Moppsy has a plugin to remove the border from a window:

I found myself wanting a way to remove the frame window from an application, so I created this.
Here is is for anyone that might find this useful.

Get it here: http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=721

This tool, by mattdev121, allows a to-do list to be displayed on the top of the cube:
from http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=793:

You need to store template.svg somewhere in $RUNPATH, and make sure the settings are set properly (as you can see, i used .xgl/todo in my home directory and pico as my editor )

It should work fine on most systems, you just need gconf-tool2 (and a compiz that reads from gconf), plus rsvg-convert that comes with any svg-enabled system

Get the code here:

What is it/are they/are you talking about?

This blog is devoted to the developments in two packages/programs: Xgl and Compiz. To see all the latest plugins and patches just check back to the front page http://compiz.blogspot.com

Xgl and Compiz were developed by David Reveman, first indpendently and then at Novell. Both are included in OpenSUSE (and of course the commercial SLED) which is supported by Novell. I will let them explain themselves :)

• OpenSUSE description of XGL
• Xgl is an Xserver that accelerates drawing operations by using OpenGL.
• OpenSuse wiki on Compiz
• Compiz combines together a window manager and a composite manager using OpenGL for rendering.

The best way to understand why I am blogging about it is to look at some of the videos. This stuff makes your desktop seriously cool (and, of course, allows you to be more productive :P)

• http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/
• YouTube

XGL is not to be confused with AIGLX - a RedHat championed set of extensions to the current X server to achieve a similar effect. Compiz can run on AIGLX.

Though they were developed 'behind closed doors' for some time, XGL and Compiz are both now open to community scrutiny and patches, and as of mid March it seems to be all go, with new patches and features daily! There is discussion of the 'closed doors' approach, in copmarison to the scrutinisable open approach of AIGLX here

How Can I Get Them?

The way you get Compiz and Xgl will vary depending on which distribution you are using.

Please note: XGL and Compiz are unstable and such should not be run in critical situations.

If you have Nvidia hardware you are likely to have more luck than those with ATI, provided you are using propriety(I.E binary only) drivers

• For Ubuntu (Dapper Drake - Unstable), check out the excellent HowTos in the forums:
• Nvidia
• ATI
• Latest Build
• This page has details for more cards/setups
• For SUSE you can use the excellent OpenSuse Wiki page
• Using XGL on Suse Linux
• Gentoo Linux has a very good Wiki on installing the Gentoo ebuilds
• Gentoo Linux Wiki
• Mandriva, too has a simple way of getting XGL
• Manriva Linux Forum
• Also see this post about getting the latest packages
  
• This Ubuntu based thread shows you how to build from source – so is potentially good for everyone!

Please email me with the details of how to add it to any other major distributions.



What Can it Do?

I think it is best that I let the blog speak for itself on that one! I try to have a new post for every new feature or fix.


The key thing about Copmiz is that all of the effects are provided by plugins. It is very modular and extensible, and this blog is devoted to providing the latest information about new plugins


The openSUSE wiki on Compiz has information about the standard functionality/Available plugins

From http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

D-BUS is a message bus system, a simple way for applications to talk to one another.

And now, thanks to iXce, they can talk to Compiz too.

http://www.compiz.net/viewtopic.php?id=1173

Gives the details of what he has done.

There are now patches to allow calling of methods from

• Cube (from iXce, original post)
• Scale (PlayerX, here, and an update here)
  
• More Cube (PlayerX) here
  
• Water (PlayerX) here
  
• One to activate a window: here (PlayerX again!)
• And finally one for replace by iXce:
  

There are other patches in that thread, it is best you read it to get their context and purpose

See the wiki for a dbus howto:

For anyone who is still reading this blog, I am going to try to get it back off the ground... Sorry that I've been so lax

The good news is that David R has implemented window shading, responding to requests on the mailing list.

Here is the article. It, and some recent fixes, are in QuinnCVS and QuinnDebs

For those of you confused, as I was, as to how to turn this on: in Gnome go to System-->Administration-->Windows and change the double click action to shade.

