Kompose: Expose for Linux?

[Viro]

There's an article here (http://osdir.com/Article1581.phtml) that describes Kompose, and Expose like feature that will soon be in KDE. It looks like these guys are copying Apple, but don't really do a good job of it.

From the screen shots, it seems that only screenshots of running apps are taken and then minimized. That means that windows can't be updated in real time. Plus, it seems that it doesn't even take entire screenshots of running apps, replacing some of them with just the application logos.

Poor rip off, IMHO.

[texanpenguin]

If I've learnt anything from using stinking annoying KDE on RedHat 9 at Uni every now and again, it's that Linux is very poor at dealing with graphical effects. Transparency on the Konsole is done (apparently) by taking a screenshot of the area beneath the transparent area of the window, filtering it with the colour of the Konsole background, then applying it as a background image. Dragging a "transparent" window around on a fast Opteron at Uni is hellishly slow and ridiculous.

That's just simple alpha-transparency, something Windows has had since Win2K, and which OS X has had since the beginning.

Now imagine Exposé being programmed in the same horrible manner. My fear is that it'll be so hideously slow that people will think of the whole idea as too impractical, and when they use Macs, won't get to see it working properly.

I had WinExposé (from memory) on my old Windows XP box when I didn't yet have this PowerBook, and it did a tragic job. It didn't scale the windows only as little as it should, and arrange them properly - it made a grid and scaled every window to the same rectangular size, so the windows were tiled at the top of the screen, leaving a large area at the bottom unoccupied.

http://osdir.com/screenshots/index.p...1&currentPic=6 is the best example of how Exposé just can't be programmed poorly and still be usable.

That is just stupid. Damn I hate KDE :P.

Thank God for Quartz.