Arch Linux

ramoneur

Member

Registered: 2007-06-04

Posts: 89

openbox is perfect for me, only ONE thing left to do...

well, after ALOT of googling and searching and maybe ~100 reboots ive got everything just the way i want it with my system and openbox. its been fun trying to set everything straight and when everything goes the way i want, the happy feeling you get... cant describe it

well now on to my question. as stated above ive only got one major thing left i want to do with my system.  i want to be able to have different wallpapers on different desktops in openbox. currently im setting my desktop wallpaper with nitrogen.
well ive searched alot on this too but havent found anything. i were more concentraiting on getting everything basic done. so with only one thing left i thought id ask the community

sorry for my english and thanks to everyone that replies to this thread!

---

A w e s o m e
r
c
h

aris002

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2004-03-21

Posts: 75

Re: openbox is perfect for me, only ONE thing left to do...

It works for me with "wallpapoz" (but not wallpapoz-svn) from AUR. Just need to install "pil" with pacman first.

ramoneur

Member

Registered: 2007-06-04

Posts: 89

Re: openbox is perfect for me, only ONE thing left to do...

well wallpapoz doesnt print the picture to the root window or whatever its called... so you can "see" that after switching to a desktop the desktop loads an image on top of the original background. so you can see the original background first.. that shite ugly.
so i would preffer another way.

---

A w e s o m e
r
c
h

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: openbox is perfect for me, only ONE thing left to do...

the "other" way isnt to attractive either.

drawing a desktop background isnt instantaneous, so unless you have window overlays like wallpapoz, you'll get a one or two second delay between changing desktop, and the image loading. If you happen to change desktop a few times quickly, it'll really start to get ugly.

But if you want to do, that, you could either setup openbox to catch the desktop change, and run your favourite wallpaper setter, or use an external key catcher like xbindkeys, and run a script that sets the background, and changes the desktop with something like wmctrl.

Like I said, the alternative isnt attractive.

James

ramoneur

Member

Registered: 2007-06-04

Posts: 89

Re: openbox is perfect for me, only ONE thing left to do...

ok so i see, maybe wallpapoz is the way to go then.. if theres NO other way.
so i tried wallpapoz, it doesnt even work with openbox! what to do now?... :S
maybe i will have to give up the fact that i want different backgrounds on different desktops. but hey, how does kde do it?

---

A w e s o m e
r
c
h

aris002

Member

From: London, UK

Registered: 2004-03-21

Posts: 75

Re: openbox is perfect for me, only ONE thing left to do...

wallpapoz works with openbox!
But .. I use an ugly way:
1. when in openbox I start gnome-panel from terminal. (then from gnome menus I have to set my custom unfinished theme because gnome can't find some icons in openbox)
2. from another terminal I start

$wallpapoz &

and click "restart" in wallpapoz settings.
3. close wallpapoz setting window.
4. then I kill gnome-panel in the terminal with Ctrl_C.

P.S.
I was thinking about another alternatives:
1. I've heard there's a compiz plugin (but because compiz was much slower than beryl on my radeon 9200 I'm not very keen to try that.) - using and activating off-screen pixmaps should work fast.
2. write my own, but I don't see a big usefullness at the moment...
3. don't use any wallpapers when work but sometimes enjoy (what other usefullness of them, anyway?) them with screen saver or browser or other progs.
4. To recognize in which desktop am I - use some different background widgets like cairo-clock with different theme, bet maybe panels with different icons is sufficient?...
5 Someone will write and I might find it later...