Installing and Using Compiz Config Settings Manager
The CompizConfig Settings Manager, sometimes referred to as CCSM by fans of abbreviations, is a Compiz configuration utility created by the Compiz Fusion project (http://wiki.compiz-fusion .org/CCSM). Why this configuration utility isn't installed by default with Compiz on Ubuntu systems is a mystery to me, because it provides an excellent interface that simplifies activating, configuring, and deactivating both Compiz and Compiz Fusion plug-ins. CompizConfig was designed solely for the purpose of configuring Compiz plug-ins. It is able to make use of some information about the internals of Compiz plug-ins and the capabilities that they provide and can therefore identify both dependencies and potential conflicts between plug-ins.
You can install CompizConfig by using your favorite package management tool to install the com-pizconfig-settings-manager package, as described in Chapter 23. This package is located in the Universe repository, so that repository must be enabled in your /etc/apt/sources.list file before you can install the package. (By default, the Universe repository is enabled in this file, but you may have disabled it for some reason.) Once you've installed the CompizConfig package, you can start the CompizConfig Settings Manager by selecting Preferences C> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. Figure 6-7 shows the CompizConfig Settings Manager when you first start it.
figure 6-7
The CompizConfig Settings Manager
The CompizConfig Settings Manager
Most configuration utilities make it incredibly easy for you to iteratively change too many options, to the point where you don't know how to restore things to their original values (or at least know what those original values were). The CompizConfig interface provides a nice, consistent solution to this problem by providing a small icon that looks like a whisk-broom to the right of each individual configuration setting. Clicking this icon at any time restores the associated configuration option to its original, default value.
To enable any plug-in but use its default configuration, click the checkbox to the left of the icon and name for that plug-in, as shown in Figure 6-7. To configure any Compiz or Compiz Fusion plug-in, click the name or icon of that plug-in. This displays the configuration panel for that plug-in, an example of which is shown in Figure 6-8. You can also enable or disable the plug-in after configuring it by selecting or deselecting the checkbox below the Use This Plugin label in the left-hand pane of a configuration panel such as the one shown in Figure 6-8. You can return to the top-level CompizConfig panel by clicking the Back button shown in the lower-left corner.
The General Options item at the top of the CompizConfig screen (refer to Figure 6-7) enables you to configure options for Compiz itself, and doing so may affect multiple (or all) plug-ins. The General Options configuration item is organized into seven tabs, as shown in Figure 6-9.
FIGURE 6-8
Configuring a specific plug-in in CompizConfig
FIGURE 6-8
Configuring a specific plug-in in CompizConfig
FIGURE 6-9
Setting General Options in CompizConfig
FIGURE 6-9
Setting General Options in CompizConfig
Each of these tabs contains multiple configuration options, such as:
■ General: Enables you to configure the cursor and its size, configure the terminal application for use with command-line functions, control whether Compiz provides audible notification of warning and error messages, and so on.
■ Display Settings: Enables you to configure general aspects of how Compiz interacts with your display: how finely the screen displays surface textures, whether Compiz attempts to automatically identify your screen's refresh rate, whether the screen or a window dims as it is transformed (Lighting), the screen's refresh rate, whether screen updates are limited to taking place during vertical blanking, the output devices that Compiz knows about and whether it should attempt to identify them automatically, and so on.
■ Focus & Raise Behaviour: Enables you to specify how your mouse interacts with and selects windows: whether you have to click a window to set the focus to it, whether windows rise to the top automatically when you position the mouse over them (and how long it takes for this to happen), whether clicking anywhere in a window brings that window to the top, and which windows will not automatically steal the focus when they appear. (The last of these requires that the Regex Matching plug-in be enabled, as does any plug-in that needs to be able to identify specific windows or types of windows.)
■ Key Bindings: Enables you to define the key bindings, mouse actions, or screen regions associated with common window operations (General section) as well as the commands to run when specific run_command functions are invoked (the Commands section). The commands on this tab also enable you to map keys, mouse actions, or screen regions to the Increase Opacity and Decrease Opacity operations.
■ Commands: Enables you to set the Linux commands that are executed when the internal Compiz run_command commands and the built-in screenshot commands are invoked. The former provides a generic way for you to map specific commands to specific keys. You can define the key mapping that executes each of the run_command commands in the Action tab's Commands section. For example, you could map the Super-1 key combination to automatically execute the top command within an xterm window by entering xterm -e top as run_command1, and then using the Action tab's Commands section to map run_command1 to the key sequence Super-1.
■ Desktop Size: Enables you to set the number of viewports that are supported by Compiz for each desktop, and their horizontal and vertical organization. As I'll discuss later in this section, the horizontal virtual size must be set to 4 if you are to use the Desktop Cube plug-in. Its default value is 2, which is confusing.
As an example of using CompizConfig, let's enable the Rotate Cube plug-in, which is one of the best-known Compiz plug-ins. When completely configured (along with some related plug-ins), this plug-in displays your active viewports as the four sides of a cube that you can quickly rotate to cycle through the available viewports. You can also rotate the cube in three dimensions to expose its top and bottom, which you can decorate with images. Why have an incredibly powerful graphics card if you're not going to make the most of it? To activate the Rotate Cube plug-in, follow these steps:
1. Configure your desktop so that four viewports are available.
2. As mentioned earlier in this section, you must use the General Options' Desktop Size tab to set the Horizontal Virtual Size of your desktop to 4 in order to provide 4 viewports that you can use as the four sides of your desktop cube, as shown in Figure 6-10. (The default value is 2, which is confusing.) To do this, select the General Options section of CompizConfig, select the Desktop
Size tab, and either enter the new value of 4 or use the up arrow to increase the default value of 2 for the Horizontal Virtual Size parameter.
