AIGLX, metacity, nvidia and Xgl

[Soeren Sandmann]

David Reveman <davidr at novell.com> writes:

> Others might be able to do a better job than me on figuring out how
> to extend metacity but I think it's to early to tell as the people
> working on metacity that I talked to at xdevconf didn't seem to be
> aware of issues I'm solving by not using an ordinary window manager
> like metacity for compositing.

For people who are curious what this means:

"People working on metacity" means Søren, and "issues David is
solving" means "argb window with an rgb child window results in an
extra layer of redirection with the current Xorg code".

There are at least the following way to solve this, in order of
increasing complexity:

- Fix up the X server so that the rgb child windows are allocated with
  32 bits per pixel. Initialize the extra byte to 0xff and make sure
  the drivers don't mess it up.

or

- Shape the reparent window such that it becomes invisible but retains
  its input shape, then paint the decorations directly on the desktop.

or

- Change the window manager to not reparent when it is also working as
  a compositing manager.

or

- Write a new window manager from scratch that doesn't reparent and
  only works when it is also a compositing manager.


Søren