Single desktop background with multiple viewports?

[Myrmornis]

I am using the "Desktop Wall". Is it possible to have a single (high resolution) background image, so that each viewport shows just a portion of that image in the background? It seems like that would be more in the spirit of the "Desktop Wall" effect. With my current set up, each viewport shows a replicate copy of the entire image.

Dan

In general settings -> Desktop size, I have

Number of Desktops = 1
Horizontal Virtual Size = Vertical Virtual Size = 3

[Forlong]

What desktop environment (GNOME, KDE, Xfce) are you using?

[Myrmornis]

gnome under ubuntu 'hardy' 8.04

[Forlong]

You can stop Nautilus from drawing your desktop, then you will able to use Compiz' own background settings:
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false

However then you will be left without desktop icons and you'll lose the baility to right-click your desktop and access the usual context menu.

[Myrmornis]

Thanks.That's not a problem; I don't use desktop icons. So I've done that, and logged out and back in, and I've still got each viewport showing an entire version of my desktop background image (set in system -> preferences -> appearance). How do I tell compiz to stretch a single image across all viewports? Is that possible? Just to be clear, what I'm hoping for is that when I zoom out using expo, I will be able to see the entire image. But when working in a single viewport, I'll only be able to see a subregion of the image.

Thanks,

Dan

[Forlong]

How do I tell compiz to stretch a single image across all viewports? Is that possible? Just to be clear, what I'm hoping for is that when I zoom out using expo, I will be able to see the entire image. But when working in a single viewport, I'll only be able to see a subregion of the image.
First of all, you have to find an image that has the proper resolution.
Then you split it into the number of pieces according to your viewports.
You can do that with the gimp for example, save them as back1.png, back2.png etc.

Finally run 'ccsm' and go to the Desktop Cube plugin and add your aforementioned PNGs to Background Images in the Appearance tab.


edit: you have to switch from Desktop Wall to Desktop Cube to make it work, of course (at least in Hardy as it doesn't have the Wallpaper plugin).
Just enable the Cube Rotate plugin -- this will take care of enabling Cube and disabling Wall.

[Myrmornis]

OK thanks very much for all this, but one more question! I don't want to use desktop cube, I want to use desktop wall (the cube movements are too slow with the generic intel graphics card on my laptop). So I'm happy chopping up the image into bits, but I am concerned that I can't find anywhere in the desktop wall settings to specify the background images. I can see where to do it in the desktop cube settings, but desktop cube is incompatible with desktop wall. So is this going to be possible with desktop wall and expo?

[Forlong]

See my edit. With the Compiz Fusion packages in Hardy, it's only possible to do that with Cube enabled, because they lack the Wallpaper plugin that provides similar functionality for Wall (and Plane).

[b0le]

"git-clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/plugins/wallpaper && cd wallpaper && make && make install" - Will give you wallpaper plugin (assuming you have all necessary deps (and wallpaper works with the version in hardy - I am fairly certain that it does))

Then you should be able to use the wallpaper plugin to do what you want