- panel shows program name on mouse over
- panel is now colored
- panel can now have another position on the screen (bottom, top, left, right)

The most recent version, including a patch by iXce (and I think one by PlayerX too – can someone confirm?) is here

The thread is a useful resource, as always, as ddave leaves good changelogs…

Brightness and Saturation

2006-06-09T10:07:00.001-01:00

BS - a plugin by Moppsy to change the brightness and saturation of windows, like transset, but less transparent. The post is here:

http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=629

Negative Windows

2006-06-09T10:07:00.000-01:00

Does what it says on the tin

http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=1163

Credit: Moppsy

Scale Enhancements

2006-06-09T10:02:00.000-01:00

The scale plugin has had a lot of love recently! Here is an attempt to summarise all that has gone on. Please tell me if I've missed anything...

Scale now places icons on the bottom of the window (I don’t yet know who did this, I guess Quinn, as she did it on the switcher).

And thanks tot the work by arturh (or perhaps PlayerX – they both seemed to be working on it at the same time…) now ‘scale from all viewports’ exists
It has been committed to Quinn’s CVS

PlayerX has done some work documented here:

I've started by writing a very simple patch which changes the way windows are sorted, so that instead of showing the active window first, and then the last active windows and then the window before, it shows the windows such as to minimize the distance they move.

and in the same thread arturh posted a patch to allow deactivation of scale with mouse corners

I really don’t know who did it, but I am currently using the fact that if you click on the desktop in scale mode, all the other windows are minimised! It’s like ‘show desktop’!

And iXce did some Xinerama helping things to allow selection of which screen the scale happens on:

Here's the patch. It features a new option for scale, called "head". It's an integer that can be 0 (scale on current cursor position head) 1 (scale on whole screen) or n (n > 1), which scales on n-1'th screen. Hope it'll work.

Window Shading

2006-06-09T07:53:00.000-01:00

For anyone who is still reading this blog, I am going to try to get it back off the ground... Sorry that I've been so lax

The good news is that David R has implemented window shading, responding to requests on the mailing list.

Here is the article. It, and some recent fixes, are in QuinnCVS and QuinnDebs

For those of you confused, as I was, as to how to turn this on: in Gnome go to System-->Administration-->Windows and change the double click action to shade.

There are already new commits to fix some bugs, so this looks like it'll be polished soon

Coloured Drop Shadows

2006-04-27T14:35:00.000-01:00

Hot on the heels of David's drop shadows patch, MacSlow (of SkyDome fame) has released a patch to change the colour of the shadows.

Here's a patch (against compiz from CVS-head about 30 min. ago) that
adds a shadow_color option to the parameters of the decoration-plugin.
(snip)
The only thing missing is the compiz.schema. I
dare not touch that XML-file manually. So after you applied the patch,
recompiled compiz and restarted g-w-d and compiz you'll have to fire up
gconf-editor and add a string-parameter with the name shadow_color
yourself.

You can use the normal HTML-like syntax for defining the wanted color:

#fff or #ffffff -> white
#f00 or #ff0000 -> red
#f73 or #ff7733 -> orange

Finally, here's a screenshot to show you how careful you should be with
chosing your new shadow_color :)

And he really isn't kidding!
Read the mail and get the patch here

Drop Shadows

2006-04-25T08:40:00.000-01:00

I know there is a lot of catching up to do, but I thought if I didn't start blogging again soon I would never be able to catch up!

So, the big news: David (Reveman) has added themeable drop shadows to CVS!

I've now added configurable drop-shadows to g-w-d. You'll need current
CVS version of Xgl, which includes important convolution filter fixes
for properly rendered shadows.

-David

He submitted a patch to the mailing list a while earlier, and this seems to be a full implementation of it.

Temporarily disorganised update

2006-04-10T22:37:00.000-01:00

Hi. Who's friend here. I've received brief information in the form of text-messages from Who on the manner in which to update this, so I hope I do the right thing :) I should also point out that I'm not a member of the linux community, let alone the compiz community myself, so I don't know what a lot of this stuff means, or whether it's relevant or not. Hence, probably all updates will be just transcriptions from emails (which I'll check about once a day). Again, I hope Who will straighten things out when he gets back. :)

Stuff emailed to Who since the 8th which seems to be relevant:

screen hotspots are in the compiz cvs now.

