Kompose’
is an Expose’-like (OS X) full screen task manager for KDE that has just
gone to release 0.4.1 in two months. You really have to see it to
understand, but imagine that tiny little box in your taskbar that
indicates all our running windows blown up and on the entire desktop.
Then add a tiny screenshot for each app. For those without an OS X box around we have provided these screenshots of Kompose’ in action.
they must have taken bad screen shots because it looks like KDE windows just sitting around.
The author of Kompose’, Luis Mayoral, warns that you need a currently powerful machine to make Kompse’ not appear sluggish. He notes in the FAQ, “If you are dissatisfied with the speed Komposé shows up please buy a faster computer.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it’s nice to see Linux copying OSX again, but what do they mean by “currently powerful” machine? Maybe there’s a better way to do this?
My vintage 2001, 500MHz G3 iBook drags on some software, like Maple, but it doesn’t seem at all sluggish when it does Exposé. It’s not as nice as my roommate’s 800MHz G4 iBook, but it’s still pretty swift.
Do the windows still update in realtime (like in OS X) when you use kompose? The way the article describes it, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
From http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14422
“0.4.2 will probably be be the last version supporting X Servers that do not provide the new XComposite extension (Xorg 6.8 will have it). During the next weeks I plan to concentrate on this issue, feature requests will be freezed until this has been done. But don’t expect anything usable too soon.”
@debman: see http://kompose.berlios.de/kompose_0.4.jpg
And people always question Mono’s legality while projects like Samba, nautilus, konqueror, mozilla and here kompose directly infrige known patents.
Apparently not. The performance blurb talk about the way the screen shots are taken….. Screenshots doesn’t suggest updates.
On page 11 of 17 in the slideshow, it shows Kompose preferences. There is a setting for the delay between screenshots. Looks like it’s live.
alright but it does not update in real time. It uses screenshots which leave overlapped windows looking overlapped in the preview mode. The fundemental design is flawed. It needs a ground up rewrite to be functional. It is a quick hack.
The reason that Exposé is fast even on a slow mac is that, IIRC, it uses Apple’s graphics rendering engine which is optimized for exactly that kind of eye candy. Trying to emulate the look without having the same kind of underlying infrastructure would certainly be more resource-intensive.
Trying to emulate the look without having the same kind of underlying infrastructure would certainly be more resource-intensive.
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you mean something like composite and glitz. thats hardly a month away
I use Kompose on several computers but only have problems with Kompose when i use an Nvidia card. Couldbe that the drivers need an update because my Ati cards do not have the same problem.
what patents do these programs infringe upon. i know about the mono thing. how about the rest?
samba obviously doesnt infringe on any known patents. its a clean room reverse engineered specs.
whats wrong with the browsers?
as long as the linux is so poorly hardware-accelerated, this kind of stuff just doesnt make any sense.
IF linux had a framework for compositing totally hardware-driven (and we’re talking about 15-40 gigaflops on today’s gpu) it would sure grab people’s attention over windows.
linux needs a killer feature for a desktop
this just doesnt cut it for me.
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/04/09/08/125208.shtml?tid…
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cairo and dri already provide acceleration for linux. update yourself
well… people who don’t believe that ideas should be patented shouldn’t be concerned about patents when developing software.
(whatever the situation is in this case)
Man, this is not an Expose clone. This is UGLY.
The great thing about Expose is not its usefulness, but its eye candy.
I beg to differ: the great thing about Exposé is its usefulness. Exposé could be stunningly beautiful, but unless I had a use for it, I’d never see it. I have the preferences set so that the fourth fourth mouse button shows all the program windows; that (or pressing F11) is more convenient than ALT+TAB or mousing over to the Dock, neither of which shows me the window contents.
If Kompose’ shows windows overlapping the contents, then I don’t care how beautiful it is, because it simply won’t be very useful.
Some similar apps, also for non-KDE users:
Skippy / Skippy-XD: http://www.thegraveyard.org/skippy.php
Expocity: http://www.pycage.de/software_expocity.html
(Skippy-XD uses XDamage and XComposite!)
It was added last Sunday.
Re: Ugly
I have to disagree as well. Expose is incredibly useful. Just because it’s fast doesn’t mean it’s eye candy. I had to use an iMac with 10.2 installed and the lack of Expose was aggravating. With Expose and Alt Tab, I only use the Dock as an application launcher. I don’t need to hide applications or minimize windows any more.
Re: concerning patents
Well, regardless of whether this infringes on any patents, and I have no idea, just because you don’t agree with the law doesn’t mean you can ignore it. If you don’t agree with it, do something about it. Lobby your government representative. Write a letter to the editor. Run for office or vote for someone who shares your views. Mount a legal challenge.
well… people who don’t believe that ideas should be patented shouldn’t be concerned about patents when developing software.
