gillies@noao.UUCP (02/27/87)
Recently there has been some discussion of applications that draw to the window manager port. This may be useful in some cases if a Finder-like interface is desired. In article <gUD1pjy00UsIk=004v@andrew.cmu.edu> jv0l#@andrew.cmu.edu (Justin Chris Vallon) writes: >>The only alternative that I could think of is to make a window with a >>gray background pattern and make it the ghost window (so frontWindow >>won't act strange). > Larry Rosenstein replies: >This is the best thing to do. It avoids the problems of handling the >clipping and mouse events, since these can be handled just like any other >window. (You probably don't have to make it the ghost window for this to >work; you just have to special case the window and never bring it to the >front.) > Since I had been working on an application that used the desktop, I could see how using a window covering the desktop with a gray pattern could have some nice features. The only case where this idea seems to me to be lacking is in the length of time it sometimes takes to erase the pseudo-desktop (bkPat is gray). This is most evident when a system window (da) is open and is dragged around the screen. The area occupied by the window when moved is painted white and is redrawn by the update event to the gray pattern (in my code). The time to do this is noticeably longer than the time to redraw the true desktop. Can this lag be eliminated? Is it possible to hook into the routine that the system uses to redraw the desktop under the same situation. If the uncovered region was painted gray instead of white I think I would be happy. I know about PaintWhite but with a system window I'm not sure can be useful. Anybody know how to do the recommended scheme (no WMgrPort) and paint the window gray quickly? Can I fool the system into thinking my window may be the WMgrPort? Please reply to my address below. Thanks. Kim Gillies -------------------- Kim Gillies { ihnp4!, seismo!}noao!gillies gillies@noao.arpa National Optical Astronomy Observatories 950 North Cherry Tucson, AZ 85719 6023275511ext246