Ercin: the expose f-11 type functionality is possible (but limited) using compiz builtins. check the short discussion and Make it Work if you're a decent coder and feel so inclined.

it's not like expose, exactly, in that it only hides/unhides your windows. nothing fancy at all. but compiz can do this, the functions are available, and they work from a plugin just fine (except that the plugin breaks, and i can't figure out why...) read the post for details.

cheers,
madbull

[Posted somewhere by anonymous:] Up and running in the alpha MEPIS 6.0 release - using this how-to

Holiday

2006-04-07T15:16:00.000-01:00

I'm off on holiday for a week over Easter - so I won't be able to update the blog...

However, one of my friends has kindly agreed to post anything that anyone emails to me (mailforwho (at) googlemail [dot] com) to the blog - so as to keep it running

So, if you have some news, or if the QuinDebs get updated, etc - then email me and it'll make its way to the front page.

Don't do anything too special, I don't want to miss out :)

Interesting additions to CVS

2006-04-07T07:57:00.000-01:00

David has updated the CVS (thanks to xplode_me for posting this to the forums...)

plugins/rotate.c: Add edge flipping support. (probably a lot of Tommie-Lie and Quinn's code from 'edgeflip'
plugins/scale.c: Allow corner screen edges to be used for initiating scale mode.

I also didn't comment on a change that was made a while ago: Rain effect added to water - now it seems to do everything xdesktopwaves could do!

CVS changelog here:

Show Desktop with Mindows

2006-04-07T07:35:00.000-01:00

aj2r has made a patch for miniwin.c to allow it to work with show desktop applet for Gnome. I haven't actually had time to apply and test this yet - so I can't even say what it _actualy_ does (I.E whether it mindowises all windows or just plain old minimizes them... ) - sorry...think of it as a fun surprise

See the post to the compiz forums here

QuinnRPM

2006-04-06T07:43:00.000-01:00

Well, it doesn't sound as catchy as QuinnDeb - but it's still mighty useful if you're using SUSE10.1

Cyberorg has made some RPMs for Suse 10.1 and posted them to the new forums.

Get them here

From the post:

Here is the SUSE 10.1 rpm.

Uninstall the default compiz and install this one for additional plugins from quinn's cvs.

-J

Enjoy!

Compiz Icons

2006-04-05T15:07:00.000-01:00

Well, this isn't strictly related to development, but I made 3 icons for Compiz which can be seen below. I'm still at the 'tell me what you think and I'll adjust them' stage - so comment away :)

The colours are from the Tango palette.

Posted here
license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0

Compiz on AIGLX

2006-04-03T11:31:00.000-01:00

iXce has made some packages for Compiz on aiglx, they can be found here

Update: Now version 0.8Ubuntu2

Not really for you if you're using an Nvidia or newer Radeon card - but great for i830-i945

Read all about aiglx here

Quote from the post:

Here are my packages of Compiz-AIGXL on Dapper
They include latest Quinn's CVS (checked 10 mins ago) and latest official CVS improvements (3 hours ago, water.c).
Hope that they will work by you!
(note that the water.c won't work until GL_ARB_fragment_program is included in your Mesa/DRI drivers)

Latest version : 0.0.8-0ubuntu2

ChangeLog :
* 0.0.8-0ubuntu2
- Resynchronize with Quinn's package and latest miniwin
Please note that this package may be reuploaded with the same version number if new bugs are discovered in miniwin before next Quinn's package.
ChangeLog :
* 0.0.8-0ubuntu1
- Resynchronize with latest CVS

The Compiz Forum!

2006-04-03T10:57:00.000-01:00

Unnoficial Compiz development, broadly overseen by QuinnStorm has a new home - its very own forum!

The forum uses PunBB and the initial glitches with being ubnable to upload files have been solved now! This seems to be where much of the discussion and development is talking place now.

Huge thanks to iXce (and Thirion indirectly) for organising this!

May the development go on!

AdminCompiz = CompizTools

2006-03-31T11:00:00.000-01:00

What was AdminCompiz has been renamed CompizTools, and is now being developed jointly by GaRgAm and Anbreizh.

It is available in English, Spanish and French at the moment, but all translations are welcomed by the authors!

All the latet details can be found here

MiniWin

2006-03-31T02:23:00.000-01:00

ddave has released an early testing version of miniwin - a plugin to allow iconifying of windows. The windows can be restored to their original size and shape by right clicking on the 'icon'.

