Subject: Re: Re: FVWM: Re: Displaying Miniature-Windows in FvwmPager

From: Tim Phipps <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 09:56:10 +0100

> I do not think, it would look _that_ bad. Of course, an application
> knows a lot more about its data and is thus much better suited to
> calculate the icon, but even without this knowledge it is possible to
> come up with a generic algorithm that looks quite passable. Do a
> couple of experiments with "xv" and you will see what I mean.

I think you've got an important point in here that scuppers any scheme to
have mini-windows in the pager.  Only the application and the X-server can
tell when the applications windows contents change.  In order to have
mini-windows the application window would have to be grabbed every few seconds.
I've seen programs that spy on other windows by grabbing at intervals, you can't
get any work done since the window keeps getting frozen when it is grabbed.

Perhaps you might consider a more abstract alternative.  The pager could find
out the application top level window background colour and use that in the
pager window.  If you colour code your windows it would give a better hint
and might look quite nice.  It would be a lot of work for the pager to query
every window that gets created but would be low on CPU load.

Cheers,
Tim Phipps.
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From: Brady Montz <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Oct 1996 10:37:24 -0700

> every window that gets created but would be low on CPU load.

I agree. In my case, the most common types of windows are of differing colors,
with the exception of netscape and xemacs. Also, I would want the window
frames to be drawn, so that the focused window can be highlighted without
changing the color of the entire window. 

It also probably would be possible to autodetect a certain set of windows
and draw them specially. Like put a fake toolbar and modeline on xemacs
windows, and a little scrollbars on xterms and xconsoles, etc. 

These seems better than the current setup but without the cost of full blown
shrinking and dithering.

-- 
 Brady Montz
 [email-masked]