Summary: Hey guys, just a quick entry this week. We’ve had quite a few radical changes done to compiz-core and the Compiz Fusion website is in the process of going up, where as I have said previously, this blog will be split in two: official, (not written by me, but by a team of people) and this blog which you will find on the planet server we will be setting up. Bear in mind that the website and theme is no easy job, and we’re just putting things in one step at a time, like building a … building. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this entry, and we hope to see you soon on the new website that’s going up.
News in Bugs:
– Code Cleanup
– Fixed windows disappearing when ungrouping them.
– Fixed group occasionally causing compiz to crash when moving windows between tab bars
– Wall now wraps around when you edge flip with the pointer.
– Desktop window is now *really* excluded from negative.
– Core action option handling re-written, see below for more details
– You can now toggle switcher with a mouse key
IMPORTANT:
If you are currently using CCSM, LibCompizConfig, CCP and the like to configure compiz, it is absolutely essential that you do not update the compiz-core package for a while, because you will lose the ability to set any options. The reason for this is because of a re-write of action handling in core, as well as a re-write of the gconf plugin.
News in Features:
Website:
Well, as you all know, the new website is slowly going up. If you haven’t heard already, the new forums are running vBulliten, and can be located at forum.compiz-fusion.org. Note that the theme won’t be up for some time until the web team gets some of the problems with it sorted out. Also, a demo website can also be found at compiz-fusion.org, created by Jeffery Lamarie (imnotpc on the forums)
Widget Layer Re-Write:
Danny Baumann (maniac) has done a re-write of the widget layer plugin. The widget layer plugin is designed to hide your widgets, then show them on a keypress. The main differences are:
– This plugin allows you to configure the brightness and saturation of the screen under the widgets
– You can decide whether you want the widgets to go away if you click on somewhere other than the widgets
– Deciding which windows are widgets is now a proper match.
– Setting a window as a widget in the widget plugin allows you to refer to all widgets in other window matches as “widget=1”. So if you wanted set a special animation for widgets, instead of putting a whole bunch of matches to match all your widgets, just define them in the widget plugin and type “widget=1” into any other window match
Other stuff:
– KDE Config (KConfig) plugin added to compiz core. This adds a KDE dependency. To compile without the KConfig plugin, use ./autogen.sh –disable-kde –disable-kconfig.
– Artwork added for Viewport Switcher plugin and CubeCaps plugin
– Goto Viewport plugin merged into Viewport Switcher
– “Reset to defaults” button added to CCSM’s profiles section
Tip of the week:
If you don’t want the tooltips on gnome-panel to show when hovering over window list buttons with the thumbnail plugin on, you can turn them off, or at least hide them by going to
CCSM -> General Options -> Opacity Settings -> Window Opacities
and adding a match like this
(name=gnome-panel & type=tooltip)
for GNOME and
(name=kicker & type=tooltip)
for KDE. The default opacity should be 0, if not, change it to that.
The great thing about this is, that only the tooltips from the window list will not show, all other tooltips from icons in the system tray and menus will still show. Brilliant!
Recent Release:
Well, Compiz Fusion 0.5.2 was our first major release and a milestone for the community. We have been successful in packaging this release and spreading the word. Thanks to everyone who dugg the blog post, your combined effort helped this wonderful news reach the front page!
Well, thats it for this week. If you have any questions, queries, observations or comments, please post them in the comments below. See you next time!
– Sam (SmSpillaz) and the Compiz Fusion team
Alternative Fax 
Ok, and if, by mistake, we have already updated the compiz-core package, how can we revert the changes in a simple way? 😉
hmm the tip of the week doesnt seem to work for me
i added (name=gnome-panel & type=tooltip) and opacity 0 but nothing happened 
Hi, thanks again for news, news, news, 🙂
Just wanted to point out the the “demo website” you mention, isn’t really a demo as such, rather something that Jeff was just trying out. There’s nothing much to look at. It’s not how the new web site will look or necessarily how it will be created. That it being carefully discussed right now. Couldn’t guess when the real thing will be up, but everyone agrees that it should be done *right* as well as soon. So hopefully you will have some more news in the weeks to come.