Becuase it gets confusing to talk about icons, mini windows, main windows etc, I am gonna go ahead and define the term mindow, for a mini window, that is an icon for a normal window

Latest Version: 0.13 - Now with dynamic backgrounds for the dock. Note ddave's warning

- - please set demindow_key to Button3, otherwise you will not be able to move your mindows around
- - - or change your default move key bindings.

0.0.12 was a big rewrite and some people had trouble running it. The best success seems to have been with the very latest XGL and Copmiz from Reggaemanu - details here

the changes are:

Last Changes:
ATTENTION: please run a gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz/plugins/miniwin as there are many
options which have changed there name and/or were removed

- code rewrite: prepared for 0.1.0
- - introduced event handling for mindows
- - separated the taskbar code from the basic mindow code
- - more debugging output
- fixed: mindows as well as windows remember their position (independent from each other)
- changed taskbar behaviour
- - mindow_key doesn't put mindows in the taskbar, only minimizing them does
- - that means: it is now possible to have (different) mindows on your desktop _and_ in the taskbar
- removed option bring_back_centered
- removed the dock window (temporarily) as it seems to cause *many* problems (focus, inputfocus, swapping around, even crashing compiz sometimes)
known bugs:
- if you hover mindows very fast and often, the may move around
- the firefox bug is now even worse (though it only appears here when putting firefox in the taskbar), but I guess this is not only miniwin's fault, but compiz's as well.

His original announcment is here. The latest source to try, aswell as a compiled binary is here
There is some stuff to build it for aiglx instead of xgl here ( OLD - courtesy of GeorgeNorton)

ddave has a very useful post on it here, which answers a lot of questions:

Some links to relevant versions: Development is happening very fast (as always), so if this looks old, please add a coment or check out this thread

Test, test, test! results in the forum

Trailfocus with mouse hover!

2006-03-29T17:15:00.000-01:00

DDave has mailed me and Quinn a patch to allow the windows that are not focussed to become opaque on hover! this is really cool if you find that you have a window mess! I applied his patch to the latest QuinnSource and compiled and it works really nicely!

Edit: he has now posted it to the forums too

Basically, transparency follows the mouse but focus doesn't. There are separate keys in Gconf to set the transparency of the unhovered but focused window (hover_focus_transparency) and the unfocussed and unhovered windows (hover_transparency). The hovered window is opaque.

He has attached a 'swap in lib' to this post

On the road to themeable window borders

2006-03-27T12:42:00.000-01:00

Edit: these patches themeselves do not really help for user themeable windows. this post will link to some key threads discussing the various plans of different people to develop a themeable window-decorator.

As antother of the 4 patches Felipe posted to the forums there was some preliminary code to allow a hard-coded second theme to gnome-window-decorator (2 of the patches). At the moment it does very little obvious stuff (see the screenshot) - it is very basic, and the main people pushing Compiz on Ubuntu seem agreed that it is not the right direction to take for further development. (this is not what the blog used to say - sorry everyone, I seemed to suffer from some optimism based delusion ;)

Patches here and here

Felipe doesn't know who is developing this, or who released the patches, so I can't give credit to the right person! Anyone got a lead? From the URL, I would guess it is someone from the Gentoo community - I'll check their wiki later...

Switcher to include minimized windows!

2006-03-27T11:51:00.000-01:00

Felipe has dug up 4 patches, one of which allows switching to windows that are minimized using the switcher! See the mail to the xorg mailing lists here

QuinnStorm has applied it in her latest debs! I haven't tried them yet - can someone confirm whether they show a preview for the window that is minimized...

Another of the patches fixed the 'Show Desktop' button in Gnome, Quinn has applied this too.

These were both developed by Alex Jasse alex.jasse at googlemail.com

EdgeFlip

2006-03-24T20:52:00.000-01:00

This has now been updated. The original version is in the latest QuinnDebs

The first update allowed you to select what ratio of the window should be on the next desktop before it changed the window position (you can still do it with a 'timebased' method too), and a second, yet to be released will add he spin code from Quinn

tommie-lie has created a new effect called 'edgeflip' - it allows you to drag windows from one desktop to another - enlightenment stylee, and is an addition to the move plugin.

