Prevent Xfce from darwing desktop background

[andreas at an3as.eu]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:09:41PM -0700, Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> If you have compositing enabled, this won't work, as the compositor  
> doesn't draw the real X root window.

I havn't changed anything from default and so compositor was just off.

> You need to be running something  
> *else* that draws a window behind xfdesktop for this to work.

Yes - this was xplanet.  It worked perfectly with xfce 4.4 and
after leaving my xfce (4.6) session gdm showed a perfectly fine
xplanet screen.

> If you're *not* running the compositor, then this just won't work at  
> all, since the 'Transparent' option requires it.

I now switched on the composor - but also can not see xplanet.

> I should just remove that option; it only works under a very restrictive  
> set of circumstances (assuming it works at all) and isn't really  
> generally useful anyway.

Probably.

> I suppose I could implement a sort of "foreign mode" that tells  
> xfdesktop to stop drawing anything on the desktop at all, and then other  
> apps could draw on it.

This is exactly what I want and if I remember right xfce 4.4 worked
like this.

> This probably wouldn't be compatible with  
> desktop icons, though the right- and middle-click menus would at least  
> still work.

This is what I want - just getting rid of any desktop icons and anything
else.  Xfce should just leave the desktion alone for other apps.

> Your other option for xplanet is just to have it save to a regular png  
> or jpg file and then set that as xfdesktop's wallpaper.  How to do so,  
> and how to get it to update when the image changes, is an exercise left  
> to the reader (and google).

Well, I use xplanet as my prefered "clock" featuring a projection of
the sun at the current location and also as weather report by downloading
cloud images 4 times a day.  So the image is changing frequently and
I'm a bit reluctant to find a solution to work around a feature I found
in xfce 4.4.  So if it is not too much hassle for you I would really love
to have this option back (and using old 4.4 meanwhile).

Kind regards

       Andreas.

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