Compositing manager notes.
==========================

xfwm4 now features a compositing manager. This code is new and has received only
a moderate amount of testing, so it's disabled by default.

If you want to stay safe, keep it disabled. If you still want to try the 
compositor extensions with xfwm4, here follows how to enable the compositing
manager.

1) Enabling the compositor manager in xfwm4
-------------------------------------------

To enable the compositing manager in xfwm4, add --enable-compositor when running
the configure script.

eg:

sh configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --enable-compositor

[...]
checking for xcomposite >= 1.0 xfixes xdamage xrender... yes
checking COMPOSITOR_CFLAGS... -DXTHREADS -D_REENTRANT -DXUSE_MTSAFE_API -I/usr/X11R6/include
checking COMPOSITOR_LIBS... -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lXcomposite -lXdamage -lXfixes -lXrender -lX11 -lXext
[...]

2) Enabling the compositor extension in the Xserver
---------------------------------------------------

At this time, the compositor extensions are included in the X.org Xserver. I do
not know if there are any plan to include these extension in XFree86, nor when
it's planned.

The following tips apply to the X.org Xserver X11R6.8.x

- Edit the xorg.conf configure file (usually in /etc/X11/xorg.conf)
- Add the following section:

Section "Extensions"
      Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
                                                                                                              
- Save the configuration file and restart the Xserver.

3) Tips
-------

The following tips are from my own experience. I am not connected to any graphic
card vendor.

If you have usefull tips to improve XRender performance for your favorite video
card, feel free to submit your own tips.

3.1 NVidia
~~~~~~~~~~

The XRender extension can be very CPU consuming. The NVidia binary closed source
drivers are able to perform the rendering in hardware.

If you have an NVidia video card and the NVidia binary closed source drivers, 
you can enable the XRender in hardwareby adding the following option to your 
xorg.conf file:

        Option      "RenderAccel" "true"

in the device section:

eg:
Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
        BoardName   "NVIDIA GeForce 4 (generic)"
        Option      "RenderAccel" "true"
EndSection