Can anything be done about minimized windows?

[shame]

I know this has been asked before (or something similar) but there wasn't really an answer as far as I can remember.

The questions is: Can anything better be done about minimized windows in scale and the various switchers?

If I'm using scale or a switcher to switch between apps, I want to see ALL open apps, including the minimized ones, otherwise I may as well go back to using the taskbar for switching apps (which isn't very pretty).

At the moment, scale doesn't show minimized apps at all and some of the switchers can be configured to show minimized apps but instead of a window, I get a horrific looking blocky icon which looks dreadful.
To top it all, in my case I use a lot of customized icons so the icon being displayed by the switchers is usually completely different to the icons I'm used to seeing so it isn't always obvious to me which app it is.

The old scale plugin I used in beryl showed thumbnails for minimized windows so how come this isn't the case with compiz fusion? I understand there are issues which make it impossible to show live previews in minimized windows but I would be happy with a static "snapshot" of the last known state of the minimized windows. Anything would be better than these icons which almost put me off using the switchers altogether.

[Photon]

+1

Also the window preview "tooltips" should work also if a window is minimized.

[isaac_j87]

Any news on this?

It just would be helpful to see minimized window previews...instead of having to open the window to see the preview!

[Slander]

Still nothing about this issue ?

It would be great to have some comments from Compiz-Fusion team or plugin makers about it... Thanks by advance

Slander

[Forlong]

It would be great to have some comments from Compiz-Fusion team or plugin makers about it...

We had implemented this in Beryl earlier (snapshotting the window pixmap right before the unmap event), but didn't port that feature because it was considered somewhat hacky and doesn't make that much sense anyway (because the texture is static).
It would be quite a bit of effort with a way better solution on the horizon. ;)
The better solution being:
There are plans to support keeping the window pixmap while the window is minimized in the X server, but this will take some time until it is implemented. Whenever that feature is available in the X server, the thumbnail plugin will support it.

[FireRabbit]

Hey Forlong,

Someone filed a bug about this at http://bugs.opencompositing.org/show_bug.cgi?id=581, however if this is actually an X server limitation, is there a different bug (at freedesktop bugzilla) we should use to track this feature?

Thanks!

[Deciare]

I've ranted about something like this once before, but...

I don't understand why live window thumbnails are being thought of as a necessarily better solution than static window thumbnails. Live window thumbnails would require windows to continue updating even when they are minimised, which defeats the purpose of minimising (for example) complex Flash-based Web sites to temporarily lower CPU usage without having to close the browser window/tab altogether. I frequently minimise windows that I'm not using right now but will be using later precisely because a minimised window stops drawing.

I believe that live window thumbnails and static minimised window thumbnails are distinct use cases, and should be treated as such.

[SmSpillaz]

Hi,

The old 'Temp Unminise' options in Beryl were essentially hacks to unminimize windows while scale mode and switcher mode was active, and then if they weren't switched to, they would be minimized again.

[mystran]

Is it absolutely impossible to get the hack back, if proper support is going to take ages? I mean if it's absolutely impossible, then it's probably time to fork again..

I mean come on... in my case for example, I did an update of Ubuntu, expecting things to work, and now I'm left with the uselessness that Scale currently is.. and what's worse, good old Beryl refuses to work :(

[adamk]

Time to live up to my title:

mystran, feel free to drop back to Feisty, or even compile beryl yourself. Certainly no one is forcing you to compiz.

And proposing that the developers now fork off compiz again is just plain uninformed. A little research would show that David is not stopping anyone from implementing the workaround (http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/compiz/2007-January/001315.html), it's just his opinion that they should wait to implement it properly.

Adam

[Forlong]

Thanks Adam for the link!

Up until now, I thought this would require core-changes as well, but since David says it could all be done in the plugin, I'm curious why Stjepan didn't do it (he seemed to be knowledgeable enough).
I mean he was right IMHO... as long as there's a way to disable it, I don't care about additional memory usage.

Plus the discussion is almost a year old. I think dirty hacks are an OK way to bridge that long of a time gap... maybe we should bring it up on the (CF) ML again?


edit: moved to Feature Requests.

[mystran]

And proposing that the developers now fork off compiz again is just plain uninformed.


Oh no, that was not what I ment. I was just frustrated with the idea of having to start messing with the code of yet another project with little chance for me having enough time to provide anything but a hack^2 that has no chance of getting accepted into anything mainline.

[belda]

Who do I have to please/bribe/kill or whatever to have this VITAL feature? Or is it just hidden somewhere deep?

[adamk]

This is completely dependent on changes to Xorg in order to be implemented properly in compiz. So maybe check with the Xorg developers?

Adam

[b0le]

This is completely dependent on changes to Xorg in order to be implemented properly in compiz. So maybe check with the Xorg developers?

Adam

Well, depends on what you want. From what I understand, when you unmap (which happens when you minimise) you loose the pixmap and hence, the texture. To fix in Xorg, when a window is unmapped, the pixmap is still kept. However, a better (IMO) way would just to not minimize the window, just replace minimize action (in decorator) with a stop input on window and don't draw the window. Then you can use minimize button to shelf a window to a dock, place the window ontop of cube, or inside the cube.

So static thumnails requires a hack in compiz or wait for it to be done properly in Xorg
Live thumnails require not minimzing (can do it right now)

(please correct me if I am wrong :) - which is quite likely...)

[ryanhaigh]

For those who really can't live without minimized windows being shown using scale I put together a hack to unminimize/activate all windows using a combination of brightside, wmctrl and my limited python skills.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=481038&page=2

I haven't looked at doing anything more with it as the current implementation satisfies my needs (until someone implements a better on in the scale plugin itself) so for the moment there are limitations:

It can be slow
All windows are activated regardless of whether they were minimized or not
All windows remain unminized even if not selected