I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. An equivalent argument is that one shouldn’t worry about being caught stealing candy if they don’t believe stealing is wrong. This sort of thinking does not jive with the way this world works and will only land you in a pile of trouble.
If I were the Kompose dev, I’d be crossing my t’s and dotting my i’s. This is just asking for trouble.
I’m running an X server with accelerated compositing right now
Just wait a week or so for the X.org 6.8 release to come out, and make sure you’ve got a NVIDIA or ATI card.
samba obviously doesnt infringe on any known patents. its a clean room reverse engineered specs.
Which obviously says nothing about whether it infringes any patent or not. We are talking about intellectual property of IDEAS, not of CODE. I neither wish that Samba infringes any patent nor do i know whether it does, but your statement is absolutely bollocks.
And James:
That’s the problem with software patents. Basically you are right, but if you really did so in the world of software, you would only check if your program does not harm any (pending) patent and you wouldn’t have time to really code any more. This is because patents on software are trivial. There is no unique thing in a program, every program uses the same concepts. And the people who allow such patents don’t have anything computer-related as an area of expertise, and are even often bribed by the big companies.
> Just wait a week or so for the X.org 6.8 release to come out
How about today? Source is there, only announcement/release notes are drawn back again for later republication today.
from what i recall the original idea for patents was that to protect a original creation from being copyed before one could get production going. these days its used after the fact most of the time, atleast for software patents.
just an idea…
can patented features developed in EU or anywhere else where there are no software patents?
there is no breaking the law and there is no fighting with windmills?
one more thing: is there anything like that being developed for gnome?
There can’t be any stolen code because OSX is not opensource. Stolen ideas? Do a search on google and you’ll see how many ideas stole Apple from others. For instance, the idea of Expose was originally included in a Microsoft Research. And i know you will laugh but i, personally had an idea about a taskswitcher utility where you can see all of your windows. And i’m sure there are hundreds of developers and users got a similiar idea.
I’d have to try Kompose before drawing any conclusions. It’s not as pretty as Expose, but speed and clear presentation is what counts.
I will say that Expose is the best workflow hack I’ve ever used. Never mind that it looks slick: it makes managing lots of windows FAST. I don’t miss multiple desktops anymore.
I like the fact that all windows are labeled. Why on EARTH doesn’t Apple do this? It seems willingly negligent to not do so. Who published “a word is worth a thousand pictures” in their HIG many MANY years ago? I’m would go on a tangent and gripe about the dock’s lack of more than 1 label at a time, too, but DragThing solves that problem for me.
Good job on your improvements/innovations, Komposé team!
When you hold your mouse over a window with expose it dims and displays a label
Hi,
Interesting to see all this debate on software patents, IPO etc. I don’t know much about it (Australia), so perhaps somebody here would care to synop the issue in a few brief sentences for us ignorants?
Does anybody know whatever happened to Expocity? According to its homepage, the last release was in January 2004, against metacity CVS. I’m guessing it won’t patch cleanly against the current metacity – is there an effort to keep working on it or anything?
Hmmm, then again, I wish Rasterman and team would start working on something like this – they always seem to code stuff that both looks beautiful, and runs smoothly on the most ancient of hardware =).
Bye,
Victor
1) Speed. I use a 2.6 gHz Celeron laptop with rotgut Intel graphics. From click to screen is roughly 1/10 second. My X server is XFree86 4.3.
2) Updates are periodic and the period can be modified.
3) Regarding the “quick hack” comment, I have not been able to duplicate the overlap issue. All running programs are displayed separately.
4) This isn’t strictly an Exposé clone, as it takes into account KDE’s multiple desktops.
5) Not only is each program clearly labeled, there are large buttons to minimize/restore and to exit the program. Already minimized programs are dimmed.
Komposé has a certain “coolness” factor, but it also works quickly and well. The biggest hassle with the program is its installation, as it isn’t in any Debian repository that I know about. I installed it the old fashioned way, compiled from source. It’s not that much fun tracking down the source of each failed sanity check and cryptic error message.
I’ve seen expose on mac OSX, and main new thing is the transitional animation from thumbnail to the real window. The representation consisting of a thumbnail in a little tray of minimised windows is something that enlightenment has had for a long while.
I should point out that KDE has a couple of fully functional alternatives to Komposé built into the desktop environment. The first can be activated by right clicking the task bar and adding a window list. A second option that does the exact same thing is to add a window list button anywhere on the Kicker. Komposé is definitely “cooler,” but the other options work well.