This update is from a simple user who follows the forum, IRC and the mailing lists, but who is otherwise not involved in the big stuff 😉
Regards,
David
d:¬)-‘
yep, nice comment, I wish the planet is already set up, by the time compiz is one year old or such, in case someone comes up with the fancy spinning pie/cake windows, that would be fun.
bye
Tip of the week, (name=gnome-panel & type=tooltip), doesn’t work for me either (on Fedora7) 😦
Ooops, forgot to mention… For GNOME, it actually stops the “Application Launcher” (Quick Launch) and the “Menu Bar” tooltips from showing, but all other tooltips show.
Tip of the Week runs great on XFCE just change the line to: (name=xfce4-panel & type=tooltip) , very great!
Doh! Wish I had seen this before my system prompted me to upgrade everything. None of my previously tweaked settings are working. Though, my config file seems to still be intact.
For the gnome tooltips problem: i had to use :
(name=wnck-applet & type=tooltip)
to make it work
I was busy trying to figure out how to make the ebuild (on gentoo) pull the git version of libcompizconfig from a couple of days ago when I notice there was a 0.5.2 version!!
emerge =compiz-fusion-0.5.2
fixed everything for me … pheeeew! I don’t know how it’s built on other systems but I gather you can use `git log` to list the changes and then select an id from one from a few days ago. Maybe there’s also a similar solution. Good luck!
“11. spiorf – August 20, 2007
For the gnome tooltips problem: i had to use :
(name=wnck-applet & type=tooltip)
to make it work”
Hey! Cool… That seems to work for me 😉
Thank you 🙂
so if we already updated, what do we do?
Dougal Campbell, the .ini location seems to have moved to ~/.config/compiz/compizconfig… I’ve just copied my prior .ini to that location overwriting the existing one and I had my settings working again.
Sadly I don’t have the keys for Rotate Cube working yet… I wish I had read this warning before upgrading too 😛
“Wall now wraps around when you edge flip with the pointer.”
very nice! i have been waiting for that. thank you.
i hope it properly wraps around so that when you go up (to get from the top row to the bottom row) it actually goes up, and not down accross all the rows in between. (and likewise for all other directions)
now i just need to find a set of packages for ubuntu feisty that is reasonable stable. trevenos last set (tried on sunday) made my machine unusable.
for gnome tooltips:
Make sure you remove the previously defined “tooltip” keyword from the default entry already set; as this will override the gnome-panel setting as detailed in the Tip of the Week.
So, I made the mistake of updating too… was waiting for someone to post a fix (moving the ini around didn’t do anything), so I finally figured it out.
The main issue for me is, as posted, not being able to set keybindings. You can run gconf-editor and manually set your keys… just be warned that doing so won’t check for conflicting keybindings.
Example: I want ring switcher to be super+tab. in gconf-editor, find
/apps/compiz/plugins/ring/allscreens/options/ You’ll need to add a next_key key because there isn’t one. Add it as a string and set the value to <Alt>Tab (that’s lessthanAltgreaterthanTab in case this post eats my characters.
You can do likewise for other plugins, just find by name.
(also note that you can screw things up if you dick around with gconf-editor too much. you have been warned)
Erp. I meant <Super>Tab where I said <Alt> in my previous post 😮
Can someone host (or I can host if someone sends me the file) the last compiz-core file we should be using so we can update our settings? I’ve just reinstalled Ubuntu Feisty on my laptop, and realized I don’t know where to get the correct file.
If you need me to host the file, send me a message @ dracojk [at] gmail [] com.
To make the tip work, move it UP in the list to be FIRST, not second.
That made it work for me!
I just updated to the latest Compiz in Trevino’s repository, and I can save my settings once again!
Long time on my computer is working everything, with glxinfo affirming DRI working and appearently the 3d effects on the menus — but I dont get away that f’ing problem that the window effects are not present, no bar on the top of the window, thus the window not moving , normally it’s in the lower right window, etc. This problem, many people have, and should be fixed finaly !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If your window decorations don’t show up, try changing the following lines in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf (back it up first…) :
Section “Device”
……….
Option “RenderAccel” “true”
Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “true”
Option “TripleBuffer” “true”
Option “AddARGBGLXVisuals” “True”
……….
EndSection
(it worked for me)
When do we get an osx bar?!