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Expose Metacity With Expocity
ubiquitin writes "expocity is a project to patch metacity and lets you switch between applications in the metacity window manager. After pressing a keystroke, your window manager will present you an overview of all open windows and you can select the window, you want to switch to, visually. For an idea on how this works, check out this screenshot."
We have cloned MacOsX 10.3 expose feature.
Then people would know what to expect without clicking on the screenshot
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Why not just say "Expose effect for Metacity" instead of beating around the bush.
Call a spade a spade.
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
here. ;-)
Anyway, it's a good idea and very useful.
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
I have 8 virtual desktops. I know whats on each of them. Alt-1 gets me to my email and general web browser. Alt-2 has my IRC client. Alt-3 has a gnome-console with a tab to the servers I want to keep an eye on. Alt-4 has some statistical analysis I'm working on. Alt-5 is my web development screen. And so on. Xmms is set to stick on all screens, and is shrunk to mini-view up at the top.
Within each virtual screen its easy to find the application I want - in the web dev screen I might have a Mozilla window, and Opera window, an emacs windows, and a Gimp window, but its easy to find the one I want.
I neither understand why you'd need a screen of thumbnails to all your open apps, nor understand why this is on slashdot. Oh well.
Baz
So the reason "Linux is losing the desktop race" is because the very people who are currently trying to improve the linux desktop experience aren't making cool stuff for windows instead?
Keith Packard is currently finishing up a sample compositing manager for his X server that presents live app windows updated in essentially real time. Should see a live demo in the next day or two---a preliminary screen shot is already available in the freedesktop.org article from earlier today.
I'm glad the WM folks are already duplicating Mac eXpose layout and function: once the two are combined, the X desktop should have the full Mac eXpose functionality.
Even better, this is only the beginning of the cool things that can be done quickly and easily with X compositing... It looks like X is finally almost ready for the (modern) desktop.
At home, I use OSX 10.3, and Expose is one of my favourite features of 10.3, which I use most often. Now, with Expose-like functionality on Metacity, I can have the same kind of comfort on my computer at work (where I use GNU/Linux with Gnome as desktop environment and - of course - Metacity as window manager). This will definitely improve my workflow.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
apt-get-expose is basically a heavily modified version of apt-get and dselect, using a completely re-implemented ncurses and screen library to allow multiple apt-get sessions to be tiled onto the console with a single keystroke. Believe me, when you're neck deep in 20 apt-get sessions trying to juggle installs across several nodes in the supercomputer cluster, being able to visually choose a particular apt-get session is a God-send!
It wasn't easy. If any of you have seen the way Expose works in Mac OS X, then you'll know how fluid that "tile all windows" animation is. It was, to put it mildly, a 'challenge' to get the ncurses library to emulate that functionality using only ASCII art. We extensively debated how we would get ASCII text-scaling support to the same level of smoothness as Mac OS X achieves, and in the end the only way we could see was to hack some low-level VGA BIOS calls. It's way cool, and it's as fast as the Mac OS X version, but using all ASCII characters (we tried Unicode, but the 16-byte overhead wasn't justifiable).
Since then, we've been able to roll out apt-get-expose (using apt-get, by the way...being able to roll out new versions of apt-get with apt-get rocks!!!) across the campus, and administrators of other clusters can't stop raving about how easy it is to manage multiple apt-get sessions with apt-get-expose.
Window tiling and arrangement functionality shouldn't be restricted only to those running Mac OS X and Expocity. apt-get tile all windows dude!!
> does anyone actually care about this??
My favorite Metacity application management tool is -
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I am here to tell you that is exactly why Linux is losing the desktop race.
Please don't tell people who are volunteering their time writing open source applications that their time would be better spent elsewhere. The reason Linux is as close to where it is on the desktop is because people have worked on the sort of things that interest them. You may be right: Maybe some other project would be more objectively useful. But on the other hand, if you were in charge, deciding who got to work on what project, nobody would want to work on open-source anymore, and Linux would suck pretty quick.
So let people do what they want, even if you think it's dumb. It's a community effort that is strong because people can work when, how, and on what they want.
Do you hang out at neighborhood cleanups telling people they should be volunteering their time at soup kitchens instead?
Yep, using the same definition of innovation as Microsoft, you're right.
Copy your ideas from Apple, give it a slightly different finish and not do it as well, and then have it named "innovative."
Bloody brilliant.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
The average desktop user barely understands the concept of files and folders - do you honestly expect them to be organized enough to arrange their programs into virtual desktops as you have done?
