Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop
Hello! The PR1.2 has a super-secret, unplanned feature that we smuggled in: so-called live backgrounds support in hildon-desktop (= 1:2.2.133-1). Live background is a window that is displayed below or front of the Home applets, either in a specific desktop view (panning with the view) or as common for all views (static). Live background window is recognised when an integer-valued _HILDON_LIVE_DESKTOP_BACKGROUND window property is found in the window: 0this client is not a live background 1-4 home view specific live background 101-104 home view specific live foreground (above applets) -1 global live background used for all home views -101 global live foreground used for all home views Notice that you probably want to use a transparent window for live foregrounds so that the applets and the background image are still visible. What you also want (I tell you) is to pause the animation of the background when it's not visible. I have ported xsnow for demonstrating how to do the pausing and detect positions of the Home applets, the xsnow patch (against xsnow 1:1.42-8) is attached (I'm also trying to create a Garage project for it). The xsnow pausing is not optimal (it periodically wakes up to check sysfs for the display brightness), but it has not eaten all my battery even if I let it run overnight. Someone could write a Control Panel plugin for managing live backgrounds (these window properties), since there is no tool as yet. There is a basic code example / test program here: http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop/hildon-desktop/blobs/master/tests/test-live-bg.c -Kimmo xsnow_1.42-8maemo1.diff.gz Description: GNU Zip compressed data ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop
That is very cool Kimmo! I have a life improving app use case for that, I'll be sure to check you examples. The manager has to be written in C/GTK or can be eased off in PyGtk ? Sivan 2010/6/1 Kimmo Hämäläinen kimmo.hamalai...@nokia.com: Hello! The PR1.2 has a super-secret, unplanned feature that we smuggled in: so-called live backgrounds support in hildon-desktop (= 1:2.2.133-1). Live background is a window that is displayed below or front of the Home applets, either in a specific desktop view (panning with the view) or as common for all views (static). Live background window is recognised when an integer-valued _HILDON_LIVE_DESKTOP_BACKGROUND window property is found in the window: 0 this client is not a live background 1-4 home view specific live background 101-104 home view specific live foreground (above applets) -1 global live background used for all home views -101 global live foreground used for all home views Notice that you probably want to use a transparent window for live foregrounds so that the applets and the background image are still visible. What you also want (I tell you) is to pause the animation of the background when it's not visible. I have ported xsnow for demonstrating how to do the pausing and detect positions of the Home applets, the xsnow patch (against xsnow 1:1.42-8) is attached (I'm also trying to create a Garage project for it). The xsnow pausing is not optimal (it periodically wakes up to check sysfs for the display brightness), but it has not eaten all my battery even if I let it run overnight. Someone could write a Control Panel plugin for managing live backgrounds (these window properties), since there is no tool as yet. There is a basic code example / test program here: http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop/hildon-desktop/blobs/master/tests/test-live-bg.c -Kimmo ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop
2010/6/1 Kimmo Hämäläinen kimmo.hamalai...@nokia.com: I think the Control Panel plugin API is C/GTK only since the plugin runs inside the Control Panel application. You'd need to be somehow familiar with X11 programming, since it would involve finding out the current live backgrounds and offer UI for manipulating the window property on So essentially find the XWindow ID and set transparency attribute on it? Sivan ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 10:41 +0200, ext Sivan Greenberg wrote: That is very cool Kimmo! I have a life improving app use case for that, I'll be sure to check you examples. The manager has to be written in C/GTK or can be eased off in PyGtk ? I think the Control Panel plugin API is C/GTK only since the plugin runs inside the Control Panel application. You'd need to be somehow familiar with X11 programming, since it would involve finding out the current live backgrounds and offer UI for manipulating the window property on them. Actually it's possible to put any application as the live background, and it could even work if the application only depends on ButtonPress, ButtonRelease and Motion events (which are forwarded by hildon-desktop to the live background window). -Kimmo Sivan 2010/6/1 Kimmo Hämäläinen kimmo.hamalai...