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Richard Grenville 58c0ecec40 Feature #80 : D-Bus support

- Add D-Bus support. Currently 7 methods are available: "reset" (same as
  SIGUSR1), "list_win" (list the windows compton manages), "win_get"
  (get a property of the window), "win_set" (set a property of the
  window), "find_win" (find window based on client window / focus),
  "opts_get" (get the value of a compton option), and "opts_set" (set
  the value of a compton option), together with 4 signals: "win_added",
  "win_destroyed", "win_mapped", "win_unmapped".

- D-Bus support depends on libdbus.

- As there are many items and my time is tight, no much tests are done.
  Bugs to be expected.

- Create a new header file `common.h` that contains shared content.

- Fix some bugs in timeout handling.

- Update file headers in all source files.

- Re-enable --unredir-if-possible on multi-screen set-ups, as the user
  could turn if off manually anyway.

- Check if the window is mapped in `repair_win()`.

- Add ps->track_atom_lst and its handlers, to prepare for the new
  condition format.

- Known issue 1: "win_get", "win_set", "opts_get", "opts_set" support a
  very limited number of targets only. New ones will be added gradually.

- Known issue 2: Accidental drop of D-Bus connection is not handled.

- Known issue 3: Introspection does not reveal all available methods,
  because some methods have unpredictable prototypes. Still hesitating
  about what to do...

- Known issue 4: Error handling is not finished yet. Compton does not
  always reply with the correct error message (but it does print out the
  correct error message, usually).

2013-01-19 20:20:27 +08:00

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Compton

Compton is a compositor for X, and a fork of xcompmgr-dana.

I was frustrated by the low amount of standalone lightweight compositors. Compton was forked from Dana Jansens' fork of xcompmgr and refactored. I fixed whatever bug I found, and added features I wanted. Things seem stable, but don't quote me on it. I will most likely be actively working on this until I get the features I want. This is also a learning experience for me. That is, I'm partially doing this out of a desire to learn Xlib.

Changes from xcompmgr:

inactive window transparency / dimming
titlebar/frame transparency (specified with -e)
menu transparency (thanks to Dana)
shadows are now enabled for argb windows, e.g. terminals with transparency
removed serverside shadows (and simple compositing) to clean the code, the only option that remains is clientside shadows
configuration files (see the man page for more details)
colored shadows (--shadow-[red/green/blue])
a new fade system
VSync support (not always working)
Blur of background of transparent windows, window color inversion (bad in performance)
Some more options...

Fixes from the original xcompmgr:

fixed a segfault when opening certain window types
fixed a memory leak caused by not freeing up shadows (from the freedesktop repo)
fixed the conflict with chromium and similar windows
many more

Building

Dependencies:

B for build-time

R for runtime

libx11 (B,R)
libxcomposite (B,R)
libxdamage (B,R)
libxfixes (B,R)
libXext (B,R)
libxrender (B,R)
libXrandr (B,R)
pkg-config (B)
make (B)
xproto / x11proto (B)
bash (R)
xprop,xwininfo / x11-utils (R)
libpcre (B,R) (Can be disabled with NO_REGEX_PCRE at compile time)
libconfig (B,R) (Can be disabled with NO_LIBCONFIG at compile time)
libdrm (B) (Can be disabled with NO_VSYNC_DRM at compile time)
libGL (B,R) (Can be disabled with NO_VSYNC_OPENGL at compile time)
libdbus (B,R) (Can be disabled with NO_DBUS at compile time)
asciidoc (B)

How to build

To build, make sure you have the dependencies above:

# Make the main program
$ make
# Make the man pages
$ make docs
# Install
$ make install

(Compton does include a _CMakeLists.txt in the tree, but we haven't decided whether we should switch to CMake yet. The Makefile is fully usable right now.)

Known issues

VSync does not work too well. It's widely reported that tearing still happens on the top of the screen. I do not know how to fix the issue.
If --unredir-if-possible is enabled, when compton redirects/unredirects windows, the screen may flicker. Using --paint-on-overlay minimizes the problem from my observation, yet I do not know if there's a cure.
compton may not track focus correctly in all situations. The focus tracking code is experimental. --use-ewmh-active-win might be helpful.
Compton may give ugly shadow to windows with ARGB background if -z is enabled, because compton cannot determine their real shapes. One may have to disable shadows on those windows with window-type-specific settings in configuration file or --shadow-exclude.
The performance of blurring is terrible, probably because of a problem in the X Render implementation. Its behavior is driver-dependent: With nvidia-drivers it works but there are strange 1px lines remaining when you operate on windows (not sure if it's a bug in compton or in the driver); with nouveau it's utterly broken.

Usage

Please refer to the Asciidoc man pages (man/compton.1.asciidoc & man/compton-trans.1.asciidoc) for more details and examples.

Note a sample configuration file compton.sample.conf is included in the repository.

Support

Bug reports and feature requests should go to the "Issues" section above.
Our (semi?) official IRC channel is #compton on FreeNode.
Some information is available on the wiki, including (and presently, only includes) a FAQ.

License

Although compton has kind of taken on a life of its own, it was originally an xcompmgr fork. xcompmgr has gotten around. As far as I can tell, the lineage for this particular tree is something like:

Keith Packard (original author)
Matthew Hawn
...
Dana Jansens
chjj and richardgv

Not counting the tens of people who forked it in between.

Compton is distributed under MIT license, as far as I (richardgv) know. See LICENSE for more info.

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