The obligatory quote from the original post:

And this is how it works:
You'll find two new gconf keys: /apps/compiz/plugins/move/*/options/edgeflip and .../edgeflip_time. The first one activates edge flipping and the latter one specifies the time in seconds how long it will take before a moving window on the edge of the screen actually causes a flipping.

The effect:
If you drag a window to the left or right (top and bottom makes no sense ) edge of the screen, you will automatically take it to the virtual desktop left or right of your current desktop, just like you could do with Enlightenment.

ToDo:
- Don't make the flipping dependend on the moving. Right now, the time is checked in the motion event handler, so you have to move the window to the edge, wait until the time has passed by and move the window again a little bit but staying at the edge (i.e. only up/down movement).
- Have a cool rotation when the window is taken over to the new desktop *if* the cube and rotation plugins are enabled.

Can't wait to try it!

Exposé for Current Application

2006-03-24T18:06:00.000-01:00

QuinnStorm has ubdated her Debs again to include another extensions to the Exposé like behaviour

You can now make it scale only windows from the current application - perfect for when you are using the Gimp or have multiple Nautilus windows open :)

New XGL for Smooth Operation

2006-03-23T12:39:00.000-01:00

Well, thanks to DeeZiD and reggaemanu you can no get the latest version of XGL from the same repositories as you need to get the QuinnDebs! Coolness!

The QuinDebs post has the appropriate sources.list line

The original HowTo by DeeZiD can be found here
reggaeman then packaged them for Ubuntu so they can just replace the current versions
QuinnStorm put them in her repositories

Straight from DeeZiD's post, here is why you want, and don't want these files :)

Advantages:
- No more slowdowns with NVIDIA-cards
- No more glitches with ATi radeons (solved my X700mobile problems)
Disadvantages:
- new mesa doesn't support Intel 915 graphics (won't compile)
- Xgl and mesa are checkinstall builds (better than nothing)

reggaemanu pointed out that his debs do support the latest Intel 915 and also that, being .debs, they are not checkinstall builds...

Some people, myself included, are reporting more visual defects with these builds, but many others claim they are much smoother and better! I wonder how much of it is the placebo effect ;)

The ATI fix is a contentious one - X300 and X600 users in the forums are still having problems (no new ones though).

When they work, they really speed things up!

You can browse the CVS for XGL here

Latest QuinnDebs

2006-03-23T11:07:00.000-01:00

Latest QuinnDebs

This is a dynamic post which should always hold the information on the LATEST QuinnDebs (see my announcment of them here)

Current Version: 0.8Ubuntu14.

Here is the actual post on the forums.

These debs basically include everything that the community has done to date and are synced with CVS on a regular basis: Additions that have come in the most recent upgrade are in green and bold, previous update are just green.

QuinnStorm's 'Zoom on Luunch', now with added 'Zoom Out on Close" for us all to enjoy
Switcher now behaves as a special case so that it doesn't zoom (though many people said they thought this was cool - should it still be an option?)
The brightness, saturation and opacity options from the opaquefocus plugin by Athropos, _avatar and QuinnStorm
The Trannset plugin (Athropos)
Lates bugfixes from CVS
Latest gnome-window-decorator - including the 'On Top' and 'On All Workspaces' addition.
ALT+TAB limited to the current workspace
Patches to 'move' and 'opaquefocus' so that they respect transparencies set by transset and the mouse scroll wheel
New menu item - 'reset transparency' on gnome-window-decorator
fixed up minimize (that provides zooming on launch) to look a bit better with the zoom in/out tooltips/menus (See the 'Side effects of 'zoom-on-launch')
Scale windows from the current application only.
EdgeFlip original version + rotate (added by Quinn)
Changing desktops behaves so that 'classic' desktop wallpaper switchers will now work, the pagers themselves may look strange (reverted in later versions)
Fixed a bug that stopped Compiz from opening sometimes.
Reverted changes that caused wallpaper changers to work but pagers to malfunctionAdded TrailFocus
Added toggle to make windows appear/disappear from the centre of the screen
Fixed OpaqueFocus' behaviour with Flash
Fixed the 'Scale this application only' so that it can now use WM_CLASS not WM_CLIENT_LEADER, which means it will work regardless of instance.
Melvil's patch to stop windows that have a transparency set from changing transparency while being moved.
OpaqueFocus no longer causes 'ghosted' windows
Added the latest additions to move.c by tommie-lie
Removed opaquefocus – the functionality of which is still provided by a special case of trailfocus (which was, in the first place, a modification of opaquefocus…)
There is now a toggle to disable drawing of the top and bottom of the cube when it is inverted (so you can see skydome)
Added toggle to invert X (as well as Y) for rotating the cube)
Added patch to make 'Show Desktop' work
Applied patch to show minimised windows in the switcher
Applied Radeon patch (tentatively, will be reverted if it causes problems) to allow windows of size greater than the graphics card's max. texture size.
Basic theme architecture implemented
Theme patch reverted
Water Plugin added
Bugfixes!