There are already new commits to fix some bugs, so this looks like it'll be polished soon

PlayerX and iXce have been doing some more DBus magic

RotateUp and RotateDown cube bindings for cube plugin (iXce) can be found here

And PlayerX's bindings for the zoom plugin here

Here they are, bindings for zoom, 3 methods at the moment:
- zoomIn and zoomOut
- zoomTerminate

Calling them is similar to the previous ones,

dbus-send --dest=org.compiz.dbus --type=method_call /org/compiz/dbus/screen0 org.compiz.rotate.zoomIn
dbus-send --dest=org.compiz.dbus --type=method_call /org/compiz/dbus/screen0 org.compiz.zoom.zoomOut
dbus-send --dest=org.compiz.dbus --type=method_call /org/compiz/dbus/screen0 org.compiz.zoom.zoomTerminate

It should now be easier to write a bash/whatever script which rotates the cube when as a screensaver or something like that, please do so and post it

A screensaver that zooms and rotates! now would be cool :)

It was also put forward that there could be a visualisation (I.E for Totem or Xmms, etc) written that manipulates the cube. It wouldn't make working easy - but if the cube zoomed to the bass, I wouldn't mind :P

Miniwin got split into two plugins – dock and miniwin. Still doing all the fantastical stuff as before, but now you can have one without the other:

As people have been requesting them, here is a screenshot:
You can see all my windows, plus a 'group' of Nautilus windows that is 'expanded'. You can see the Gimp as an unexpanded group


There is a thread discussing it here

there are many ideas dealing with what one can do with mindows, and the first realised was the dock/taskbar/panel thing you might know.
I've extracted the dock code and decided to make it a new plugin itself, the dock plugin.
As the latest versions of miniwin were rather stable, I recently added some animation and eye candy.
changes from miniwin-0.1.0 alpha to dock-0.1.0-rc1:
- code cleaning
- sane defaults
- animation fixes
- panel shows program name on mouse over
- panel is now colored
- panel can now have another position on the screen (bottom, top, left, right)

The most recent version, including a patch by iXce (and I think one by PlayerX too – can someone confirm?) is here

The thread is a useful resource, as always, as ddave leaves good changelogs…

Throughnothing has posted a patch that allows zooming of scaled windows when they are right clicked

From the forum post here

Here is something i made that lets you zoom in on a window during a scale out. Just right click on one of the scaled windows and it will zoom into the center for a better look. Let me know if you guys have any other suggestions/comments 126 This patch also has playerX's code for the organic window palcement in it (but it is disabled by default in case you dont want it) with the gconf option organic to turn on/off.

You will get screenshots tomorrow night when I have actually had time to apply the patch. now, because throughnothing submitted one :)


Note that this patch includes PlayerX's Organic Scale patch

In a flurry of activity on the forum Quinn has released a tool to allow us to theme the colours and the transparency of the window decorations, and managers for the themes seem to be spawning all over the place!

It started with this post by kr0n0, which was followed up by Quinn's post:

Just to bump this thread, I'm playing around with this now since theming seems so far away, and working on creating a very-customizable patch to g-w-d (with a bool to switch back to the old behaviour should you wish)

Followed by this

This is going into cvs in just a moment.

The defaults still need some tweaking and there are tons of options to play with.

Make SURE you install new schemas

Turn on /apps/compiz/plugins/decoration/allscreens/options/use_new_decor

The post was 'hidden' in the Q and A forum and I built this CVS without even knowing the option was there :P

Moppsy posted a patch to get rid of the white 'halo' on windows here (which is in the CVS now)

There are a few posts on installing the new schemas here and here for a very useful post by moppsy on how to set the colours and transparency keys from the command line.

But we don't need that anymore :)

It all (seems) to start with this mockup by SparX
More mockups, refinements and code was contributed by Melissa, Chanders and Treviño, who has added settings to gset-compiz (picture).

strash has released a python tool aswell

The picture above is Quinn's tool based on the GUI designs by the above (with her own tweaks)

Quinn's most recent post says she will keep settings in ~/.compiz/themes.

So it looks like Tommie-Lie has a while to finish his complete windec themeing before we get restless again :P

...Conditional Opacity

This new plugin by Michael Callahan makes parts of the window that are similar to the background colour transparent, leaving things in the foreground as bright as they should be! At the moment it uses black as a background colour, but as the post says, that can change if people like it.

Michael's post explains all very well

Legacy applications don't support transparency. Composition managers work around this by allowing each window to have a global transparency value. However the correct behavior for most windows is to have the background color be translucent and the foreground be opaque so that text is more visible.

The conditional opacity filter works around this by using a fragment shader to only make colors that are close to the background color transparent. The rest of the colors remain opaque. The included screenshot shows a comparison of and emacs window using the copacity filter on the left and normal transparency on the right. The text fade is clearly visible between the two windows.

The plugin is hard coded to use BLACK as the background color pending a review of the usefulness of the plugin and what the user interface should look like. It also doesn't set the transparency of the window but rather preserves the existing value. The current usage is to set a window up with black background and light foreground, then use transset to set the transparency value to the desired amount, then -c to turn on the copacity effect.

And a screenshot (from the original post)