[openbox] Set different background images per virtual desktop

[Anthony Thyssen]

On Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:43:52 +0200 (CEST)
Mikael Magnusson <lists at bak.och.fr.am> wrote:

| On Sun, 19 Apr 2009, Bernhard Stoeckner wrote:
| 
| > Hi,
| >
| > can I set different backgrounds depending on the virtual desktop I am
| > switching to (without incurring the overhead of applying the background
| > in the keybind)?
| >
| > Regards.
| 
| Openbox doesn't have any specific support for it. In fact openbox has no 
| support for wallpapers at all, but it doesn't use virtual root windows. 
| This means that when you change desktops, you are still looking at the 
| same desktop, we just unmapped all the windows on the old desktop and 
| mapped the ones on the new desktop.
| 
| You could have a desktop type window on each desktop that simply displayed 
| whatever you wanted, and it would have that effect. Note that having that 
| large images open at all times uses some memory:
| 
| You have: 1680*1050*3 bytes
| You want: MiB
|  	* 5.0468445
| 
| If your machine is under some load, those images could be swapped out and 
| desktop switching would be slowed down.
| 
| I'm not aware of any such existing program, and you are maybe the third or 
| fourth person asking for it ever, so I don't think there is a big demand 
| for it :)
| 
If you use a small tile pattern in a 'background' window, then it should
be possible to use a lot less memory than a full image.  It depends on the
program that generated such a window.

If a dedicated application does this then of course that application
could possibly do the switching of the desktop when the window managers
changes screen, and keep it in below ALL other windows without special
intervention by the WM.

Note that if 'show_desktop' is enabled for Gnome Nautilus (the default
unless turned off using a gconf configuration program) then it already
has 'background display window' whcih looks just like the normal
background.  Of course it does not change with desktop :-(

I know this as in the past I used CTwm window manager (sic) and had to
add special manager configuration to handle that background window.


  Anthony Thyssen ( System Programmer )    <A.Thyssen at griffith.edu.au>
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Writing software takes twice as long as you expect it will take...
                  Even if you keep this in mind!
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Anthony's Home is his Castle     http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/