Launch sugar in a window

[westurner]

Is there a way to launch sugar in a window (in gnome) at least for development (instead of by selecting sugar as an alternate window manager/launcher in the GDM login screen)? That would solve for: screensaver with lock screen, sugar not working with e.g. LightDM on old notebooks, development and testing.

A person could require the window to launch in fullscreen in kiosk mode if that's necessary.

"Software Screensaver"
#927

(Edit) https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-runner 👍

Sugar Runner is for running Sugar as an application inside a desktop environment. It provides a desktop menu item and icon.

You can run it from a text console or from inside another X session. By default it runs in fullscreen but you can specify the window size using the --resolution option.

[quozl]

Needs more user experience detail. Sugar could be changed to check for command line argument --no-fullscreen and;

• not use a full-screen window, but rather a window of about 1024x768 pixels,
• not start the metacity window manager, but rather work with whatever window manager the user has already started,
• provide user interface elements for the global keys like F6, see how Sugarizer does this,
• not log out the session on exit. but instead exit the Python process.
• allow activities to create their windows managed by the existing window manager,
• not support activity focus switching, but instead leave that duty to the existing window manager,
• support resizing the Sugar window,
• support the Journal replacing the Sugar window,
• potentially support the different Sugar windows (F1, F2, F3).

[westurner]

I'll take a look at https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-runner .

"Kiosk / single-application mode"
sugarlabs/sugar-runner#7

[devmrfitz]

Is this issue about running the traditional Sugar session manager view in a window in another manager like Gnome, XFCE, etc?

[quozl]

Yes, this issue originally asked about how to run Sugar inside another window manager. It is an idea that has merit, but has not been implemented in Sugar yet. I gave items that begin to show what would have to change inside Sugar to complete the idea.

However, there was no progress on defining what was to change or to change it. Instead something that is not part of Sugar, called Sugar Runner, which used to do something like this but not as well, and is unmaintained, was suggested as a workaround.

[devmrfitz]

Should I try to implement it using Xephyr?

[quozl]

No. As in #929 (comment), implementing support for running Sugar as a window requires a set of steps, and none of them would require Xephyr. Sugar Runner only used Xephyr and Xvfb in order to not change Sugar. Sugar Runner was not intended for regular use, but rather as a debugging tool. Sugar Runner is not a good example of how to implement the changes needed.