Bugfixes by Alex Jasse for his Show_Desktop fix

Fix switcher not to show previews for minimised apps (draw an icon instead)
Draw an icon for all apps in the switcher
Bugfixes
Sync with CVS
Contents of Ubuntu14 unknown! does anybody have any idea where to find it or if there is a webcvs for Quinn's CVS?
Fix for problems with the minimize plugin
Sync with latest CVS.

You can find them and their source here or just add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb

deb http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/ dapper main

To do this use these commands in a terminal

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list_PRE_QUINN
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

then paste the line in at the bottom of the file and save and close gedit
Finally, type

sudo apt-get update
and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

You should be ready to go!

Transparency on the move

2006-03-23T10:44:00.000-01:00

Melvil is back with a patch to ensure that any opacity value set with transset or the mouse remains while the window is being moved.

You can read all about it here

It looks like Quinn has applied it in her latest QuinnDebs

TrailFocus

2006-03-23T10:38:00.000-01:00

_avatar (of brightness/saturation in opaquefocus fame) has released a new plugin called 'trailfocus'. He explains it here:

trailfocus is a compiz plugin that changes the brightness/saturation/opacity of a window based on how long ago it was focused. This way the user can easily and quickly find recently used windows when they are otherwise obscured.

As always with _avatar's additions, here is a screenshot he provided: (it doesn't really do the effect justice)

This hasn't made it into the 0.0.7-0ubuntu4 QuinnDebs, but we probably won't have to wait too long.

Blurry Code

2006-03-23T09:19:00.000-01:00

While hunting around for Compiz documentation yesterday (if anyone knows of anythinng more than Francis' Walkthrough then please show me!) I stumbled upon this plug-in (a text version here)

It aims to blur what is behind any transparent(translucent) object - so for example the desktop icons underneath a semi transparent window. It sounds like a great way to reduce the clutter induced by too many semi transparent windows!

However, the plugin is not complete, and doesn not work :(. I emailed the author to ask about its development and got the following response:

Blurring behind translucent windows was the original intention. The
plugin does not work, and will unlikely be finished anytime soon. I
got frustrated with the lack of documentation for compiz plugins, and
the fact that I didn't have the GL_ARB_shading_language_100 extension
inside xgl (probably a mesa/nvidia thing).

So, in the spirit of Open Source, does anyone want to pick up the mantle?

Sorry to dissapoint those who want finished products!

QuinnStorm: QuinnDebs and QuinnSource

2006-03-22T09:58:00.000-01:00

QuinnStorm has released a set of Compiz .debs to allow us all to try her latest enhancements hassle free. She has also provided a copy of her source tree so AMD64 and non Ubuntu folks can build it for themselves.

She has started a new thread for her debs that can be found here. Her explanation of why is here

These debs basically include everything that the community has done to date, including the ALT+TAB limited to the current workspace patch (which she has apparently edited to work with the latest CVS). This includes, but is not limited to:

QuinnStorm's 'Zoom on Luunch', now with added 'Zoom Out on Close" for us all to enjoy
Switcher now behaves as a special case so that it doesn't zoom (though many people said they thought this was cool - should it still be an option?)
The brightness, saturation and opacity options from the opaquefocus plugin by Athropos, _avatar and QuinnStorm
The Trannset plugin (Athropos)
Lates bugfixes from CVS
Latest but one (see below) gnome-window-decorator - including the 'On Top' and 'On All Workspaces' addition.

You can find them here

The new thread that QuinnStorm added has the chnages to the window-decorator integrated, as per her comment.
~~Moments later Quinn update her gnome-window-decorator with latest CVS bugfixes and her own patches - so they can be found here~~

Staying on Top of Things!

2006-03-21T09:02:00.000-01:00

It seems that while I was sleeping, QuinnStorm was not!