When you're finished, your screen should look like that shown in Figure 6-10. Click the Back button to return to the main CompizConfig screen.
figure 6-10
Increasing the horizontal viewports on your system
Increasing the horizontal viewports on your system
3. Activate the Desktop Cube plug-in by clicking the X to the left of its icon and name. If you have made no previous configuration changes, you will see a warning dialog like the one shown in Figure 6-11.
figure 6-11
Identifying potential plug-in conflicts
Identifying potential plug-in conflicts
Dialogs of this type are one of the advantages of using a domain-specific configuration applications such a CompizConfig instead of a generic configuration application such as gconf-edi-tor. Because CompizConfig knows more about plug-ins than simply how to manipulate the GNOME registry, it can detect feature conflicts and offer to disable active plug-ins that might cause them to fail when you enable new plug-ins. In this case, click Disable Desktop Wall, which will disable the enhanced, but linear, viewport scroller and will enable the Desktop Cube plug-in, as requested.
4. Select the checkmark beside the Rotate Cube plug-in, which is the plug-in that actually rotates the cube (the Desktop Cube simply maps viewports to the sides of a cube but doesn't provide any whizzy graphics). At this point, you should be able to rotate the faces of your new desktop cube in one of three basic ways:
By using the Ctrl+Alt+Right key combination to rotate the desktop to the right, and the Ctrl+Alt+Left key combination to rotate the desktop to the left.
By clicking the title bar of a window and dragging that window to the left or right edge of the screen. The cube will rotate, and the window you're moving will be moved to the new viewport.
By positioning the mouse cursor on your desktop background and moving the mouse's scroll wheel (if you have one).
Pretty impressive, no? Even more eye-catching are the following:
You can spin the cube in three dimensions by holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys, clicking and holding the primary mouse button, and moving the mouse up and down to expose the top and bottom of the cube.
You can unfold the cube (flattening it to a single screen) by pressing the Ctrl+Alt+Down keys, and you can then scroll left or right by using the appropriate arrow keys. This makes it easy to locate the viewport that contains the applications you're looking for. Once the viewport that you're looking for displays in the center of the screen, release the Ctrl, Alt, and arrow keys to display it full-size.
Now that you've had some fun with this plug-in, you may want to consider tweaking it even further. Some fun suggestions are:
■ Use the Desktop Cube's Appearance tab to add custom images to the top and/or bottom of the desktop cube by specifying image files in the Cube Caps section.
■ Use the Desktop Cube's Appearance tab to specify a background image or gradient for the space "behind" the 3D rotating cube by selecting a gradient start and end color or specifying image files in the Skydome section.
■ Set the cube to be transparent using the Desktop Cube's Transparent Cube tab, and then activate the Cube Gears plug-in to display a rotating set of gears inside the cube as it rotates. Figure 6-12 shows a transparent cube running the cube gears plug-in in the process of being rotated.
These suggestions show the fun you can have with Compiz and its plug-ins and the incredible range and power of the graphical capabilities it provides. Given the number of potential settings you can configure and the bells and whistles that Compiz provides, you may never get around to doing real work again!
FIGURE 6-12
Rotating a transparent cube while using the cube gears plug-in
FIGURE 6-12
Rotating a transparent cube while using the cube gears plug-in
i- : .--p '-'K'i^S A common Compiz problem is that the title bars of newly-created windows display under RIwSsSSi&SkeiSH the GNOME panel at the top of the screen. If this occurs, first make sure that the Place
Windows plug-in is enabled. This plug-in uses a "smarter" algorithm that takes window title bars into account when placing new windows on the screen. You can also simply move such windows so that their title bars are visible by holding down the Alt key and clicking and holding the left mouse button in the window that you want to move. The standard window move icon displays, and you can then drag the window such that its title bar is visible.
These Are a Few of My Favorite Things
^ome of the plug-ins that I typically activate beyond the default set are as follows:
■ Desktop Cube/Rotate Cube: Discussed in the previous section, quickly cycling through available viewports and rotating a cube with those viewports on its sides is not only attractive but also eminently useful.
■ Cube Gears: Although I realize I'm using more of the CPU's resources, this is such a cool effect that I can't resist activating it.
■ Ring Switcher: This plug-in adds the Super-Tab command to display available windows in a circular ring that spins as you tab through them, with the title of the selected window displayed in the center. It's similar to the standard Alt+Tab application Switcher but much more fun.
■ Water Effect: Sure to amuse the kids and amaze the neighbors, this plug-in lets you toggle onscreen raindrops with Shift+F9. This wastes computing power only when the raindrops are active, but it's quite visually impressive when you're showing Compiz to someone.
■ Wobbly Windows: Discussed in the section of this chapter on using the GNOME configuration tools to configure Compiz effects, Wobbly Windows provide a jiggly, gelatinous view as you move windows. Like the Desktop Cube/Rotate Cube plug-ins, this plug-in provides one of the classic Compiz effects.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, see http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/Plugins for a complete listing of available Compiz and Compiz Fusion plug-ins and their configuration. The Compiz plug-ins page at www.compiz.org/Plugins lists the default plug-ins that are bundled with Compiz and also provides links to some additional, external plug-ins that you may find useful.
Continue reading here: Installing and Using the Avant Window Navigator
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