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

[From: Kimmo Hämäläinen]

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.hamalainen at 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
> >
> >
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> >