From: Matthew W. O. <wei...@gr...> - 2002-12-12 19:47:16
|
-- Thomas Leonard <ta...@ec...> wrote (on Thursday, 12 December 2002, 05:17 PM +0000): > On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 11:13:07AM -0500, Matthew Weier OPhinney wrote: > > One thing that's been a conflict for me is the ROX pinboard. Current > > blackbox requires pushing button-3 to get a root menu, and patches to > > blackbox that I utilize require capturing wheel-mouse scroll events to > > scroll through workspaces; I've created a patch in the past (updated > > today for general use with the 1.3.x series) to handle this. > > > > My other gripe about the pinboard, however, is that it sets the > > backdrop. I personally feel this is better left to the window manager. > > Most themes for window managers also include a backdrop of some sort, > > and the window manager usually has methods for handling this. In the > > case of blackbox, a utility called bsetbg calls a program of choice to > > set the backdrop (I use ImageMagick's display command). If ROX handles > > the backdrop in order to set icons on the desktop, this automation is > > disabled then for ROX users. > > Can't the ImageMagick programs write the image to stdout? If so, just set > that as the command in Wallpaper's Advanced tab. I realized Wallpaper existed... just hadn't thought of it as setting the backdrop. So, I downloaded this, as well as ROX-Lib2 and pygtk2, and got it up and running. Except that I can't seem to get it to grab an image via another command. I've been trying all sorts of options from ImageMagick's 'display' and 'montage' commands -- -window -backdrop and using | and > to either pipe or redirect the output and all result in an empty /tmp/imagename and Wallpaper halts, or no image is displayed. (Usually, display opens, but it opens as it normally would, and when it closes I then get the error message from Wallpaper.) > Making the pinboard transparent isn't possible without either: > > - Requiring XFree86 4.2 (4.3?) for everyone, and being extremely slow and > inefficient, or > > - Looking very ugly (ie, like Gtk+-1.2), using non-AA fonts and no > smooth edge blending or semi-transparency for the icons. > > And the code is so different, that even if you were prepared to put up > with Gtk+-1.2 looks, it would be a nightmare to maintain both options. > It would also be a major pain for window manager authors if ROX handled > the backdrop differently to GNOME and KDE. And the right-click menu > wouldn't work, and neither would the drag-selection box. Check the > archives for more discussion... ;-) Okay, so that makes sense. What I'm wondering... How does Wallpaper set the root image? I'm thinking that if the AppRun script could take an image name as an argument and set the root image, I could use it with bsetbg (which takes an app name and uses that app to set the root window), and my problems would be solved. This would allow themes to set the background image without a problem, and let ROX manage icons and coexist peacefully with the window manager. So, something like this: % ~/Apps/Wallpaper/AppRun ~/img/rootimage.png would set the backdrop, without opening the Wallpaper GUI. Then this could be used as the program the window manager uses to set the root window. Does that makes sense? Is that possible? -- Matthew Weier O'Phinney ma...@we... |