unity-dev team mailing list archive

[Philipp Gassmann <phiphi@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 08.02.2012 20:01, Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Philipp Gassmann <phiphi@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:phiphi@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
>     On 07.02.2012 21:04, Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper wrote:
>     > I guess my first question is how can we programmatically disable
>     > Ubuntu Unity mode (specifically disable the application menu
>     > relocating, window titlebar integration with the top panel bar, and
>     > disable the left side dock/launcher bar) for our users when they
>     want
>     > to enter VMware Unity mode with an Ubuntu 12.04 VM? Is it
>     possible to
>     > do so via gconftool or dconf-tool or something else?
>     >
>     > Is it possible to do this currently? Was Ubuntu Unity designed with
>     > the thought that users might want to turn off elements of it without
>     > having to logout and login again?
>     >
>     When I read your goal and your approach, I thought: "why not a
>     different
>     approach?"
>
>     Wouldn't it be possible to access the exported menus and build them on
>     the host system?
>     With unity --replace you can restart the entire shell on the fly.
>     Perhaps you could use a special compiz-plugin or similar that passes
>     window content and menus to vmware.
>     Could you even use unity-core (base of unity 3d and 2d) and make
>     another
>     frontend? Is there some kind of API between core and frontend?
>
>     Disclaimer: I am no Ubuntu developer and don't know if that's
>     possible.
>     But I imagine you could result in even better integration.
>
>
> Hey Philipp! Thanks for the reply! I'm CC'ing unity-dev too because I
> think you have an interesting proposal and I'm guessing someone else
> might have the same idea and I want to make sure I address it for them
> too. =:)
>
> Actually, we've thought about your approach before. You're right, it
> would be a possibility to host the Ubuntu Unity DE window menus in the
> host system. But I don't think this would work across the largest
> segment of our user base. I think it would be possible to do this with
> a Linux Ubuntu Unity DE host and a Mac OS X host, since both of these
> host environments have menus at the top of the screen and not in the
> application windows directly. But we need to take into account all of
> our users, and I do not think this solution would work at all for the
> majority of our users who use Windows hosts and even our Linux users
> who don't use the Ubuntu Unity DE. They're used to seeing application
> menus as part of the application windows themselves and having them
> not show up there would be very foreign and confusing to them.
>
> So while I think it would be a pretty interesting design and would
> provide for a nice integration on Mac OS X and Linux Ubuntu Unity DE
> host platforms, we'd still need to design a different approach for the
> majority of our users, sadly.
>
> Good point, though! I definitely appreciate the "let's think outside
> the box" approach. =:)
>
> -- 
>  -[ Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper   //  http://movingparts.net ]-
>  -[ bash fun -> :(){ :|:&};:   //  Numbers 6:22-26 ]-

Thank you for your appreciation.
I didn't think of the global menu in an ubuntu or Mac host only. I
thought you could use the window decoration and the menu system (in the
window or globally) of the host system and just export the actual
content of the windows. I don't know the inner working of the graphics
system, as far as I know the content of windows are drawn in a X buffer,
that then are moved and overlayed by a window manager. I imagine one
could interfere there and export the content of application windows to
the host system instead of whole-screen-capture and cutting away what's
not wanted.