Hello Jean-Philippe, On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 01:35:38AM +0200, MENGUAL Jean-Philippe wrote: > Hi, > > I think your Compiz packaging will be in Debian before next Sunday > or 20th. I plan to add yourself from possible uploaders, because I > really hope we'll be able to work together on the package itself. > I'm sure your work is directly importable in Debian and does what's > needed. > > I've an usage question (personally I cannot test due to my > blindness):
You did not tell me that detail before, though I should probably have guessed. Maybe you have heared that my wife is blind, too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix#Adriane_Knoppix), she does not use the graphical desktop at all even with the usual orca+compiz combination, but a text-based interface instead with sbl as screenreader, and is working way faster using this method than any seeing person I know working on the graphical interface including myself. > I was said that Emerald was useful to add icons to > minimize, restore, close, etc top right of the window. I should explain what it does. For the effect part like zooming, window overview by moving mouse top right, moving windows with key combinations, the plain compiz composite manager as add-on to a desktop like LXDE, GNOME, KDE, openbox ... is sufficient, but people working graphically will most likely want to use the mouse for grabbing windows at a title bar, using minimize and maximize as buttons in the title bar and so on. That's where the "window decorator" comes in, it's the part of the GUI that draws window borders, title bar, buttons and menus aroung the window. Since the window management has to closely work together with compiz, it is not possible to use openbox, metacity etc. directly for this together with compiz. The window decorator has to work together with compiz special handling of transparency and effects. On the other side, a compiz-aware window decorator will ONLY work together with compiz and will not start without compiz having started prior. So the two, effect manager compiz and window decorators, make sense at least as a "recommends" field in each other package. The only three window decorators that are compatible with compiz which I am aware of, are in fact emerald (which is probably the oldest from the time when compiz was forked as compiz-fusion), gtk-window-decorator and kde(4)-window-decorator. All three have the same function, by drawing borders around windows so they can be resized and moved using the mouse, plus icons for maximize, minimize, close, and a menu button on the left (which is configurable by either gconf/dconf in GTK or KDE settings in KDE). The users choice of window decorator can also be called by a script "compiz-decorator". I use gtk-window-decorator in Knoppix, which regularly resides inside the package compiz-gnome built from the compiz source, because it depends only on compiz and common GTK and metacity libraries, is relatively lightweight, and shares look&feel with the metacity window manager which is what I also use for graphics cards that are unable to run compiz, so the windows will look the same in compiz or without compiz. It is possible to switch between compiz and a 2D non-effect desktop by calling compiz --replace vs. metacity --replace compiz would call the window-decorator that had been set forth in its configuration plugin "window decoration", where compiz-decorator is the default alias, which then calls either gtk-window-decorator or kde-window-decorator. I hope this clears up the relation between compiz and the window decorator. Which one works better with orca, may depend on whether you prefer KDE or GNOME accessibility. From my experience, orca works well nowadays with GTK as well as QT based applicatione, provided that the at-spi and atk packages are installed for both versions. Concerning the decorator, this plays only a role in reading the window menu from the title bar and the window title itself, which will most likely not being used by a blind user who works more with keyboard hotkeys defined in compiz directly instead of clicking somewhere near the top 10 pixels of a window. > But other > users tell me metacity does that too, via gtk-window-decorator. Again, metacity itself cannot be used as window decorator in compiz, since it replaces compiz when being started with --replace. But gtk-window-decorator, which is built with metacity libraries for configuration, look&feel, works together with compiz. > So > far I uploaded Emerald, so that once frozen, we can test Emerald and > Metacity and see the results. The script /usr/bin/compiz-decorator contains these lines: 73 # start a decorator 74 if [ -x ${COMPIZ_BIN_PATH}emerald ] && [ "$USE_EMERALD" = "yes" ]; then 75 DECORATOR=emerald 76 elif [ -x ${COMPIZ_BIN_PATH}gtk-window-decorator ] && [ -n "$GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID" ]; then 77 DECORATOR=gtk-window-decorator 78 elif [ -x ${COMPIZ_BIN_PATH}kde4-window-decorator ] && [ x$KDE_SESSION_VERSION = x"4" ]; then 79 DECORATOR=kde4-window-decorator 80 fi so it will find the best match on its own. > I prefer having a useless package than > a useful missing package after freeze. > But anyway: do you confirm that Metacity provides what's needed or > is Emerald useful? Not metacity, but gtk-window-decorator from compiz-gnome provides a metacity-lookalike window decorator, same as kde(4)-window-decorator will provice a window decorator with a KDE4 look&feel. Emerald can be used, too. You can install all three with no conflicts, I guess. > My purpose is to make Compiz work with Orca too, > so with Meta-tab etc. Other point: if Metacity is enough, how do you > set it to have gtk-window-decorator enabled and how is it shipped in > Compiz? I'm afraid that metacity (which will not work together with compiz) has lost most of its useful keyboard shurtcuts in Debian/unstable since moving to GTK3, including Alt-Tab for window cycling. metacity-based gtk-window-decorator instead can still do this because compiz is doing the hotkey handling via the "command" plugin independent of the decorator. > Finally, 9hat's the Metacity status: maintained upstream? metacity seems to be maintained, but has less useful features than compiz plus metacity-based gtk-window-decorator with the same look/feel. > will it be linked to gnome3 (it'd justify Emerald to have less > useless deps to install)? I'm not sure if emerald has less useless deps to install that the compiz-gnome package that's included in compiz source, you could try. Regards -Klaus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