It is now possible for any compiz window to be 'On Top' and 'On All Workspaces'

See the post here.

I put together a new gnome-window-decorator that has a custom right-click menu sporting ON TOP and ON ALL WORKSPACES! Attached is a .tar.gz of both gnome-window-decorator.c and a binary of gnome-window-decorator that should work with the debs I posted earlier just fine (and the front-page ones)

The front page referred to is here

I'll be looking at the CVS changelog later today to see which of the recently blogged bits are going in.

No code :(

2006-03-21T01:27:00.000-01:00

Well, I have been blogging about other people's inovations all day, and now I want to write about a proposal of my own:

I would love any window to be manually scaleable - perhaps by CTRL clicking and using the resize handle.
I think a good implimentation should then allow the window to return to 100% size when the mouse moved over it, or when the user clicked on the title bar.

Some cases where I think this would really come in to it's own:

For toolbox windows in The Gimp or Inkscape - make them small in the corner (or even, should I be so bold, small, desaturated and translucent :P, hell, we can do it all now). Move mouse over them to use them and watch them shrink back to an unobtrusive size when you move the mouse away. Smooth.
For reading from one source and writing another (for example, composing a blog from many forum posts :P). Have the source page open, but scaled, and allow the user to read it full size on mouse-over. They can return to their original document when the mouse leaves.
For status windows, such as network status or a sound level monitor.
To keep track of multiple messenger conversations - scale/hide them down the bottom and then mouse-over to type, move mouse off to re-scale (you could concievably read them while scaled!)

The possibilities are endless. i'm getting quite excited just thinking about it!

The problem is, I haven't done any Compiz coding yet, and this seems like a big undertaking. Is anyone willing to give it a go?

It seems to me that the key bits of code (scaling and mouse-over tracking) are already done, so would it just be a job of pulling it together?

I also suggested some enhancments to the scale plugin - namely
What do people think about some extensions to 'scale':

A) Hotspots on the screen
B) In addition to the normal mode for scale I'd love to see these others:

1. All applications, minimised or not (perhaps with the minimised ones desaturated or separated somehow)
2. All windows from the active application
3. All windows from all desktops

Post your ideas!

Who

Zoom on Launch

2006-03-21T01:12:00.000-01:00

As part of QuinnStorm's mad code push she has hacked the minimize plugin so that when any new window is created it zooms in from where the mouse pointer was when it was clicked (using the same zoom effect as minimize). This looks really cool!
It has been through a number of revisions -

Rev1: No gconf key to turn it on/off
Rev2: has the Gconf key but had a glitch so it was inconsistent
Rev3: This has the Gconf key and also solves the bug stopping it from working on all windows. QuinnStorm has suggested that if the fact that the 'switcher' dialogue behaving like this is annoying then he may be able to make it a special case - if you have a suggestion, head to the latest-compiz thread in the Ubuntu Forums folks :P

Some Gnome users experienced initial problems with getting it to work, chanders eventually solved it here (see the edit)

Ok I think the problem was the list of window types in gconf. For some reason I had a 'Toolbar' in there and no ModalDialog... When this was changed it all works perfectly!!

REV3 works! make sure window_types is [Utility,Dialog,Normal,ModalDialog] is so.

The Rampage

2006-03-21T00:56:00.000-01:00

Well, I went to make a loaf of bread (yes, I did _actually do that), watch a film (The Constant Gardner...) and eat some dinner - all of a sudden this blog is old!

Firstly, Athropos has released a 'latest' version of opaquefocus with the two patches by _avatar and QuinnStorm - that can be found here.

Meanwhile, QuinnStorm has been working rather quickly on a number of new plugins/effects. She released three compiled librarys here buyer beware, the libminize on this post is not the latest - it is the one being referred to as Rev1 in the forums

Here's a precompiled libminimize.so, libopaquefocus.so and libmove.so. the libmove.so is needed for translucent-on-move. I hope my changes are to everyone's liking ^-^

So the new information is that the minimize plugin has been hacked:
Because I want to roughly keep a new post for each feature, see the next post for the details!

Handling of Dialog Windows

2006-03-20T15:17:00.000-01:00

Just added to CVS is a patch to:

Allow dialog window actions on util and toolbar windows

It seems to do the same thing as QuinnStorm's patches here and here, but yet it seems to be done in a different way.
The changelog is here

QuinnStorm has posted some more updates here

The new version has support for KDE's "context-help" button in the title-bar.

