[3ddesktop-dev] Re: Documentation / web page update

On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 04:24, Saint-Michel Laurent wrote:
> 
> > > - I could be very helpfull for the newbies like me to have a description
> > > the way to map  Ctrl+Shift+S to the programme, mapping done by X11
> >> instead of the WM)
> >
> > Yes I agree, but I don't know how to do this.  anybody?
> 
> I think it is in the key bindings options of Xfree, I will have a look.
> 
I think you're looking at using the xmodmap command, but I think that
can only bind your keys to events.. I think the window manager still
needs to decide what happens when the events occur. I also don't think
it handles key combinations, just single key events, and it's up to the
wm to deal with modifier keys... but I'm not positive on this, it's been
a while since I've messed with it. It's pretty much just a utility to
actually remap keys, not decide what they do.

The original poster I thought said they were running enlightenment
though. It's very easy to configure E to handle this for you.

Just copy your global keybindings.cfg file to:
~/.enlightenment/keybindings.cfg
then add something like this:

  __NEXT_ACTION
    __KEY Tab   
    __MODIFIER_KEY __CTRL
    __EVENT __KEY_PRESS
    __ACTION __A_EXEC 3ddesk

This maps CTRL-TAB to 3ddesk. I've also got CTRL-ALT-RIGHT set to 
goto the next desktop with: 

  __NEXT_ACTION
    __KEY Right 
    __EVENT __KEY_PRESS
    __MODIFIER_KEY __CTRL_ALT
    __ACTION __A_EXEC 3ddesk --gotonext

..and so on.

Enlightenment's documentation doesn't cover this stuff all that well, 
but if you look in the standard config file, you'll see an entry like
this for running "eterm".

> To be (hopefully) more clear, the pictures aren't updated when the command 
> 3ddesk is called but when 3ddeskd is called at the beginning, and in between 
> no update is done.
> 
The way it should be working now, is that every time you use 3ddesk to
zoom out, it takes a snapshot as you leave. If you use your window
manager's other methods for switching desktops, 3ddesk won't get updated
screen images because it never knew you left that screen. If you keep
using 3ddesk for every desktop switch, then you should see the screens
as you last saw them all the time.

I think what you want is something like enlightement's pager displays
that can be set to slowly update the screen snapshots in the background 
without having to go to them to take the snapshot. I'm sure it's very
possible to do.. Enlightenment does it, but I'm not sure that it'd be
very easy to do with all the different window managers out there. 

On the upside, Enlightenment uses imlib, and so does 3ddesk, and I'm
sure they probably both use it for it's screen snapshot abilities among
other things, so it might not even be that hard.. maybe just a rip of
some code from enlightenment's desktop pager. On the other hand, it
might be extremely difficult too, and it might just be easier to use
3ddesk to switch desktops every time.

It would be a pretty cool feature, but I'm sure it's not a very trivial
thing either. It would probably make it so that the snapshots and
3ddeskd don't get moved into swap when you hang out on a terminal for
too long though. I've noticed that if I'm gone for a while, it takes
3ddesk a bit to wake up. I usually spin it around to every desktop just
to make it put everything back into ram when I get back from lunch or
something.

Maybe a switch to make 3ddesk zoom in and zoom out, and spin to random
desktops until the keyboard or mouse were moved, so it could be used as
a screensaver. That would keep things out of swap, and your desktops
nice and updated as long as you were idle enough to let you screensaver
kick in all the time ;). 


> I think the solution is to "acquire" every 3or 4 seconds the different 
> screens by the deamon, but it should be background work only (and not disturb 
> the user)
> 
> >
> > There may be some variations (multi monitor/video arrangements) where
> > something dynamic could be done. . . I'm not to that point yet though :P
> >
> > --brad
> >
>

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