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List:       kwin
Subject:    Task bar and thumbnails
From:       "Robert Knight" <robertknight () gmail ! com>
Date:       2007-08-03 3:51:48
Message-ID: 13ed09c00708022051t118d6334peb2da5da9c6f59b1 () mail ! gmail ! com
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Hello,

I discussed the task bar with Lubos briefly at Akademy.  Now that I
have a clearer idea of how it is likely to work (from the user's
perspective) I think it would be good to discuss the requirements for
the protocol to get thumbnails displayed next to the task bar.

The concepts I am working towards can be found in the README and
GROUPING files in playground/base/plasma/applets/tasks in svn.  In
summary the main concept I am working with is the ability to create
groups of windows in the task bar and then treat them as one.
That is, raise, activate, close, minimize and maximize them together.
Groups have a colour for easy identification in the task bar and an
optional title.  This is not quite the same as 'virtual desktops'
because these groups are not exclusive, ie. bringing one group to the
front would not hide all the other windows.  Creating groups can also
be done in a much more ad-hoc fashion than virtual desktops.  To
create a new group the user just drags one task in the task bar on top
of another.  I believe that this will make them more widely used than
virtual desktops are now as a means of organization.
I also intend to provide a selection of pre-defined layouts which
applied to windows in a group - this being the group equivalent of
'maximization'.  The idea is to make it easy to lay out particular
subsets of windows on screen such that they do not overlap each other
and use the full screen area effectively.
All this requires only a few basic operations on individual windows (
raise, lower, close, reposition ) which are already available through
the taskmanager library from Kicker.

For previews, I would like to be able to preview individual windows,
groups of windows as they are currently positioned, and groups of
windows as they would look laid out in one of the pre-defined layouts.

My memory is a little hazy, but I think what Lubos suggested was that
the task bar would create a window somewhere on screen and ask KWin to
put a preview of a window (or set of windows) in it.

I'd like to expand on that 'put a preview in the window' bit.  What I
would like to do is pass a list of windows and a corresponding list of
areas to KWin and have it display a preview of those windows as if
they occupied the specified areas of the screen, with the
corresponding icons for the windows overlaid on top.  As mentioned
earlier, groups have associated colours.  It would be a nice (but not
essential) extra to be able to change the colour of the preview
window's shadow to match the group colour.

There is a slight problem here in that if the area specified for a
window has a different size (and aspect ratio) than the actual window
then KWin will presumably have to draw a stretched version which won't
look the same as the actual window would if it were resized to those
dimensions.  I don't know how noticeable this inaccuracy will be to
users and whether or not they will tolerate it.  If the thumbnail is
not too large then (depending on the window's content) I think the
discrepancy will be acceptable.

Not knowing much about how window managers work behind the scenes, is
this feasible?

Regards,
Robert.
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