Window previews in xfwm4

Sonal Santan sonal.santan at gmail.com
Thu Jan 1 14:56:30 CET 2015


Hello,

I have been exploring how to add support for Window previews in xfwm4. I am
assuming that this can be built with the help of XRender support in xfwm4.
My aim is to enhance the tabwin implementation to show window previews if
compositor is enabled in xfwm4 or fall back to the current scheme of
showing application icons. The compositor has window_pixmap for every
application window that IMHO can be used for generating previews but it
wouldn't work for minimized windows.

Here is how I am thinking of  enhancing xfwm4 to add support for this often
requested feature:

[1] Add an XImage or GTKImage to represent Window Preview for every _CWindow
[2] Lazy update the Image: Cache the image for windows which are being
minimized; For unminimized windows update the Image on Window Preview
Request
[3] Enhance tabwin to request the compositor for the Window Preview if
compositor is enabled
[4] Use the obtained Image for drawing the GtkButton

Does this sound inline with xfwm4 broader design philosophies? Given I am
not an expert in XWindow programming, does this look technically doable?

-Sonal
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