This project is exactly what Linux should be doing - assimilating the best features from its competitors on the desktop. I just wish that Linux was also innovating on the desktop, rather than just following in the footsteps of others (and no, themability is not an innovation so far as usability is concerned).
Yup, virtual desktops are cool, but 3D virtual desktop selection is even cooler, and surpisingly fast if you have a decent video card: http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
This is a troll, I warn you in advance. That is, I am going to deliberate provoke you to think.
Looking at the incredible screenshot of Expocity for Metacity, I think to myself: how can anyone work with such a confusion of information in front of them?
My hero, Dijkstra (anyone who could live with 5 successive constanants in his name must be cool), once said "GOTOs considered harmful". We know where that led us to...
Anyhow, I believe the desktop Window metaphor has outlived its usefulness. It dates to the earliest metaphors of visual computing, but continues today only because it has become dogma. Let me list some of the ways it does not model a true desktop, such as you or I sit at every day and work on.
First, a true desktop has hundreds of objects on it, varying from piles of CDs, documents, bills to be paid, loudspeakers, mouldy cups of coffee... This is the real working environment of most creative people, a cluttered mess that makes perfect sense because it maps our projects. You've all had that sense of panic when someone "cleaned your desk?"
Second, in a real desktop, you add new stuff, it covers old stuff. This is normal and natural and necessary and the only way to filter the real work from the junk. If it ain't screaming at you, it's not serious.
Thirdly, the objects on a GUI windowed desktop do not match the actual objects we work on. I have to look through my email client to find important emails, I have my bookmarks in Konqueror, I have that hot dossier on a disk somewhere.
There has to be a better way.
What we need is a unified desktop that represents the real objects we work on, in a way that mirrors the manner in which we actually use them.
A desktop that hides information which needs to be hidden, and exposes the information which needs to be visible. A desktop that shows everything, from incoming emails to useful web bookmarks, to documents and toys, newsgroups, and devices.
I've specified this desktop in
journal entries.
Putting my money where my mouth is, we're working on a prototype that will be unleashed on the world sometime early next year.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Panther has been out for, what, a month? Good to know the Mac is still worth copying, at least....
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I've just tried it. It works, even if it's DOG SLOW. Expose on my brother's iMac 400 is chunky, but it's very usable. Expocity on my P4 isn't usable yet.
If it speeds up I'll be happy to use it.
Are you a troll, or were you just shortchanged on brains? Metacity copied it from Apple, not the other way around.
>Especially that neat bar along the bottom with the
>flashy icons. I've seen that in heaps of
>screenshots but I just _can't_ find any information
>on how to get it.
One answer: gDesklets.
http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/
I know that lots of readers here believe that they should be able to copy ideas from other peoples software and make an open source or free alternative, but does this kind of blantant copying harm the cause?
I would rather see innovation from the Linux and open source commnuitities that doesn't merely try to implement what other companies are already doing.
Apple deserve much praise for their recent work on OS X in my opinion. Simply duplicating work that they've invested time, money and effort in research and development.
It think this dilutes their efforts. Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery.
This just shows in summary how poorly designed (aesthetically) most GNOME applications are. All the applications look the same! You can see the brilliance of Apples work with expose because each application has a unique appearance.
And there was me thinking that it was Enlightnment's pager (which has done the same thing for several years now - move the mouse over a small version of a window in the pager and it'll zoom out a larger picture, click on it and get taken to the window... and you can move windows around in the pager, even between desktops)
It's a very, very evil hack. It works, for some definition of working - it'll make your Metacity very, very slow. It hooks into Metacity so that every time a window is exposed or does a redraw, it recalculates a thumbnail of the window.
:-)
This means dragging a window over multiple other windows will make the window manager unresponsive for quite some time! Anyway, hitting the magic button does produce a pretty thumbnail though.
This is definitely not useful in the real world, but still cute
A topic in the gentoo forums tells of how to make an ebuild that will get the cvs source, patch it, build it and install it in your gentoo box.
There's no hurry. The desktop market isn't going anywhere.
Right now, we're seeing the catastrophic takeover of the server market by Linux, it's devastating the vendors Unix offerings, Microsoft will be next, all that will be left for non Linux systems will be a few small niches and long term holdouts.
The desktop market is really no different, the same will happen there too. Like the server switch it really is inevitable and has been for years. Purely a matter of time now.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
You probably also have a giagantic screen, yes? 1280x1020 or above? Doesn't sound like you have many windows open either.