The program worked rather well, though I wait until a XComposite version is out before I use it more often. The real problem I had with it when I tried it earlier tonight was that Komposé took way to long time to render the background behind the miniature windows… so it went from background to a single color for maybe half a second and than back to background! Very annoying… still good work, looking forward to future releases!
The first can be activated by right clicking the task bar and adding a window list.
Okay, I just tried that, but it doesn’t show the window contents, as do Exposé (realtime) and Komposé (pseudo-realtime).
Kompose is in Debian unstable
Does anybody know whatever happened to Expocity? According to its homepage, the last release was in January 2004, against metacity CVS. I’m guessing it won’t patch cleanly against the current metacity – is there an effort to keep working on it or anything?
At moment, the current metacity is still the one from Gnome 2.6, i patched it clearly on Gnome 2.6.0. Performance wasn’t too good, although i had nvidia drivers installed.
Generally for X, using the new 6.8 features:
http://thegraveyard.org/skippy.php
And for gnome, a metacity mod:
http://www.pycage.de/software_expocity.html
…is that we can save precious time switching tasks which we can then waste discussing the task switchers here.
Well, regardless of whether this infringes on any patents, and I have no idea, just because you don’t agree with the law doesn’t mean you can ignore it. If you don’t agree with it, do something about it. Lobby your government representative. Write a letter to the editor. Run for office or vote for someone who shares your views. Mount a legal challenge.
So, I assume you thought Rosa Parks was wrong. Kompose’s author is doing the exact same thing–standing up for his moral beliefs.
I’m a very strong moralist, and it’s immoral to follow a law you know is immoral just because it’s the law. By disobeying it, he’s doing the right thing.
I’ve found Komposé faster than Skippy. Takes about 1/2 second on my 1.2GHz Laptop, which is actually running at 800MHz. Skippy-XD is faster of course, but Komposé >0.4.2 should be the same. Atm Windows are static, that should change in >0.4.2. Komposé also has the advantage of being Qt, so configuration is easy.
It’s not entirely terrible to copy features from other groups . . . but this is certainly an example of a lack of innovation in the linux camp. By and large, linux just doesn’t stand out from an OS perspective.
First, this is way off-topic and I wouldn’t complain if both our comments were moderated away. Second, of course I don’t think Rosa Parks was wrong. I’ll assume you said that simply to make a point. It’s a fair point and I respect both your perspective and conviction. I just don’t think it’s reasonable to compare the infringement of a patent law for a task switcher to a courageous act of defiance which galvanized the civil rights movement. Also, I’m not sure this is a case of patent infringement. Beyond that, I haven’t been convinced that patent law is immoral. Stupid maybe, but I’m not sure yet about immoral.
When you hold your mouse over a window with expose it dims and displays a label
Yeah, but you have to mouse over to see what the window is titled. What about showing all titles, and highlighting the one you have selected?
First Jack: You are quite right. To be able to see the contents of the app while switching gives it a certain “coolness” factor, but I’m not sure it makes it any more useful.
Then Michael: Thanks. Either I missed it in Sid, or they just put it in a few days ago. I notice they are using 0.4.1 instead of 0.4.2. I notice also the dependency on KDE 3.3, something I want to avoid for the time being, because of stability concerns. I am currently running 3.2.3.
I figure I’ll switch to the Debian package when it hits testing.
I really don’t get it. Expose is only there on OSX cause OSX horrendously lacks a good task/window manager.
KDE has a good, working task bar already… Kompose is an artificial leg fitted to a person who is not crippled… What a waste of skill!
Haha, i’ve always thought the same thing about Expose. It only needs to be there becuase the dock is so crappy compared to a task bar
samba obviously doesnt infringe on any known patents. its a clean room reverse engineered specs.
Which obviously says nothing about whether it infringes any patent or not. We are talking about intellectual property of IDEAS, not of CODE. I neither wish that Samba infringes any patent nor do i know whether it does, but your statement is absolutely bollocks.
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do you really think samba people arent aware of the possible problems and have effectively worked around it. the guys are employed by IBM which has the world’s highest amount of software patents. go find something else to spread fear about
Does anybody know whatever happened to Expocity? According to its homepage, the last release was in January 2004, against metacity CVS. I’m guessing it won’t patch cleanly against the current metacity – is there an effort to keep working on it or anything?
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the author is working on it. he is waiting for xorg composite and damage extensions to be widely deployed before relying on it
This sounds like some of the features that have been in kasbar for a while (window thumbnailing etc). The code in HEAD allows the thumbnails to be embedded in the task box and adds custom sizing etc. Once I get support for the new features in X.org 6.8 like Composite and Damage this will be even cooler. There’s a little information about the stuff I’ve done here:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/538
and here
http://webcvs.kde.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/kdebase/kicker/…