Show Desktop plugin

[mikedee]

Here is the showdesktop plugin, it is one of the more popular ones so I will post here for suggestions on how it can be improved.

The porting was again standard stuff except one strange problem which I do not understand. I would be really interested to hear why it is happening.

The problem related to this line

ss->placers = realloc (ss->placers, sizeof (CompWindow) * (ss->nPlacers +32));

It was originally sizeof(CompWindow *) * ... which I changed to the code above. It was crashing hard everytime at that point but nobody on the beryl forums seem to be complaining.

Download here or through compiz-extras package if one is available.

http://www.anykeysoftware.co.uk/compiz/plugins/showdesktop.tar.gz

[iznogood]

mikedee your work is fantastic, keep it up!!!!

some suggestions for showdesktop:
we can implement a different way to hide windows not only up-down or left-right but also to the closest edge or moving up and slightly to the left like MacOS.
Also we can hide windows by rotating around y axis and translating on z axis very fast until it disappears. It would look like the window is rotated and then it is moving away from us...

I will try it as soon as i can...
Its my first time so no promises

[mikedee]

Both sound like great ideas :)

I cannot help much other than to tell you to look in animation and miniwin. Miniwin has an option to rotate the window and there is a function called miniwinDrawWindowTexture which may be useful for the rotation.

[Matias]

Hi mikedee, great work porting beyl plugins.

I use the desktop extremely and I see only one annoyance with this plugin. when I press the shorcut to show desktop, rise one windows and show desktop again, all windows raises. I and I thinks I'm talking for everyone, would like for it to not happen.

I don't know if I'm not being clear. My english is very poor but if you don't understand I'm glad to make my self clear.

Again, great work, keep on it

[fab]

Nice plugin !!!
The only problem i can see is that the standard show desktop functions are not playing with this plugin ( in can be found in enterShowDesktopMode in one of the src files of compiz but i can't remember which one !)

I made a patch to add support for showdesktop plugin there but when i pulled an update from git my work has vanished ... i'll try to make it back when i can find time to and i'll see with you mike to make this work :)

Keep up the good work anyway :) :)

[Matias]

I have found a little big bug in this plug in. Try super+d a few times and my windows disappear. Tey are not showed anymore in the windows bar nor in the switcher.

It's me the only one with this problem?

[mikedee]

I think the windows disappearing problem is a seperate one related to the core (something to do with the new desktop support). I have seen it while using the switcher but it seems to be fixed now.

This plugin generally is a bit buggy but the effect is nice, hopefully it can be tidied up and integrated with the core showdesktop functionality. Once we get git it will be easier to work on this sort of thing.

[Matias]

ok so i would stop using compiz until this is tided up, I'm a massive desktop user. :cry:

Thanks for the quick response

[mikedee]

Which version are you using? If you are using a latest git checkout then maybe the bug still exists.

Does the same thing happen if you use the inbuilt show desktop or if you use switcher quickly?

Also making sure you are not confusing desktops with viewports (the cube faces are different parts of the same desktop), as far as I know the desktop support is very basic so you probably are not using multiple desktops ;)

[Matias]

nahh, I'm not confusing desktops with viewport but thanks for the tip :D .

I'm using the gandalfn's dev branch repository so the version is 0.3.4.

And I belvie I know what is happening. show desktop is throwing my windows out the screen, so when I want to rise them up they just dont get the viewing area.

I have to mention that the windows aren't showed on switcher or in other desktop

[mikedee]

If you can, try a git version and see if you have the same problem.

In the meantime you can try changing this option a few times to see if it sets the number of desktops correctly.

/apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces

This might be because metacity starts up before compiz and sets the
number of workspaces to 2 and compiz will then use that setting instead
of its stored setting. I'm not sure what's more correct, ignore previous
window manager setting or not.

Setting gconf key "/apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces" to 1 might
help.

This is quote from David here which I think is a similar problem to the one you have. Dont know if it would work, but it sounds likely.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/compiz/2006-November/000920.html

[Matias]

I think that's not my problem, the bug isn't related to desktops, as I'm not trying to switch or drag a window to other viewport, it is related to windows that are thown away and it's still happening with those modifications.

I don't know if I'm turning this off topic, if I am just let me know

[iznogood]

Hi all,
just to report a bug with this plugin

i press the initiate button and the windows move out of screen..
i press it again and the windows reposition at their previous position. However the topmost window is animated 2 times.

Does this happen to anyone else??

[Matias]

Hi all: I been switching to beryl this time.
I found that the problem I described reproduces in beryl too.

I've reinstalled every thing and now it looks like it works fine. 1 desktop, four viewports here for a couple of hours and no window have disappeared