Her comment also confirms that her patches have made it in to CVS

Alt+Tab limited to the current workspace

2006-03-20T15:04:00.000-01:00

Update:QuinnStorm has patched this so it now applies against CVS and can be found in her latest debs or source tree, downloadable here

Update: Emanuel has just emailed to say this pacth doesn't apply against the latest CVS, and that it also has not yet made its way into CVS. I'll update you if anything changes, for now you can check the CVS changelog and get the latest code if things change (see the links to the side)

The Gentoo XGL Wiki has some information on patches to limit ALT+TAB switching to the current desktop only:

From http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_XGL

you can apply this patch, by Tiago Sousa, to only switch between the windows of the current workspace. Then Bartosz Taudul enhanced it with the ability to turn it on or off through a gconf key. The final result, which is the recommended patch, is here.

I looked at the latest CVS and it doesn't seem to be there yet... so just a patch for now - Please correct me if I'm wrong!

More Transsetability

2006-03-20T14:48:00.000-01:00

First it was only avaialible via the command line, then you could do it with the mouse wheel thanks to Francis Woodhouse (see here) . Now, the ever prolific Athropos has extended the transset plugin to allow diffferent windows to have different transparencies from startup!

Note the instructions below on how to find the correct name for a window.

This has actually progressed over a few revisions, and I will post the 'history' such as it is here:

First was a simple plugin to do the thing for Gnome Terminal:
It was then extended to support an unlimited number of applications through gconf
Finally, the method of configuration was altered to make it easier to manage

I think that is up to date!
To add my classic quote from the original article:

Applications may now be configured using gconf-editor. The key is name 'apps', and its format must be like that:
"Gnome-terminal 80 Rhythmbox 90"
There is no limit in the number of applications.

To find the correct name of applications, use this command:
xprop | grep "WM_CLASS" | cut -d \" -f 4
You will then have to click on the corresponding window.

Another Swithing Enhancement

2006-03-20T14:39:00.000-01:00

Created by Athropos and edited by David Reveman when being applied to CVS the scalefocus-enchancement, allows the user to choose the opacity of unfocused windows when using scale (expose)

Athropos says:

The patch allows the user to choose the opacity of unfocussed windows during the scale function (F12). I sent it to David Reveman (at Novell) and he added it to the CVS.

So, yet another option to play with!

Neat Little Admin tool

2006-03-20T13:13:00.000-01:00

GaRgAm has started a C+GTK project that seems to be running out of the Ubuntu Forums to design a configuration editor for Compiz that means the user can bypass Gconf editor! It looks really promising as a way of letting non-technical users play with Compiz.

The initial forum post is here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=140687

screenshot courtesy of Tharna

Introduction to Compiz/XGL

2006-03-16T15:53:00.000-01:00

What is it/are they/are you talking about?

This blog is devoted to the developments in two packages/programs: Xgl and Compiz. To see all the latest plugins and patches just check back to the front page http://compiz.blogspot.com

Xgl and Compiz were developed by David Reveman, first indpendently and then at Novell. Both are included in OpenSUSE (and of course the commercial SLED) which is supported by Novell. I will let them explain themselves :)

OpenSUSE description of XGL

Xgl is an Xserver that accelerates drawing operations by using OpenGL.

OpenSuse wiki on Compiz

Compiz combines together a window manager and a composite manager using OpenGL for rendering.

The best way to understand why I am blogging about it is to look at some of the videos. This stuff makes your desktop seriously cool (and, of course, allows you to be more productive :P)

XGL is not to be confused with AIGLX - a RedHat championed set of extensions to the current X server to achieve a similar effect. Compiz can run on AIGLX.

Though they were developed 'behind closed doors' for some time, XGL and Compiz are both now open to community scrutiny and patches, and as of mid March it seems to be all go, with new patches and features daily! There is discussion of the 'closed doors' approach, in copmarison to the scrutinisable open approach of AIGLX here

How Can I Get Them?

The way you get Compiz and Xgl will vary depending on which distribution you are using.

Please note: XGL and Compiz are unstable and such should not be run in critical situations.

