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List:       kwin
Subject:    Re: Is there a Kwin/KDE4 tech overview ?
From:       "Lucas Murray" <lmurray () undefinedfire ! com>
Date:       2008-12-26 12:44:59
Message-ID: f09827650812260444v7c91d275j719ce73fc08bad26 () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 9:24 PM, Marc Jackson <marcj.lcd@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi from another developer in  Australia, i'm wanting to learn how i can
> control the desktop from an application, or launch apps,  disable their
> borders, position and size them.  I have'n worked out exactly how i can do
> this yet. It would be good for self running demo's or presentations.
> Especially if I can control the desktop cube effects.  Do I need to read up
> on QT4.4, freedesktop specs. Would be good if I could do this from Ruby.
>
> I'm currently living on a Yacht in Sydney.  The ultimate goal is to
> have some app/plasmoid that would startup all applications in their correct
> places on the virtual desktop for a specific task for sailing / navigation
> on the yacht by pressing one key on a touch screen, pressing another key for
> Navigation apps, starting the nav applications or switching to the relevant
> desktop which has them running already if user has previously selected the
> nav mode. Switching activites which would switch desktop's and also enabling
> the selected desktop switching effect to impress of course.
>
> Any help in which way i should proceed would be great, what api's i should
> use/read up on. Code i could look at that would be relevant. How much of QT4
> would I need to learn?
>
> Hope you had a great xmas, trying to finnish reading my Ruby book. From an
> old C programmer.
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Marc Jackson
> Opensource Systems Analyst - Unix/Linux
> Ruby/Rails/Web2.0/Service Oriented Computing
>

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As for your program the class you would want to touch up on is
KWindowSystem [1]. It doesn't do everything that you are trying to do
(Some of those you asked are not even window management related) but
it does allow you to switch desktops for example.

[1] http://api.kde.org/4.x-api/kdelibs-apidocs/kdeui/html/classKWindowSystem.html

For window placement, size and border status you could achieve the
same thing with KWin window rules (Alt+F3 -> Advanced -> Special
Window Settings). As for specifying what effect you want that cannot
be done, KWin will use whatever effect the user selected from the KWin
system settings panel. If you have control over the system's
configuration once you've set everything up how you want it on your
development system you can just copy your kwinrc and kwinrulesrc files
(~/.kde4/share/config/) to the user's system and it will look
identical to what you had to them.

I am not familiar with Plasma development myself so I cannot answer
the remaining questions.

    Lucas
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