[maemo-developers] Live Backgrounds in PR1.2 hildon-desktop

[From: Kimmo Hämäläinen]

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

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