If you have Nvidia hardware you are likely to have more luck than those with ATI, provided you are using propriety(I.E binary only) drivers

For Ubuntu (Dapper Drake - Unstable), check out the excellent HowTos in the forums:

Nvidia
ATI
Latest Build
This page has details for more cards/setups

For SUSE you can use the excellent OpenSuse Wiki page

Using XGL on Suse Linux

Gentoo Linux has a very good Wiki on installing the Gentoo ebuilds

Gentoo Linux Wiki

Mandriva, too has a simple way of getting XGL

Manriva Linux Forum
Also see this post about getting the latest packages

This Ubuntu based thread shows you how to build from source – so is potentially good for everyone!

Please email me with the details of how to add it to any other major distributions.

What Can it Do?

I think it is best that I let the blog speak for itself on that one! I try to have a new post for every new feature or fix.

The key thing about Copmiz is that all of the effects are provided by plugins. It is very modular and extensible, and this blog is devoted to providing the latest information about new plugins

The openSUSE wiki on Compiz has information about the standard functionality/Available plugins

OpaqueFocus

2006-03-16T13:22:00.000-01:00

Update: Latest version can be found here or in the QuinnDebs/QuinnSource

Athropos has made a plugin to allow changing the opacity of the unfocussed windows:

See this forum post here for more details. From Athropos' post

I made a small plugin that change the opacity level of unfocused windows.

If you want to test it, just put libopaquefocus.so in /usr/lib/compiz and add opaquefocus to the list of plugins in gconf-editor (in apps->compiz->general->all screens->options->active plugins).

Further to this, QuinStrom has pathced the patch to allow transparency while moving and to change the opacity of the focussed window too- the post announcing this can be found here. From the post:

I've managed to successfully patch opaquefocus and move to have both selectable opacity for focused windows and selectable opacity while-moving.

Finally (and I think I have got these in chronological order!), _avatar has modified it so that the the saturation and brightness can also be set - see here. From _avatar's post:

I have created a patch for Athropos's opaquefocus plugin. My patch adds the ability to change saturation and brightness for unfocused windows. The following are some screenshots showing what it looks like.

Some eye candy for you all (courtesy of _avatar):

There is some more discussion of Avatar's plugin here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=841922&postcount=663

Correct at time of writing - but things change so quickly at the moment!

Who

Two plugins to make switching easier

2006-03-16T13:19:00.000-01:00

Edit: Melvil has just left a comment saying that these are both now in CVS

I'm gonna blog these two together as, while they do different things, they both make switching between apps easier and cooler:

This one by Daniel G Taylor desaturates the background while using the scale (Exposé) trick,

and this one by Melvil brings brings the current window to the top of the Z-order while switching windows (it's called 'switching-enhancements')

Both of these guys have emailed their patches to David Reveman, so could(/should :P) be included in later releases. For now, you can use them as patches and build yourself, or, if you use Ubuntu, download the 'latest-compiz' packages by DeeZID here.

I will be blogging about DeeZIDs contribution later! I owe a lot of my information to posts on the thread he started!

Skydome

2006-03-16T12:23:00.000-01:00

Edit: As you will see in MacSlow's comment below, David Reveman has chosen to implement only .png images - so the quote from MacSlow's blog is now incorrect.

Well, I'm a bit late on reporting it, but here you go:

MacSlow has made a patch for Compiz (not strictly a plugin, but it fits here anyway ;) to allow the background of the cube rotation rendering to be changed.

A user can use gconf to set what is displayed behind the cube

MacSlow says about his patch:

My skydome-patch will allow you to set any power-of-2 image (e.g. 1024×1024) to be used as texture for the background (that empty void of space behind the cube, only visible when you rotate the cube). Filetypes like .png, .jpg, .tga and .bmp can be used. You can set the image on the fly via gconf-editor. If you enter an invalid filename a fallback color-gradient will be used. No more black backgrounds. Have a look at the screenshots below.

You can read more about it here
http://macslow.thepimp.net/?p=31

Where are the plugins!

2006-03-06T13:34:00.000-01:00

XGl and Compiz are here, along with a plug in mechanism - there's just one problem: as yet, I can only find one plugin!

This Blog is here to save the day, and keep a list of as many of the XGL and Compiz plugins I can find...

So, where are the plugins, who has them? Mail me!

mailforwho {at} googlemail [dot] com

The fist plugin that I can find is this one by Francis Woodhouse that lets you adjust the transparency of a window using the mouse wheel.

The more interesting thing about that post though, is that it details how to write your own plugin. Someday, when I get more time, I may just have to try it