Notes on Beryl

[John Stowers]

On 10/31/06, Ulrik Mikaelsson <ulrik.mikaelsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Regarding Gnome "Integration" there's of course a reason why Beryl in the
> forking process decided to be desktop neutral.
>
> I don't know for sure but I've got a feeling the KWin devs would appreciate
> a non-biased compositing manager to adopt over a Gnomish Compiz.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it still be possible to write a
> Gnomified version of beryl-settings and emerald-theme-manager?

Yes but then you would simply end up with what upstream compiz has.

If you want Gnome integration then using metacity themes seems like
the sane choice. If you want Gnome based settings then Gconf seems
natural, the "gnome compiz manager" at http://gandalfn.wordpress.com/
is simple to use and integrates nicely with GNOME.

> In my view, basic subsystems, such as graphics compositing, filesystems,
> networking, file-indexing services should be kept as desktop and
> distribution-neutral as possible. It's then up to the desktop and
> distribution to put it's own flavor on top of it and present it to the
> users. Tracker, DBUS, NetworkManager AND Beryl is doing a good job here,
> trying to stay neutral with completely separate projects for integration
> into the desktops.

Compiz is desktop neutral. DavidR designed the plugin system with this
in mind. Compiz will work perfectly fine without the GConf plugin
(which is its only tie to GNOME).

gtk-window-decorator depended on gtk, but there was nothing stopping
someone from writing a kde window decorator that used Qt.

Sorry but there was a lot of FUD spread about the reasons for the
fork. Desktop neutrality was (IMHO) a bit of a red herring.

John