xfdesktop inside a window

[Brian J. Tarricone]

Pablo Angulo wrote:
>   Hello all,
>   I wonder whether it would be possible (easy) to build a component that 
> essentially contains xfdesktop. I mean: so that you can build an 
> application with gtk windows, gtk menus, gtk toolbars, etc, and a fully 
> functional xfdesktop contained inside a gtk container.
>   What for? Think of the gimp. It has several windows that are directly 
> managed by the window manager, and that's the way I like it, and that's 
> probably the way you like it, but many people prefer a single window 
> that contains all the application. When I used windows I preferred this 
> way, because there aren't virtual desktops, and it's a mess to have a 
> bunch of windows in your only desktop.
>   To be even more explicit, ultimately I'd like some pygtk code like 
> this to work:
> 
> import gtk, pygtk...
> wini=gtk.Window()
> toolbi=gtk.ToolBar()
> boxi=gtk.VBox()
> ...
> xfdeski=xfce.xfDesktop(folder,options...) #where folder is the 
> equivalent of ~/Desktop (icons in the xfdesktop corresponding to files 
> in the folder (although choosing icons to represent minimised 
> applications seems more interesting...))
> boxi.pack_start(xfdeski)
> wini.add(boxi)
> ...
[...]

This really has nothing to do with xfdesktop.  Xfdesktop *is* a window 
that sits on top of the X root window.  It has nothing to do with 
keeping windows in a certain place.  The window manager, xfwm4, does 
that.  (Well, it could, presumably, if suitably modified.)  In this case 
you'd likely want a WM that groups windows by application and raises all 
windows in a particular app (sorta like MacOS does).

I don't really understand why you'd want to use the desktop component 
for this, anyway...

	-brian