[openbox] Per-workspace wallpaper impossible?

[Holly Bostick]

dircha wrote:

> Eric Shattow wrote:
>
>> Mikael Magnusson wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Marc Wilson wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 05:31:10PM +0200, Holly Bostick wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So what's the deal? Is per-workspace wallpaper simply not
>>>>> possible under OB3, or have I misconfigured something?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> You'd have to have something that watched for openbox to switch 
>>>> workspaces, and then reset the root pixmap when it happened.  The
>>>> window manager isn't going to help you, it'd have to be an
>>>> external application.
>>>>
>>>> Stuff like that isn't really the job of the window manager in any
>>>> case.
>>>
>>>
>>> A faster solution that just came to mind would be to have a 
>>> _net_wm_type_desktop (or whatever the name is) type window that has
>>>  all the pixmaps preloaded and just switches them over when you
>>> change workspace. It would probably use like 3M of ram per
>>> workspace though.
>>
> >
>
>> yeah. or, if you're already running gnome with ob3 as the wm, you
>> could run multi-backgrounds-daemon.   i have this going with 3ddeskd
>> for switching workspaces,  pure functional eyecandy.
>
>
> If it hasn't already been mentioned, in your <keybind> where you have 
> <action name="Desktop"> and then the desktop you want to go to, just 
> append an <action name="execute"> as a child of the <keybind> that 
> invokes a script that takes as a parameter a number from 1-10 (or how 
> many every desktops you want).
>
> In the script switch/case for each possible desktop number (which is 
> the argument from passed in from the shell), and "xloadimage -onroot 
> -fullscreen [image]" accordingly.
>
> If your desktops are important enough to you that you want a seperate 
> background on some, I would suppose you will stay on each long enough 
> that you don't mind the initial load (which may or may not be 
> noticable on your computer).
>
> For example, I use CTRL-ALT-[1-6] to switch desktops. SHIFT-ALT-[1-6] 
> sends a window to a desktop but does not follow it.
>
> But if you switch relative to the current desktop (e.g. "next", 
> "previous") rather than absolute as I described, then you are going to 
> need to keep track of state somewhere. You won't need a daemon for 
> this; you could get by using a file to track state. Just include a 
> script as an additional <action name="execute"> that increments or 
> decrements the value in a file.


OK, that seems to be the key issue that either I didn't know, or that is 
confusing me, or both-- that depending on your access mode, desktops are 
named differently somehow. Which would explain why using absolute 
names/numbers in a rox --pinboard= command, or even using wmsetbg -w 
<workspace> doesn't work.

I'll try some of these suggestions and see if any of them fit my needs 
(thanks!), but I'm still curious as to what changed in workspace 
designation between OB2 and OB3 (yes, I know one is based on bb code and 
the other is completely from scratch, but that means nothing to me) so 
that these 3 external programs would presumably work under OB2, but do 
not under OB3.

>
> Sorry for the sloppy grammar; I'm on my way to sleep.
>
> dircha
>
Thanks again for the help, and no... it's not really "important", but it 
would be nice, and trying to do things like this is how I learn more 
about Linux and the WM, so I'm learning :-) .

Holly