metacity

Metacity 2.27.0 has just been released.  Since the number 27 is odd, it means the first unstable release on the path to the stable release 2.28 in six months’ time, and not a stable release as the forthcoming 2.26 will be. What is it ? Metacity is a simple compositing window manager that integrates nicely with GNOME [...]

When GNOME bug 86590 was born, it was a request to make workspaces switch instantaneously when you panned around them using the workspace switcher with ctrl alt arrow. Then that was fixed, and someone else complained that it was too slow, and inconsistent with the alt tab popup, which doesn’t switch until you let go of alt.  They [...]

At present all lines are drawn at the same thickness.  However, some people such as partially-sighted users require particularly thick lines .  GNOME bug 86040 suggests that the line format be extended to give the width as a fraction of the current icon height. Since this is a change to the format, it must appear first [...]

In GNOME bug 85793, someone points out that when a session is restored, the windows are restored out of order.  (The z-order is the depth of the window in the stack on the screen, so called by analogy with Cartesian X and Y coordinates.)  So if a window was on top when you logged [...]

In GNOME bug 80984 (closely related to GNOME bug 76672), someone is asking for the window manager to help out with drag-and-drop.  The problem is that a drag-and-drop operation should not raise the window it begins in, because raising that window could obscure the window you’re planning to drop the object into. This is [...]

GNOME bug 97725 raises the interesting idea of associating keys with windows.  Two differing approaches have been advocated: Have a set of keys which work to “bookmark” windows, and a corresponding set of keys which mean “jump to bookmark n“. Have a keystroke which means “bookmark this window using the key I’m about to press”, and [...]

Rather than allow squibs to disappear into the bit bucket, we’ll post the status of all the squibs so far every so often (except any that were already fixed or rejected at the time of the previous roundup).  There is only limited time to fix things, so the burden of proof is on explaining why [...]

This was going to be the squib of the day for May 8th (yes, I have it all planned out) but I thought it was so interesting and potentially useful that I wrote a patch already. Metacity lets you bind keystrokes to all sorts of things, but it doesn’t let you bind all those extra buttons [...]

GNOME bug 150897 points out that as things stand you can’t bind naked modifiers to actions– for example, you can’t have it so that pressing alt on its own takes a screenshot. The reason this might be useful is that pressing super (which is generally the key with the Windows logo on it) on its [...]

GNOME bug 130821 suggests that all windows should have the current dimensions shown in the middle while they’re being resized.  Everyone seems to agree this is a good idea, and I’m not sure why we haven’t just committed it yet.  Any naysayers? Photo © Bruno Peck, cc-by-nc-sa.