@nokia.com: Hello! The PR1.2 has a super-secret, unplanned feature that we smuggled in: so-called live backgrounds support in hildon-desktop (= 1:2.2.133-1). Live background is a window that is displayed below or front of the Home applets, either in a specific desktop view (panning with the view) or as common for all views (static). Live background window is recognised when an integer-valued _HILDON_LIVE_DESKTOP_BACKGROUND window property is found in the window: 0this client is not a live background 1-4 home view specific live background 101-104 home view specific live foreground (above applets) -1 global live background used for all home views -101 global live foreground used for all home views Notice that you probably want to use a transparent window for live foregrounds so that the applets and the background image are still visible. What you also want (I tell you) is to pause the animation of the background when it's not visible. I have ported xsnow for demonstrating how to do the pausing and detect positions of the Home applets, the xsnow patch (against xsnow 1:1.42-8) is attached (I'm also trying to create a Garage project for it). The xsnow pausing is not optimal (it periodically wakes up to check sysfs for the display brightness), but it has not eaten all my battery even if I let it run overnight. Someone could write a Control Panel plugin for managing live backgrounds (these window properties), since there is no tool as yet. There is a basic code example / test program here: http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop/hildon-desktop/blobs/master/tests/test-live-bg.c -Kimmo ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 11:32 +0200, ext Sivan Greenberg wrote: 2010/6/1 Kimmo Hämäläinen kimmo.hamalai...@nokia.com: I think the Control Panel plugin API is C/GTK only since the plugin runs inside the Control Panel application. You'd need to be somehow familiar with X11 programming, since it would involve finding out the current live backgrounds and offer UI for manipulating the window property on So essentially find the XWindow ID and set transparency attribute on it? No, transparency property is not used, the window itself needs to be transparent (i.e. 32-bit window with alpha channel). You'd need to use XQueryTree() (check e.g. the xsnow patch -- it finds the applet windows) and find windows with _HILDON_LIVE_DESKTOP_BACKGROUND 0 window property on them, and then provide UI for manipulating the property, and perhaps even killing the processes (when _NET_WM_PID is provided by the window). See test-live-bg.c for example code on how to set this property. -Kimmo Sivan ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
Re: Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop
One can probably use Vala if such VAPIs are available. Bundyo 2010/6/1 Kimmo Hämäläinen kimmo.hamalai...@nokia.com On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 10:41 +0200, ext Sivan Greenberg wrote: That is very cool Kimmo! I have a life improving app use case for that, I'll be sure to check you examples. The manager has to be written in C/GTK or can be eased off in PyGtk ? I think the Control Panel plugin API is C/GTK only since the plugin runs inside the Control Panel application. You'd need to be somehow familiar with X11 programming, since it would involve finding out the current live backgrounds and offer UI for manipulating the window property on them. Actually it's possible to put any application as the live background, and it could even work if the application only depends on ButtonPress, ButtonRelease and Motion events (which are forwarded by hildon-desktop to the live background window). -Kimmo Sivan 2010/6/1 Kimmo Hämäläinen kimmo.hamalai...@nokia.com: Hello! The PR1.2 has a super-secret, unplanned feature that we smuggled in: so-called live backgrounds support in hildon-desktop (= 1:2.2.133-1). Live background is a window that is displayed below or front of the Home applets, either in a specific desktop view (panning with the view) or as common for all views (static). Live background window is recognised when an integer-valued _HILDON_LIVE_DESKTOP_BACKGROUND window property is found in the window: 0this client is not a live background 1-4 home view specific live background 101-104 home view specific live foreground (above applets) -1 global live background used for all home views -101 global live foreground used for all home views Notice that you probably want to use a transparent window for live foregrounds so that the applets and the background image are still visible. What you also want (I tell you) is to pause the animation of the background when it's not visible. I have ported xsnow for demonstrating how to do the pausing and detect positions of the Home applets, the xsnow patch (against xsnow 1:1.42-8) is attached (I'm also trying to create a Garage project for it). The xsnow pausing is not optimal (it periodically wakes up to check sysfs for the display brightness), but it has not eaten all my battery even if I let it run overnight. Someone could write a Control Panel plugin for managing live backgrounds (these window properties), since there is no tool as yet. There is a basic code example / test program here: http://maemo.gitorious.org/fremantle-hildon-desktop/hildon-desktop/blobs/master/tests/test-live-bg.c -Kimmo ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
xsnow (Re: Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop)
On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 09:33 +0200, Hamalainen Kimmo (Nokia-D/Helsinki) wrote: ... the background when it's not visible. I have ported xsnow for demonstrating how to do the pausing and detect positions of the Home applets, the xsnow patch (against xsnow 1:1.42-8) is attached (I'm also Maybe it's not Christmas season yet but xsnow is now available from extras-devel. ;) Notice that you need to kill it from the terminal, it does not have any quit button on it, and that it goes on your current desktop (make sure you have some applets on it). The PR1.2 version of hildon-desktop still has some bugs related to the live background feature. Those are fixed in the git master and should be in the next SW update also. But it is usable, just may need some workarounds. -Kimmo ___ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
