xsnow and xfdesktop

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 12/02/04 15:10, Patrick Wiseman wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> At this time of year, I like to fire up xsnow.  It always worked before
> (i.e. with xfce3), but this year it doesn't.  Googling turns up this site
> 
> http://spuriousinterrupt.org/projects/xfce4/index.php
> 
> where, among "Future Plans" is
> 
> "Bring back support for apps that draw directly to the root window."
> 
> Lack of such support strikes me as a serious limitation of any desktop
> manager.  I'd rather lose the desktop fuctionality than lose the ability
> to write to the root window!
> 
> So, for now, 'killall xfdesktop ; xsnow &" keeps me happy!

congrats, you appear to be the first person to have found that page
before asking about it ^_^.

anyway, i should update that.  unfortunately, it looks like that support
will probably never come back.  full blown DEs today generally use
a fullscreen virtual root window to use to manage the backdrop, display
a menu or (coming in 4.4!) draw icons.  personally, i consider drawing
directly to the root window to be deprecated, especially since this
probably won't work at all once people start using x.org's compositing
support.  at any rate, apps that want to support the "new way" should
provide a command line option for you to specify the window id on which
to draw.  ideally, there should be some sort of standard property that
DEs should set on the 'real' root window to inform apps of this
automatically, but it seems no one's gotten around to creating this
standard and getting people to adopt it.

if losing the desktop functionality is fine with you in the interests of
eye candy, then by all means, go for it.  xfce will putter along just
nicely without xfdesktop running.

	-brian