Our CEO didn't 'get' Expose when I demo'd it on my 17" Powerbook. Then two days after he got his 12" Powerbook, he was asking a question about something and said in disgust, 'Arrg, all these frigging windows." "Hit F12". "Oh. Hmm. Okay. That IS cool." He now loves it. Can't stop using it. Once you start using it- you realize that you don't spend time hunting for windows by hiding others(and then un-hiding them because that's what you were working on), or repositioning them, or hiding and closing things. It's like having a desk where you can instantly tile the mess, grab what you want, and everything goes back to exactly where you left it.
I use virtual desktops on my linux workstation, and they're a constant pain- an inelegant solution. An opened terminal doesn't open where it should go, it opens where you currently are. You have to move them between VTs. You have to remember which one you're in, and which one you want to go to. They DO NOT solve the problem Expose is designed to solve- finding one out of many windows on the screen, very quickly.
I'd like to see you manage 40 open windows and find ONE quickly, please. Oh, what's the matter, your scheme doesn't work for more than 3-4 windows per virtual terminal?
Oh, and did I mention that I don't have any screen real estate wasted on a pager, or a window list...even my dock is auto-hide.
Please help metamoderate.
Not having much exposure to Mac, I just saw the expose effect the other day. A professor was doing a powerpoint lecture and needed to switch to a website to better get a point across.
He used the expose feature to select the browser from the 10+ he had open at the time. The audience all went "Ooooooh" and I'll admit that I thought it was a neat effect.
While I probably would just use virtual desktops most of the time, it would be useful in some cases, or to show someone (as pictures are worth a 1000 words and all that) some of the neat stuff Linux can do.
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
They have.
They just haven't felt the need to let anyone easily select it.
It's either a command line option passed to gconf to set the option, or available in gconf-editor. A google should turn it up. Personally, I'd just use OpenBox 3 in place of metacity. Nice and snappy even on low-end machines. You could run it (if you wanted ) in GNOME by:
opening a terminal
open your session editor
remove metacity from the session
and then running OpenBox from the open terminal window.
In theory it should work, but it's been awhile since I've tried to run GNOME.
Alt-tab is fine if you have a few windows open at once, but it doesn't scale well. Try it with 20 or so windows and it starts to get annoying.
If you have multiple similar windows open (say a load of gimp documents, or gvim windows), you have to cycle through each one, read the title on the task list and remember to stop cycling on the right one (or use shift-alt-tab to go back, a strange combination).
Alt-tab works, but it's inefficient. I generally split my work over many desktops to avoid having to use it too much. The expose^Hity method seems a good alternative.
Anyone who thinks Enlightenment development has "gotten stuck" hasn't been paying attention.
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
I'll take "Features Enlightenment Had 3 Years Ago" for $100, Alex.
Michael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
"I think George Lucas is gonna sue somebody."
Oddly, everything you site as an example of original OSS development is actually derivative of something else.
Apple's Expose was a totally original concept that's now been copied by OSS developers.
It's one thing upgrade and revise existing ideas along what would appear to be a natural path of progression, and something else entirely to brainstorm new products and new interfaces, and mass market them.
Enlightenment has already a similar feature for at least three years. It's called the pager.
:)
For those who aren't familiar with it: Enlightenment's pager continually takes a live snapshot of each window's contents and displays them in a miniature form inside the pager.
- You can focus any window by clicking on it in the pager
- You can drag windows around inside the pager to move them
- You can drag a window out of the pager from any virtual desktop onto your current desktop
- You can iconify (minimize) a window by dragging it from the pager to the iconbox
Just make the pager fullscreen and give it a "transparent" background. Expose and its clones can keep on trying to catch up.
Am I a hipster-doofus?
But according to Tog this principle has been patented by apple like ten years ago: Tog has been touting the "Piles" concept ever since.
Before wasting you time you may want to read a book or two.
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
Okay, I have to admit it. Not only I read the article, I took the time to patch the current metacity CVS and try it :
Pro- good scaling, looks slick
- can better differentiate between similar windows
ContraI had to completely release Alt and Tab to activate it. Mouse needed to activate windows. Better: Initial Alt+Tab invokes Expose-Mode, Mode stays while I keep pressing Alt. Every further Tab press flips through the windows top-down/left-right (or in your cultural preferred directional order), releasing tab selects window
while (!asleep()) sheep++
-T
another good example is Pure Data (pure-data.org) ... this is the original visual audio programming language, and its open source. its rediculous to clain innovation is somehow conclusively tied to the license that the code is released under, when its clearly mostly dependant on the author. sure, open source projects often clone ideas from closed source, but closed source clones closed source, and closed source clones open source all the time.
tasty electronic music vittles